Stillness in Motion brings together the writing of scholars, theorists, and artists on the uneasy relationship between Italian culture and photography. Highlighting the depth and complexity of the Italian contribution to the technology and practice of photography, this collection offers essays, interviews, and theoretical reflections at the intersection of comparative, visual, and cultural studies. Its chapters, illustrated with more than 130 black and white images and an eight-page colour section, explore how Italian literature, cinema, popular culture, and politics have engaged with the medium of photography over the course of time. The collection includes topics such as Futurism's ambivalent relationship to photography, the influence of American photography on Italian neorealist cinema, and the connection between the photograph and Duchamp's concept of the Readymade. With contributions from writer and theorist Umberto Eco, photographer Franco Vaccari, art historian Robert Valtorta, and cultural historian Robert Lumley, Stillness in Motion engages with crucial historical and cultural moments in Italian history, examining each one through particular photographic practices.

Stillness in Motion in the Seventeenth Century Theatre provides a comprehensive examination of this aesthetic theory. The author investigates this aesthetic history as a form of artistic creation, philosophical investigation, a way of representing and manipulating ideas about gender and a way of acknowledging, reinforcing and making a critique of social values for the still and moving, the permanent and elapsing. The book's analysis covers the entire seventeenth-century with chapters on the work of Ben Jonson, John Milton, the pamphletheatre, Aphra Behn, John Vanbrugh and Jeremy Collier and will be of interest to scholars in the areas of literary and performance studies.

Since the development of film as an artistic medium in the 1890s, there has been an inherent tension between still photographic images and moving cinematic images, from their form and function to the messages they convey and their impact on the beholder and on culture at large. This volume, one of the first book-length works to analyze, critique, and further the international debate about the meaning and use of motion and stillness in film and photography, takes these concepts out of the theoretical arena of cinematic studies and applies them to the wider and ever-changing landscape of images and media. With contributions from such acclaimed international scholars as Tom Gunning, Thomas Elsaesser, Mark B. N. Hansen, George Baker, Ina Blom, and Christa Blümlinger, these collected essays examine the strategic uses of stillness and motion in art from the mid-nineteenth century to the technologically driven present.

Traditionally shrouded in mystery and taught only to the closest students, the secrets of Taijiquan push-hands and fighting technique from the Chen style are revealed in this book. Master Wang Fengming, an eleventh generation practitioner of Chen-style Taijiquan, provides detailed information about the famous internal fighting techniques and reveals inside knowledge essential to the remarkable results achieved by the Chinese masters. The book features: - effective ways of cultivating Taiji internal power - variety of joint-locking techniques and counter techniques - 13 postures of Taiji explained - leg work, including stances and kicking techniques - unique silk-reeling exercises - rarely revealed vital point striking - 7 styles of push-hands training - 20 kinds of Taiji energy explained and demonstrated. This comprehensive book is a major contribution to the literature on push-hands techniques in the West.

Craniosacral therapy is based on the belief that functions of the human system are maintained and integrated by a biodynamic force known as 'primary respiration,' or the breath of life. Found in the brain, spinal cord, and bodily fluids, this rhythmic pulse promotes healing and health. Written for students and practitioners but accessible to lay readers, this text presents the fundamental concepts and techniques of a method that redirects the cerebrospinal fluid to areas of imbalance, thus enhancing overall health. Volume One covers both the history and conceptual ideas fundamental to Craniosacral Biodynamics, as well as the more complex structural and tissue relationships.

Charles Ridley is known for having refined a version of biodynamic craniosacral work that is nonmedical and nonmechanical. In Stillness, he clarifies the three fundamental types of this work — biomechanical, functional, and biodynamic. He explains the requirements and pitfalls of each model, and how to discern the differences and similarities between them. He guides the practitioner experientially to explore what he is describing, and offers exercises drawn from his own practice to help therapists access directly the whole felt-body sense that connects each individual with the Breath of Life.

Part artistic study, part intimate memoir, this book illuminates the technique and repertory of American dancer Isadora Duncan (1877-1927) and her enduring legacy from the perspective of an artist and scholar who has reconstructed and performed her work for 35 years. Providing an overview of modern activities and trends in the teaching and performance of Duncan's dance, the author describes her own work directing The Isadora Duncan Dance Ensemble, the company that sought to implement Duncan's mission to create not a school of dance but "a school of life."