The best of America's best writer on dance "Theoretically, I am ready to go to anything-once. If it moves, I'm interested; if it moves to music, I'm in love." From 1973 until 1996 Arlene Croce was The New Yorker's dance critic, a post created for her. Her entertaining, forthright, passionate reviews and essays have revealed the logic and history of ballet, modern dance, and their postmodern variants to a generation of theatergoers. This volume contains her most significant and provocative pieces-over a fourth have never appeared in book form-writings that reverberate with consequence and controversy for the state of the art today.

Prominent dance critic Arlene Croce wrote for The New Yorker during the 1970s, '80s and '90s. Through more than 200 critiques in that magazine, she confirmed a classical aesthetic framework for dance, influencing the work of numerous contemporary critics as well as the tastes of audiences. This book explores that framework and provides an interpretive analysis of the biographical, professional and historical elements that contributed to the context of Croce's work. Topics include Croce's predecessors in dance criticism, relevant twentieth-century contemporaries and the journalistic philosophy of The New Yorker. Providing 10 of Croce's essays in their entirety, the author discusses the three specific elements of artistic excellence that Croce consistently used in her evaluations: sympathetic musicality, Apollonian craftsmanship and the enlivening force of tradition. Special attention is given to the literary and rhetorical qualities of Croce's work. Finally, appendices offer a detailed subject breakdown of topics in Croce's essays, listing (by frequency of appearance) dance companies, dancers, choreographers, dance styles, ballets, and themes.

Dance is an activity that everyone can enjoy, and Dance Appreciation will help students do just that. Dance Appreciation is written to encompass the needs of a broad range of dance students, from high school to university level, and is appropriate for students who are new to dance as well as those who are experienced in the art form. The text will help learners discover more about themselves, connect with dance, and make it a relevant and vital part of their lives, whether it is their primary course of study, eventual career path, or simply a way to express themselves and enrich their lives. This text is the only dance appreciation resource that offers ancillary materials for instructors: Instructor ancillaries consisting of an instructor guide, test package, and PowerPoint presentation package make the teaching experience both easier and more effective, whether teaching in face-to-face or online settings. Five video segments demonstrate elements of dance and offer associated learning and movement activities, bringing the content to life for students. Textbook elements such as learning objectives, key terms, Enduring Understanding statements, Spotlight special elements, and chapter discussion questions help students navigate the chapters and retain the essential content. In addition, related resources delivered through HKPropel supply students with learning activities, individual and group projects, handouts, time lines, suggestions for further reading, video recommendations, and more to facilitate the learning experience. Dance Appreciation helps students understand dance from the perspectives of dancers, choreographers, and professionals in other careers related to dance. Students are introduced to a broad range of dance genres, forms, and styles, and they learn to forge a relationship with dance as an art form, connecting it with other academic and artistic disciplines and with their own life experiences. The text is organized into three parts. Part I, Exploring Dance, provides a foundational understanding of who dances and why, and it introduces the elements of dance and movement principles. Part II, Selected Dance Genres and Styles, covers Western dance genres, examining classical concert dance forms, hip-hop, and aerial and site-specific dance, highlighting notable artists and events. In part III, Connecting With Dance, students delve into aspects of dance performance and production, learning approaches for viewing and responding to dance performances and exploring the role of global interactions, especially through online content and social media, in developing and transmitting new dance forms and styles. Throughout the text, readers will learn about dance-related career paths. Dance Appreciation offers instructors an up-to-date, comprehensive resource—complete with an array of ancillaries—that ensures that students have the opportunity to become informed, discerning, and responsive dance audience members and gain a broad appreciation of dance as an art form and a lifetime physical activity. Note: A code for accessing HKPropel is not included with this ebook but may be purchased separately.

Choreographing Discourses brings together essays originally published by Mark Franko between 1996 and the contemporary moment. Assembling these essays from international, sometimes untranslated sources and curating their relationship to a rapidly changing field, this Reader offers an important resource in the dynamic scholarly fields of Dance and Performance Studies. What makes this volume especially appropriate for undergraduate and graduate teaching is its critical focus on twentieth- and twenty-first-century dance artists and choreographers – among these, Oskar Schlemmer, Merce Cunningham, Kazuo Ohno, William Forsythe, Bill T. Jones, and Pina Bausch, some of the most high-profile European, American, and Japanese artists of the past century. The volume’s constellation of topics delves into controversies that are essential turning points in the field (notably, Still/Here and Paris is Burning), which illuminate the spine of the field while interlinking dance scholarship with performance theory, film, visual, and public art. The volume contains the first critical assessments of Franko’s contribution to the field by André Lepecki and Gay Morris, and an interview incorporating a biographical dimension to the development of Franko’s work and its relation to his dance and choreography. Ultimately, this Reader encourages a wide scope of conversation and engagement, opening up core questions in ethics, embodiment, and performativity.

Selected writings illuminate a century of international dance.

Teaching Dance Studies is a practical guide, written by college professors and dancers/choreographers active in the field, introducing key issues in dance pedagogy. Many young people graduating from universities with degrees – either PhDs or MFAs – desire to teach dance, either in college settings or at local dance schools. This collection covers all areas of dance education, including improvisation/choreography; movement analysis; anthropology; theory; music for dance; dance on film; kinesiology/injury prevention; notation; history; archiving; and criticism. Among the contributors included in the volume are: Bill Evans, writing on movement analysis; Susan Foster on dance theory; Ilene Fox on notation; Linda Tomko addresses new approaches to teaching the history of all types of dance; and Elizabeth Aldrich writing on archiving.

This volume was first published by Inter-Disciplinary Press in 2013. The chapters in this book provide an overview of both global and interdisciplinary perspectives on Writing. In an era when technology in general and social media in particular has appeared to overtaken academic discussion in regard to how we communicate; the thoughts, research and praxes in this volume reveal that while the concept of writing has changed dramatically in the past decades, the flow of words on a page or computer screen as a large flow of text still remains one of the key forms in which humans are able to crystallize thoughts. Each chapter reveals a particular facet of this process, revealing that it is only through the crafting process of producing words through the conduit of head to heart to hand that we can create and understand the external composite of internal creativity and reveal the power of human reflection. The clearly demonstrates that writing is encapsulated humanity.

Examining a century of dance criticism in the United States and its influence on aesthetics and inclusion Dance criticism has long been integral to dance as an art form, serving as documentation and validation of dance performances, yet few studies have taken a close look at the impact of key critics and approaches to criticism over time. The first book to examine dance criticism in the United States across 100 years, from the late 1920s to the early twenty-first century, Shaping Dance Canons argues that critics in the popular press have influenced how dance has been defined and valued, as well as which artists and dance forms have been taken most seriously. Kate Mattingly likens the effect of dance writing to that of a flashlight, illuminating certain aesthetics at the expense of others. Mattingly shows how criticism can preserve and reproduce criteria for what qualifies as high art through generations of writers and in dance history courses, textbooks, and curricular design. She examines the gatekeeping role of prominent critics such as John Martin and Yvonne Rainer while highlighting the often-overlooked perspectives of writers from minoritized backgrounds and dance traditions. The book also includes an analysis of digital platforms and current dance projects—On the Boards TV, thINKingDANCE, Black Dance Stories, and amara tabor-smith’s House/Full of BlackWomen—that challenge systemic exclusions. In doing so, the book calls for ongoing dialogue and action to make dance criticism more equitable and inclusive.

From ballet and Balanchine to tap and swing, a treasury of unforgettable writing about the beauty and magic of American dance. From the beginning, American dance has been an exciting fusion of many disparate influences, with European traditions of ballet and social dancing encountering Native American rituals and African American improvisations to create something new and extraordinary. In this landmark collection, dance critic Mindy Aloff brings together an astonishing array of writers—dancers and dance creators, impresarios and critics, and enthusiastic literary observers—to tell the remarkable story of the artistry, innovation, and sheer joy of a great American art form. Here is dance in its many varieties and locales: from tap and swing to ballet and modern dance, from Five Points to Radio City Music Hall, and from the Lindy Hop to Michael Jackson’s Moonwalk. With 100 selections spanning three centuries, this is the biggest and best anthology on American dance ever published. Here are the most acclaimed dance critics, including Edwin Denby, Joan Acocella, Lincoln Kirstein, Jill Johnston, and Clive Barnes; the most inventive and influential choreographers and dancers, among them George Balanchine, Merce Cunningham, Paul Taylor, Twyla Tharp, Allegra Kent, and Mikhail Baryshnikov; and a dazzling roster of literary figures, such as Ralph Waldo Emerson, Emily Dickinson, Hart Crane, Edmund Wilson, Langston Hughes, and Susan Sontag. Here too are rare and hard-to-find texts, several previously unpublished, among them Jerome Robbins’s reflections on the secret of choreography and an inspiring commencement address from Mark Morris. Brilliant profiles of unforgettable performers—Stuart Hodes on Martha Graham; John Updike on Gene Kelly; Alastair Macaulay on Michael Jackson—join incisive, often deeply personal pieces—Zora Neale Hurston on hoodoo ritual; Arlene Croce on dance in film; Yehuda Hyman on Hasidic dances—to form a one-of-kind reading experience every dance lover will cherish. A twelve-page color insert presents iconic photographs of key figures from Isadora Duncan to Michael Jackson.