Abstract: Stepping Left simultaneously unveils the radical roots of modern dance and recalls the excitement and energy of New York City in the 1930s. Ellen Graff explores the relationship between the modern dance movement and leftist political activism in this period, describing the moment in American dance history when the revolutionary fervor of "dancing modern" was joined with the revolutionary vision promised by the Soviet Union. This account reveals the major contribution of Communist and left-wing politics to modern dance during its formative years in New York City. From Communist Party pageants to union hall performances to benefits for the Spanish Civil War, Graff documents the passionate involvement of American dancers in the political and social controversies that raged throughout the Depression era. Dancers formed collectives and experimented with collaborative methods of composition at the same time that they were marching in May Day parades, demonstrating for workers' rights, and protesting the rise of fascism in Europe. Graff records the explosion of choreographic activity that accompanied this lively period - when modern dance was trying to establish legitimacy and its own audience. Stepping Left restores a missing legacy to the history of American dance, a vibrant moment that was suppressed in the McCarthy era and almost lost to memory. Revisiting debates among writers and dancers about the place of political content and ethnicity in new dance forms, Stepping Left will engage a wide range of readers interested in the development of modern dance and the history of leftist culture in America.

Abstract: List of Plates - Preface - Notes on Contributors - PART 1: DANCE IN THE CITY/THE CITY IN DANCE - Dancing around Meaning (and the Meaning around Dance) A.Ward - Exer(or)cising Power: Black Bodies in the Black Public Sphere P.Gilroy - 'Keep your Great City Paris!': the Lament of the Empress and other Women V.A.Briginshaw - The Beat Goes On: Trance, Dance and Tribalism in Rave Culture G.Gore - Dirt, Noise, Traffic: Contemporary Indian Dance in the Western City: Modernity, Ethnicity and Hybridity S.Roy - PART 2: STEPPING OUT - Ballroom Blitz H.Thomas & N.Miller - Cyborgs, Nomads and the Raving Feminine M.Pini - Madame Smudge, some Fossils, and other Missing Links: Unearthing the Ballet Class L-A.Sayers - Safe Sets: Women, Dance, and 'Communitas' B.O'Connor - PART 3: BORDER COUNTRY - Nazism and the Call of the Jitterbug L.Back - Aerobic Dance and the City: Individual and Social Space S.Prickett - Dance and Erotica: The Construction of the Female Stripper S.Dodds - Let's Face the Music - and Dance?: Torvill and Dean: 'Champagne on Ice' S.Jordan & H.Thomas - Index

Abstract: Loie Fuller (1862-1928) was once the most famous dancer in the world, though many, including Loie herself, wondered if what she did was really dancing. In her best-known innovation, the serpentine, she manipulated voluminous folds of silk through shimmering beams of colored lights. Loie broke the mold of traditional choreography and paved the way for other pioneers in modern dance, including Isadora Duncan and Josephine Baker. As a "magician of light, " she made long-lasting contributions to stage lighting, cinematic techniques, and costuming. Loie also beguiled her era with autobiographical details that suited her fancy more than the facts, leaving a sketchy and inaccurate portrait of her early years. Drawing on primary sources, the authors masterfully untangle the paradoxes of this exceptional woman. A tall and lovely sylph in posters and sculptures, she was in reality a rather plump woman with a plain face; a dance innovator, she had no training in choreography; a co-founder of art museums, she had never seen an art exhibit before arriving in Paris; a close and respected associate of the most learned men and women in the world, she had no formal education. Loie said that she was born in America but made in France, and this fascinating book also brings to life members of the circles in which she flourished, including Sarah Bernhardt, Alexandre Dumas fils, Pierre and Marie Curie, Anatole France, Auguste Rodin, and Queen Marie of Romania. In a biography as distinctive as the woman it depicts, the authors reveal a remarkable artist whose dauntless will to get ahead, along with intelligence, resourcefulness, and ingenuity, enabled her to succeed despite repeated disappointments andfinancial disasters. This is the definitive work on Loie Fuller and her tremendous influence on the world of dance and Art Nouveau.

Abstract: In the fall of 1927, newspaper dance writing in the United States evolved from a haphazard and largely throw-away subspecies of music criticism (covered by music and drama critics and sometimes sports and society columnists) into a specialized field of arts reporting and commentary. Lynne Conner investigates the watershed moment when New York City's three leading daily newspapers -- the New York World, the New York Herald Tribune, and the New York Times -- all hired full-time dance writers. Her investigation reveals the relationship between the rise of American concert dance, the solo and modern dance movements, and the emergence of its corresponding critical discourse, dance writing in American dailies.Conner analyzes the social, economic, and cultural issues affecting both forms, and presents a more complex interaction between the modern dance and its critical discourse than has been previously understood. At the center of her research is the work of three pioneering dance writers: Lucile Marsh, Mary E Watkins, and John Martin. A pioneering book in its own right, Spreading the Gospel of the Modern Dance is the first comprehensive history of American dance criticism. "Spreading the Gospel of the Modern Dance intertwines a history of modern dance with a history of newspaper publishing in a way that sheds new light on both histories. It is persuasive in the argument that the growth of an art form depends not simply upon the creation of innovative works by artists but also upon the education and cultivation of its audience, through the medium of mass journalism". Noel Carroll, University of Wisconsin "A fascinating account of American newspaper dance criticism.... Offers apanoramic view of changing styles in the format and content of American newspapers, and is therefore of interest not only to dance lovers, but also to anyone concerned with trends in the media". Jack Anderson, New York Times

Abstract: In the late twenties, actors and directors of the Group Theatre, who were pioneering the use of Stanislavski's teachings, saw the value of teaching ballet and the emerging modern dance. Actors now routinely learn dance, but dancers rarely study acting. In The Six Questions, Nagrin maintains that a command of acting techniques allows the dancer to couple the passion of a body in motion with the heart and mind of the dancer. In five parts, the book first examines the personal essentials demanded by dance. The second part looks at the pitfalls inherent in the act of performing from vanity to self-hatred. The third part, the core of the book, poses six questions: Who? is doing what? to whom? where and when? and why? and against what obstacle? In the fourth part, Nagrin looks at the tools for working on the role, and the fifth part enters into the very act of performing. All of the work is handled in terms of movement alone: no dialogue or scenes from plays are used. The Six Questions is a companion piece to Nagrin's other works, How To Dance Forever, and Dance and the Specific Image: Improvisation. Together they present an invaluable teaching and learning tool for anyone in love with dance.

Abstract: Modern dance in Depression-era America distinguished itself from other forms of theatrical dancing by its "primitive" style and psychological content. The primitive aspect of psychological content led to modem dance's markedly affective--or emotional--expression. But the role of what I shall refer to generically as "feeling" was not limited to physical styles; it also played a part in the cultural politics of subjectivity subtending class and racial tensions during the Depression. In fact, it was through theatrical manifestations of feeling in modern dance that concepts as different as psychological depth and ethnic identity became symbolically wedded to movement. Once psychology and ethnicity were concomittantly embodied, as it were, modern movement could bear testimony to national, class, and ethnic identity. In other words, expressive bodies conveyed significant ideological content, and were themselves ideological constructs. A critical theory of ideology is, therefore, indispensable to the reassessment of modem dance during this period. The ways in which personal bodily experience and ideology were conjoined in modem dance performance can be illustrated not only by dances, but also by the modernist critical discourse generated in response to them. The general aim of this article, however, is to explore the relation between performances of feeling and ideology in modern dance of the 1930s.

Abstract: Spain's contribution to the evolution of theatrical dance is acknowledged within the categories of ballet and ethnic dance. Spanish folk dance elements have been incorporated into the classical ballet vocabulary, and exotic adaptations of dances from Spain have enriched the established ballet repertory: Fanny Ellsler's Cachucha, Petipa's “Spanish Dance” divertissement in Swan Lake, and Leonide Massine's Tricorne (The Three Cornered Hat) are wellknown examples. Soloists such as Pastora Imperio, La Argentina, Jose Greco, and Carmen Amaya have popularized around the world what has become known as the Spanish style of dance (for example, fandango, bolero, seguidillas, flamenco). However, Spain has not been associated with the history of early modern dance, a phenomenon largely attributed to a handful of American and German dancers.Tortola Valencia (1882–1955) claimed Spain as her country of origin, and made a flamboyant contribution to early modern dance in western Europe, Spain, and Latin America from 1908–1930. Her vast, eclectic repertory of Oriental, classical, and Spanish themes echoed the preoccupations of her contemporaries with whom she was favorably compared—in particular, Isadora Duncan, Maud Allan, Ruth St. Denis, Mikhail Fokine, and Anna Pavlova (1). In her time she received critical acclaim as one of the most famous dancers in Europe, yet she is not cited in the English language history of dance (2). This is only part of the mystery that weaves through the fabric of Tortola Valencia's intriguing life and career.

Abstract: Rumba: Dance and Social Change in Contemporary Cuba. Yvonne Daniel. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1995. 196 pp. Human Action Signs in Cultural Context: The Visible and Invisible in Movement and Dance. Brenda Farnell. ed. Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow Press, 1995. 309 pp.

Abstract: Credit is due a great many individuals for sustained, serious and heartbreaking efforts to achieve successful dance productions within the organization of the Federal Theatre Project in New York, but there is one person who has practically given all her life to it for the past three years and has repeatedly and consistently identified her own career with it. She has been responsible for four productions and has done more than any other one person to hold the whole project together and keep it going. Without her tremendous creative enthusiasm and energy, her personal and artistic integrity, her sense of social responsibility, I doubt if this project could ever have endured. I doubt it could have been organized in the first place.… I am speaking of Tamiris. The history of the Works Progress Administration's short-lived Federal Dance Theatre embodies many of the aspirations, achievements, ambiguities, handicaps and frustrations of Franklin Delano Roosevelt's New Deal. Like the other Works Progress Administration (WPA) relief programs, the Federal Dance Theatre (FDT) was created with federal funds to help alleviate the hardships brought on by the Great Depression. The FDT was established in January 1936 as a distinct artistic entity within the WPA relief organization. It employed professional dancers, choreographers, musicians, designers, and technicians, and set before them the task of producing socially relevant dance pieces for the American people, in particular, audiences that had not previously had access to the theatre. That the Federal Dance Theatre came into existence at all and managed to stay afloat and produce a few critically acclaimed productions of social portent and artistic merit was largely due to the perseverance of modern dance maverick, Helen Tamiris (1905–1966).

Abstract: Many children dream of being a ballerina. Chin raised with purpose, arms high above head, they twirl clumsily around the living room and leap tirelessly in the air. Sooner or later they're bound to say, "I want to dance." Now what do you do? How do you know if the time is right? Where's the best place to start? In Getting Started in Ballet, Anna Paskevska draws from her training at the Paris Opera Ballet School and the Royal Ballet School in London and her career as a professional dancer and teacher to offer a step-by-step introduction to dance education for parents with children starting ballet. Paskevska begins with a historical overview of dance and discusses the fundamental virtues and many life-long skills it imparts. Dance teaches children how to cooperate and support each other's efforts; encourages them to work in harmony with others; helps establish a child's spatial relationships; and promotes discipline and responsibility. Paskevska outlines the proper sequence for training in ballet based on a child's physical and mental development. She clearly demonstrates how ballet's early training, focusing on repetition of simple motion such as exercises at the barre and basic jumps, establish pathways for all later movements not only in ballet, but in modern dance, jazz, and tap as well. Written in a clear and accessible style and full of anecdotes from Paskevska's long professional dance-related career, Getting Started in Ballet offers helpful information on types of dance schools and how to select the right school for your child. Included is valuable information on choosing a dance instructor, the role both parents and teachers should play in a child's learning experience, and the qualities the ideal teacher should possess. Also discussed are more practical matters such as the appropriate clothing to wear while practicing, the importance of shoes that fit properly, how to secure pointe shoes, tips for avoiding injury, and how to balance training and performing experience during the formative years. A special chapter covers proper diet, eating disorders, and ways to recognize symptoms of imbalance. Finally, Paskevska touches upon the professional world of dance, attending college as a dance major, and advice on choosing careers that benefit from a background in dance. With forewords by Violette Verdy, a preeminent ballerina affiliated with the New York City Ballet and the Paris Opera Ballet, and Sybil Shearer, a pioneer of American modern dance, as well as an extensive appendix of performing arts schools and dance programs throughout the United States, Getting Started in Ballet gives parents the advice they need to make their child's dance experiences both enjoyable and constructive.

Abstract: Analyzing a specific dance event during the 1992 war in Croatia, the autor recognizes it as a political ritual. The main point of the dance event, the round dance which was performed by a Slavonian folk-dance group at the International Folklore Festival in Zagreb, together with the results of the enquiry carried out among the performers of that dance event, show how important the role of the traditional dance can be in the Croatian community. According to critical ethnological- anthropological research, having in mind the complex political situation in Croatia, the author provides some answers about the dance as a simbol of regional and national identity, and about symbolic ways of presentation of regional and national unity and diversity.

Abstract: The study was designed to determine how individuals become socialised into folk, competitive ballroom, ballet and modern dance through an investigation of background variables, the influence of significant others and the participation profiles of dancers, and the identification of those socialization and involvement variables that best discriminate among different groups of dancers. The subjects were 308 adolescent and adult dancers of at least 16 years of age who had pursued their main dance form for a minimum of three years. The data were collected by questionnaire, supplemented with some additional data gathered through personal interviews. Differences between the four dance groups were analysed using t‐test, Chi Square analyses, analyses of variance, Scheffe's multiple‐range test and discriminant analysis. Most subjects were from the middle or upper socio‐economic classes. Most art dancers were women while social dancers displayed a more even distribution of sexes. Ballet dancers were younges...

Abstract: DANCING AMERICA: MODERN DANCE AND CULTURAL NATIONALISM 1925-1950 FEBRUARY 1997 JULIA L. FOULKES, B. A., WILLIAMS COLLEGE M.A., LOYOLA UNIVERSITY CHICAGO Ph.D., UNIVERSITY OF MASSACHUSETTS AMHERST Directed by: Professor Kathy Peiss In 1930, the dancer and choreographer Martha Graham proclaimed the arrival of "dance as an art of and from America." Doris Humphrey, Ted Shawn, Katherine Dunham, and Helen Tamiris joined Graham in shaping a new art form: modem dance. Confrontational and experimental, modem dancers questioned their own roles in society, the role of art in America, and the place of America in the world. This dissertation is about how modem dance developed in the midst of debates about national identity. In the wave of cultural nationalism of the 1930s, modem dancers attacked ballet because of its elitist roots in European courts. Influenced by communist and socialist politics, they danced in bare feet, with unadomed costumes, and privileged individual expression and portrayals of abstract concepts over fairytale narratives and escapist entertainment. White women (many ofwhom were Jewish), gay men, and some African American men and women populated modem dance. Separate chapters explore how each of these groups negotiated what it meant to be an American through dance. Challenges to gender, sexual, racial, and class norms coalesced in idealized visions of American democracy and pluralism such as Graham's 1938 "American Document." Dancing