| Description |
xvii, 258 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm |
| Series |
New directions in anthropological writing |
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New directions in anthropological writing.
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| Contents |
1. Contact Improvisation and Anthropological Analysis -- Contact Improvisation: An Introduction -- Anthropological Analysis: The Body, Movement, Dance, and Society -- Researching and Writing an Ethnographic History -- 2. Contact Improvisation's Origins and Influences -- The Heritage of Early Modern Dance -- The Physical Reality of the Body: Merce Cunningham -- Improvisation and the Theater of the Body: Anna Halprin -- Science and Sensuality: Erick Hawkins -- Social Dance in the '60s -- Experimental Dance and Theater in the '60s -- Steve Paxton -- 3. "You Come. We'll Show You What We Do": The Initial Development of Contact Improvisation -- The First Years -- Performances, Audiences, and New Dancers -- Organization and the Contact Quarterly -- 4. Dance as "Art-Sport" : Continuing the Form -- A Performance in 1978 -- Expansion -- Improvisations: Dance as Art-Sport Conference -- Contact at 10th and 2nd -- The Continuing Practice of Contact Improvisation -- 5. Movement and Meaning in Contact Improvisation -- Summary of the Movement Style -- Ballet and Contact Improvisation -- |
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Cunningham Technique and Contact Improvisation -- Contact Improvisation as Part of a Movement Environment -- 6. Experiencing the Body -- Learning Contact Improvisation -- Sensuousness and Sexuality: The Image and Experience of Touch -- Evaluations of the Dancing -- 7. Cultural Symbols and Aesthetic Practices -- Physical Necessity -- Physical Law and Nature -- Realizing the Responsive Body -- Improvisation -- 8. Community, Values, and Authority -- Spontaneity and Decision-making -- Participation and Performance: Contact Improvisation as a “Folk Art” -- Steve Paxton as a Charismatic Authority -- Contact Improvisation as a National Movement -- Hierarchy and Egalitarianism -- Coherence and Competition: The American Dance Guild Conference -- 9. The Business of Performance -- Using the Dance Form as a Model for Action -- Contact Improvisation as a Business -- Arts Organisation and Postmodernism -- Contact Improvisation as American Culture |
| Summary |
In Sharing the Dance, Cynthia Novack considers the development of contact improvisation within its web of historical, social, and cultural contexts. This book examines the ways contact improvisers (and their surrounding communities) encode sexuality, spontaneity, and gender roles, as well as concepts of the self and society in their dancing. While focusing on the changing practice of contact improvisation through two decades of social transformation, Novack's work incorporates the history of rock dancing and disco, the modern and experimental dance movements of Merce Cunningham, Anna Halprin, and Judson Church, among others, and a variety of other physical activities, such as martial arts, aerobics, and wrestling |
| Analysis |
United States Modern dance, history |
| Bibliography |
Includes bibliographical references and index |
| Notes |
Print version record |
| Subject |
Dance -- Anthropological aspects -- United States.
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Dance -- United States -- Anthropological aspects
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Improvisation in dance -- History.
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| LC no. |
89040534 |
| ISBN |
0299124401 |
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0299124444 (paperback) |
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