Why choreography and architecture? Both are visual art forms based on three-dimensional design. Both create vocabularies in space in order to express or communicate. Both are highly collaborative: in architecture there is the marriage of site and structure, in choreography, of music and movement. Perhaps these intertwined relations are seen most clearly in Fallingwater's majestic cantilever over Bear Run Creek, and in Martha Graham's powerful response to Aaron Copland's score, Appalachian Spring. Both Fallingwater and Appalachian Spring are bound to their settings, yet each enriches the site or score immeasurably.

The similarities between choreography and architecture oscillate between the obvious and the contrived. Unlike architecture, dance is ephemeral and subject to human variables which are, by nature, unpredictable. Choreography is dependent on the human dancer and therefore subject to multitudinous interpretations and manifestations. The architect's product is as solid as the building, but the architect's design is no less spontaneous than the choreographer's. Both art forms are subject to gravity, to expression and to structure—for the choreographer, structure involves both the dancer's individual body and the group's compositional organization. Both are collaborative forms: music and dance, costume and movement partner one another as structural engineering must support the design, the site, the building.

Isadora Duncan inspired many such passages of fervid prose among her admiring contemporaries. From the beginning of her career, around the turn of the twentieth century, to her death in a bizarre automobile accident in 1927, those who saw her dance were less interested in writing about what she actually did than in presenting their bedizened responses to her.

Yet even as she evoked a fragrant never-never land, this American was creating a contemporary image for the stage dancer. Not a steely-legged virtuoso whipping off pirouettes, not a coquettish quasi-virgin, not a disembodied nymph, but a noble-spirited woman, bold, yet pliant — tree to use her imagination and her body as she wished.

John Cranko's only ballet for the Batsheva Dance Company in Israel, Ami-Yam, Ami-Ya'ar (Song of My People—Forest People—Sea, 1971) is described in a program note as “A Nation and Man Move in Parallel Cycles from Death to Regeneration.” It has remained unique in Cranko's choreographic corpus and in the Batsheva repertoire. Based on recently discovered film evidence, I reread Cranko's largely forgotten project and discuss its problematic and controversial reception in Israel and abroad, in light of Adorno's statement that “writing poetry after Auschwitz is barbarism.” I situate it as a landmark in tackling the Holocaust in dance in Israel as of 1971. I problematize the ethics and aesthetics of representation in Cranko's ballet on the grounds of Giorgio Agamben's discussion of testimony and in reference to Jacques Derrida's reading of Paul Celan.

This article is an ethnographic study of Bharata Natyam choreographies performed in venues across Colombo, Sri Lanka, during the ethnically divisive civil war. The compositions reveal the strategies of female choreographers who are using dance to address the war in a climate that often silences citizens from discussing the topic in public. I illuminate the discreet negotiations of ethnic identity taking place within choreographies, informed by circulating meanings ascribed to the dance, the ethnic compositions of the bodies dancing and watching, and the shifting experience of living in the city during an escalating civil war.

By focusing on a 2003 dance residency program sponsored by the U.S. State Department, this article locates twenty-first century American cultural diplomacy in a post-9/11 political context. The article focuses specifically on collaboration between San Francisco–based Margaret Jenkins Dance Company and Kolkata, India–based Tansuree Shankar Dance, which grew from the 2003 residency, to consider how artists find ways to facilitate cultural diplomacy that might be a blueprint for future American cultural diplomacy efforts. The article also addresses, however, the limits of that collaboration—limits that highlight the central tension of American cultural diplomacy: a desire to build relationships of so-called “mutual understanding” while also forwarding American national interests.

As the literature of dance proliferates, it becomes increasingly difficult to keep track of what is available. The need for current bibliographies of dance materials has been addressed during the past few years at meetings of both CORD and the Dance History Scholars; this first installment of a western dance history bibliography is the direct result of such discussions. At the historians' meeting held during the August 1978 ADG-CORD Dance Conference in Hawaii, plans were formulated and a number of people offered to contribute to the project in one way or another. A report was made at the February 1979 history conference in New York City, and again the response was positive. A few months later, CORD offered to help support the project.

This is the first installment of materials published in 1978. It includes books and articles in twelve categories. An index in seven sections guides the reader to time, place, and area of subject matter; people, dance works, and institutions named in titles; and to authors. Part I of the bibliography is far from complete and only minimally international in coverage since most of the collecting has been done by one person located in the United States. Some periodicals have not yet been searched at all, and some categories of materials that may be included in the future – book and performance reviews, for example – have generally been omitted here.

W. Thomas Marrocco has shown the types of music and dance that are discussed in Boccaccio's Decameron; I should like to present some examples of these art forms, re-created as accurately as we are able to do so, in the form of an entertainment which might have amused the ladies and gentlemen in that secluded villa on the outskirts of Florence in 1348.

In re-creating dances of the past from written documents, two principles must be borne in mind: first, that the records reflect the dance of an earlier period, for the steps and movements must have been tried, learned, and proven successful before a dancing master (or academician) would have deemed them worthy of recording; second, the materials preserved were obviously quite popular in the courts and hence were likely the most “danceable” compositions available. Therefore, it is the task of the reconstructor of these movements to discover the elements that were exciting and appealing to the dancers (and spectators) of the period and to make these elements come to life for contemporary audiences. Besides the obvious necessity of translating verbal instructions for steps and movement patterns and setting these to music, many factors enter into this elusive performance task: the size of the dance area usually employed; the shape, length and weight of clothing worn while dancing; the style and maneuverability of shoes, hats, swords, capes and other accoutrements; body positions generally in vogue as well as attitudes towards the human body, i.e., what was and what was not generally acceptable in terms of the good manners of the day.

The formation of what Randy Martin has called “critical dance studies” (1998) has gained increased momentum over the past decade. Martin's notion of critical dance studies clarified how dance scholarship was being reshaped by the explicit inclusion of critical theory in its methodologies and epistemologies. One of the major consequences for dance studies in embracing critical theory was the identification of dancing and choreographic practices as being also theory. Understanding dance as theory is not equivalent to seeing dance as the sole provider of the theoretical tools it needs for its own analysis (this would be intolerably solipsistic). Rather, it means that dance becomes a privileged practice ready to provide analytical tools for theorizing other areas of social performances: politics, culture, formations of disciplines and their bodies (docile or resistant). Dance is a mode of theorization that theory itself would need in order to address the social and political problematic brought by issues close to dance such as mobilization, embodiment, subjectivities, participation, representation, desire, discipline, control, etc.

The fourteenth-century Italian lived during turbulent and catastrophic times. Internecine warfare between Guelphs and Ghibellines, reprisals against foraging neighbors, conflict between church and state, and, as though political and religious dissension were not enough, the dreaded black plague, which descended over Europe periodically with devastating results, added to human misery.

Yet, in the face of such calamities Italy covered herself with glory, for in that century the arts blossomed as never before. In musical productivity no other country could boast of over 700 compositions during the period known as the Ars Nova (1330–1420). Francesco Landini, the most famous composer and organist, and a contemporary of Boccaccio, alone has left us over 150 compositions. The composition of music was encouraged by advances in musical notation, such as those described by Marchettus da Padua in his treatise Pomerium (1314), which made possible the precise recording of a much wider range of rhythmic figures.

Throughout the United States and Canada people go to Native American intertribal powwows. At powwows women, men, and children execute rhythmic movement, drumming, and song as they experience and express sensory stimuli. The aroma of sage incense pervades as Indians and non-Indians socialize, share fry bread, and sell, buy, or “window shop” at concession stands. Vendors display T-shirts, fur, turquoise, silver, and beaded jewelry as well as artwork, CDs, and Ecuadorian and Peruvian items. All participants enjoy storytelling, comedy skits, Indian rap and country music performances, and Mexican “Aztec” dance presentations alongside rituals such as giveaways, the Eagle ceremony, or the Veterans dance. These social and spiritual celebrations occur in increasing numbers across North America. In the tristate region of New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut alone, from 1995 to 2001, the number of powwow events has tripled.

Sylphides and wilis, white gauze and moonlit glades: these are the stereotypical images of the Romantic ballet. A cursory look at the lithographs of the period leaves the viewer with visions of an airy-fairyland far removed from industry, labor, colonialism, or any of the bigger and beastlier concerns of the early nineteenth century. But despite its bias towards otherworldliness, the Romantic ballet was not entirely divorced from the concerns of its time. It shared many interests with the drama, literature, and fine arts of the period and like them drew many of its themes from the material world, although it tended to select and exploit these themes for their color and spectacle rather than utilize them to convey sociological truths or instigate reform. An example of such a “realistic” ballet is Jules Perro's Catarina, whose protagonist is a more robust creature than the sylphs and fays that dominated the period: a female bandit.

When investigating the relationship between dance and political movements in the twentieth century a paradox emerges: How could modernist art coexist and indeed diri ve in companionship with totalitarian ideologies? Emphatic individualism has come to define the modern American age and the modern artist. Yet such autonomy stands in direct conflict witii the Fascist and Communist waves mat crashed over Europe and rolled tfirough Depression-era New York in the first half of the twentieth century. This paper traces a lineage of movement ideas that traveled to the United States from Germany during that time. I will briefly consider the chorie principle of the German dance pioneers and how ideas of monumental mass movement emigrated to and were assimilated into the dance world of 1930s New York. The coexistence of two trends, the mass dance and modern concert dance, offer a way to trace the dissemination of movement ideas that organized in tandem with emerging political movements on bom sides of me Atlantic. I will examine how die leftist New Dance Group grew out of me New York Wigman School under die direction of Hanya Holm. The Group used Holm's methods of movement improvisation to encourage amateur dance within the labor union revolution, while simultaneously supporting the development of professionals in die field. Over time, the Group had a lasting impact on American modern dance, encouraging collaboration among artists and racial equality for dancers.

The lights coming up from downstage left pick up a group of six women edging their way onto the stage from the diagonally opposite corner, their spines collapsed forward from their pelvises, backs jutting out to emphasize the broken line of the spine, knees flexed low, feet weighted to the ground, arms lying stiff and lifeless at their sides, but their heads still reaching searchingly forward. With their broken backs, they move painstakingly, slowly: the heel of one foot rises almost imperceptibly and drags the foot forward, the sole ever unable to dissociate itself fully from the ground. The weight shifts forward with this arduous endeavor as the body resigns itself onto the forward foot. Now the heel of the other foot rises in a barely visible movement and drags the foot, yet unable to lift itself from the ground, forward. The weight shifts one more time and another step is inched on. And again, the heel of one foot rises almost imperceptibly and drags the foot forward and another step is inched on. Each step speaks of weariness and pain, and a quest in spite of that. One by one, the feet pull themselves forward and haul the body across the stage in this terrifying, weighted effort. Halfway across the stage, the women are halted in this journey as if by some unseen attacker looming large in front of them. Acknowledging their arrested pathway, they begin to retrace their steps.

To me, life is essentially movement, and much of my journey has been living so that I may dance. Now, as a woman of color confronting disabilities as well as heightened awarenesses in my post-cancer reality, I dance to live; my dance has become a functional ritual for the continuance of all of life. I believe that art in some of its highest forms can be healing, thus I create dances to sustain health, harmony, and balance of all forms of life and interconnected relationships—the dance of ecology.

In 1914, as Europe went to war, Serge Diaghilev launched an artistic revolution that profoundly altered the identity of the Ballets Russes. By and large, historians have dated this artistic shift to Parade. Unveiled in Paris in 1917, three years after Diaghilev's last full-scale season in the French capital, the work served public notice of the switch in his allegiance to the avant-garde. Parade came with impeccable modernist credentials: designs by Pablo Picasso, music by Erik Satie, a libretto by Jean Cocteau, program notes by Guillaume Apollinaire. Only Léonide Massine, the ballet's choreographer, was an unknown quantity, although by the early 1920s, his name, too, would be synonymous with modernism. It is not difficult to understand why historians have identified this work as the cradle of Ballets Russes modernism.

Since the early years of the twentieth century it has gradually come to pass that virtually anything, anything at all, can be considered a work of art. A sliced up cow can be art, and so can a pile of bricks or a hole in the ground. In the domain of dance, a choreographer having difficulty creating a dance work may, for example, simply walk onstage and describe for the audience how her work might have looked had she completed it. Or she can list the work in the concert program with an explanation that it will not be performed because it does not actually exist. The most advanced theories of art in circulation today would, without hesitation, confer the status of art upon either of these options as easily as upon an actual dance.

How did it come to be that such things as these could be art? The quick answer is that it is one of the legacies of aesthetic modernism to have made it possible for virtually anything to be art. As Thomas McEvilley explains:

The search for the “centre”… For a dancer, this word resonates physically first of all. Not so long ago, the dancer, when he was training, was systematically told to “find his centre”. But today, it is generally acknowledged that the body has no centre, and he doesn't miss it. The body of modern times has no need for a centre, because that absent centre, the core which would enable one to feel reassured, isn't there, has ceased to be there. For in the void of a body expropriated of its centre, there is room for dance.

This article considers the ethico-aesthetic potential of British choreographic practices that respond to questions raised by the current sociopolitical moment by staging im/possibilities and dis/orientation and by envisioning alternative understandings of the present. It embraces Karen Barad's new materialist onto-epistemology as an inspiring framework to discuss the significance of choreography that troubles accepted patterns of relationality and engages in a creative-critical remapping of experience.