The dancer, Xavier Le Roy, walks with a calm yet deliberate pace across the empty stage toward its center, where he stops, with his back facing the audience. He slowly lifts his arms in front of him and, after a brief moment of suspension, makes a hand gesture, as focused as unexpected, as if channeling a stream of intensities—a gesture to which the music responds. Echoing Le Roy's movement, Igor Stravinsky's most notorious score, Le Sacre du Printemps, begins its first notes. The performer goes on gently whisking the air, with a fluid yet measured pace, and thus engages an uncanny dialogue with the recorded symphony by conducting the seemingly empty space before him.

In 1700 the London theatrical world was in crisis. The quality of English plays had deteriorated during the 40 years of restored Stuart rule. Playwrights, believing themselves to be working in the tradition of the finest Elizabethan and Jacobean dramatic poets, were churning out ranting tragedies, stripped of the subtle heroes and comic relief of Shakespeare, and amoral comedies, rarely showing the sparkling wit of Jonson. The two London theatre companies were locked in bitter competition for the small, mostly aristocratic audience, and managers compromised the poets and actors by introducing into their plays music-hall entertainments, from ventriloquists to tumblers. At the center of the crisis, however, was not the lack of playwrights of genius nor a fickle, world-weary audience; rather British drama was seriously weakened by a tradition that had since 1660 allowed the play to become the vehicle not only for spoken drama, but for large quantities of music and dance as well.

Among the Yoruba-speaking people of Nigeria recreational dances are a popular art form usually performed at purely social gatherings such as weddings, funerals (of elderly people), or child-naming ceremonies. They are distinct from the more symbolic dances which may accompany such social events, or even from the more formally structured and often public events such as historical festivals, initiation rites, and ancestral remembrance ceremonies. The recreational dances, which are performed mainly for relaxation and entertainment, are also opportunities to express and communicate emotions arising from the occasion being observed. Social ceremonies in Yoruba society are simply inconceivable without recreational dances.

Social festivities are of course not the only occasions for these dances; they are also performed on non-specific occasions for purely aesthetic fulfillment or as an expression of general well-being. At the end of a day's work, for example, friends or relatives get together to relax, or as they say, “múfàáji”—’ catch relaxation.’ At such fàáji evenings dance performances feature prominently alongside story-telling and riddle contests, games, poetry chants, or merely sharing anecdotes. Occasionally, too, a popular dance form may find performance space at the end of a successful symbolic ceremony, when the inclusion of a different form, both thematically and conceptually, is no longer a distraction from the desired goals of the ceremony. At such times recreational dances produce a cathartic effect following the tension of the event's significant symbolism.

Until I became involved in dance, I believed that art is public property. It seemed there was a definite connection between the personal, even intimate character of the artist's process and the generosity with which he or she relinquishes a work when it is completed. This interchange might partly define the altruism that people have associated with artists—up to the twentieth century anyway.

Since the last millenium, Western culture has undergone many drastic shocks that have redefined the transaction known as artmaking. Mechanical and electronic reproduction techniques have put the uniqueness of the art object into question. They have transformed visual arts and music into commodities—”cheapened” them by diminishing their exclusivity and multiplying the number of people who can enjoy them. Yet dance continues to elude capture by the potent, ever-present media of films, video and computers. A dance is still a singular event—but, it seems to me, one that's even more vulnerable now to disappearance. Dance images submerge almost instantly in the flood of other visual stimuli that's constantly washing over us; dance is everywhere but the choreographic entity has resisted translation to film. As an inherently live phenomenon dance preserves its aura of spontaneity and surprise, but it loses some of the visibility, and the standards and protections, that benefit artworks with a more permanent format.

Representations of war recur throughout art, whether celebrating the glories and heroism of conflict, or depicting its horrors and follies. This paper uses qualitative audience research to examine soldiers' own responses to the representation of soldiers in choreographer Rosie Kay's dance performance 5 Soldiers: The Body is the Frontline. This article explores how for military audiences the satisfaction of an internalized sense of authenticity allowed them to accept the performance as a legitimate representation; at the same time the presentation of war in a choreographic language meant that the performance was also abstracted, with theatrical and stylized elements that were far from authentic as a documentary. This paper proposes that it was the combination of authenticity with theatricality that generated empathetic investment and made 5 Soldiers an articulate witness to the military experience.

This essay draws on personal experience as it investigates the intersection of ethics, political activism, and dance performance. It considers the manner in which artistic and ethical convictions can shape the critical reception of dance that intentionally engages social justice issues, and it draws on ethical theory in order to investigate the manner in which personal ethical beliefs can determine a dance artist's approach to such work.

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, José 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.

Tórtola 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 Tórtola Valencia's intriguing life and career.

Though scarcely remembered today, the Théâtre de la Chauve-Souris (The Bat Theater) in its heyday (1908–1943) was an internationally known musical theater under the direction of Nikita Baliev. Founded in Moscow in early 1908, it eventually became, because of the exigencies of history, a touring theater, a company equally at home in Paris, London, New York, and elsewhere. Despite its enormous popularity among general audiences, the Chauve-Souris was the first theater of its kind to enlist in its ranks artists from the Russian Imperial theaters, the public dramatic and light-opera theaters, and the experimental or avant-garde theaters as regular or frequent visiting performers, musicians, or designers. It was also one of the first, if not the first, theaters of its kind (at least in Western Europe) to engage a woman as its choreographer, Mme Elizabeth Anderson. On its first appearance in the West, Parisian critics variously identified the theatrical character of the Chauve-Souris as that of a cabaret, a night club, or a music-hall theater, none of which, as we shall see, adequately defines its nature. To understand the aesthetic premises of Baliev's theater, we need to review briefly the origins of the Chauve-Souris and the early careers of Nikita Baliev, Elizabeth Anderson, and Sergei Sudeikin, the principal designer for the Paris opening. The artistic mastery each brought to the group's first “saison russe” in 1920–21 produced a collaboration that led the critics to call the Chauve-Souris “une école d'avantgarde.”

In 1951, at the dawning of a decade that would be known by some for its suffocating conformity and political intolerance, Katherine Dunham created Southland, a dramatic ballet Americana about what was by then the century-long practice of lynching. In the program notes to the ballet that premiered at the Opera House in Santiago de Chile, Dunham wrote, “This is the story of no actual lynching in the southern states of America, and still it is the story of every one of them”. She spoke the Prologue onstage, in Spanish:

Like Bojangles, by 1958 the Savoy had become an institution in the world of entertainment, and like Bojangles, it caught the imagination of thousands upon thousands of people during its 32-year history. The Savoy was a building, a geographic place, a ballroom, and the “soul” of a neighborhood. It personified a community and an era, and became a monument to the music and dance of “swing.” On its huge and shiny mahogany floor, the Lindy Hop was born, a dance that took the world by storm and would become as seminal as the waltz in the history of social dance. The Lindy Hop, together with countless other dances like the Flying Charleston, the Stomp, the Shim Sham Shimmy, Rhumboogie, Suzie-Q, Big Apple, Black Bottom and the Scrontch, were taken to an extraordinary level of performing perfection at the Savoy. Within its inner circle, great dancers and musicians set trends and styles in dance and music that ricocheted throughout the world. There were other ballrooms and clubs—Connie's Inn, Small's Paradise, The Cotton Club, The Lenox Club, The Kentucky Club, and the downtown clubs on 52nd Street—but there was only one Savoy.

The Grand Union was a collective of choreographer/performers which during the years 1970–76 made group improvisations embracing dance, theater, and theatrics in an ongoing investigation into the nature of dance and performance. Grand Union's identity as a group had several sources: some of the nine who have been its members had known each other for as long as ten years when the group formed; they had seen and performed in each other's works since the Judson Church days. Most had studied with Merce Cunningham, and three had danced in his company.

One important and rich source for the group's genesis was Yvonne Rainer's work Continuous Project-Altered Daily (CP-AD). To understand the course of Grand Union's activities, it is useful to look first at the changing nature of CP-AD. Rainer began the piece in 1969, and in March 1970 presented a definitive version at the Whitney Museum. The performers were Becky Arnold, Douglas Dunn, David Gordon, Barbara Lloyd (now Dilley), Steve Paxton, Yvonne Rainer and various readers.

Although the face possesses potent social and symbolic meaning, the “dancing face” is rarely addressed in dance scholarship. In spite of its neglect, the face participates choreographically in the realization of aesthetic codes and embodied conventions that pertain to different dance styles and genres. I therefore turn to Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari's (1987) theory of “faciality” to understand the semiotic coding of the face in relation to the Busby Berkeley chorus girl. Although their work offers an important critique of universalist theorizations of facial expression, I argue that “facial choreography” offers scope to dismantle the legibility of the face that is produced through the overcoded “abstract machine of faciality.” To do so, I introduce the concept of a “choreographic interface” to explore how facial expression enters into a choreographic relationship with other faces and bodily territories. With this in mind, I explore two dancing bodies that engage the face in ways that complicate existing modalities of facial expression. I analyze a hip-hop battle and a neo-burlesque striptease number to show how the mobility and ambiguity of facial choreography opens a dialogic space through which meaning is generated and social and political critique take place.

During the course of a summer dance workshop I attended many years ago, I learned a section of Doris Humphrey's Passacaglia and Fugue in C Minor. Later, on occasion, I would “teach” this section to students thinking I was adding to their understanding of dance and its practice. As luck would have it, I was teaching this section again to students at the University of Wisconsin when one of my mentors, Claudia Melrose, stopped by to observe my work. Following class Claudia approached me and said, “That was very nice Tom, but what were they learning?” I replied, “They were learning a section of Humphrey's Passacaglia.” Claudia responded, “No, Tom. What were they learning?” In a flash I realized that I couldn't answer her; I hadn't really thought about the “what.” I realized the need to make a personal search for substance in dance education. Being at Wisconsin— “ground zero” for dance in higher education—I turned to the writings of Margaret H'Doubler and found in them a way of thinking that continues to inform my professional development. In many respects, H'Doubler's lifework acts as my point of departure in educational dance. As time has distanced me from my moment of epiphany, I find myself ever more in debt to the legacy of this remarkable woman.

This essay looks closely at the first stage of H'Doubler's development as a dance educator. Between the years 1916 and 1926, only a ten-year span, H'Doubler evolved from a women's basketball coach, admittedly ignorant of dance as art or in education, into the nation's foremost academic authority on the subject. Her vision of dance matured quickly and with amazing clarity; the moment of epiphany, while lying on her back in a studio in Carnegie Hall, served as the source for what she called a “way of thinking” that would serve her for the rest of her professional life. An assessment of H'Doubler's evolution as a dance educator during this period, and an analysis of her development along with her peers and colleagues in the field, provides important contexts from which to evaluate her subsequent contributions to dance in American education.

One of the most heated debates in modern literary and aesthetic theory concerns the relevance to criticism in general, and to interpretation specifically, of information about an author/artist's intentions in creating a particular work. This intentionalist/anti-intentionalist debate is an important one for dance educators to examine and discuss with students, since teachers' beliefs about the relevance of an artist's intentions determine in large part the way they interpret and judge dances (and other works of art), and mentor student choreographers and critics. The critical advice of mentors who hold intentionalist assumptions naturally tends to be quite different from the input of those holding anti-intentionalist views.

The debate over artists' intentions began in earnest in 1946 with the publication of a provocative and now famous essay entitled “The Intentional Fallacy” by W.K. Wimsatt and Monroe Beardsley. In this work the authors attacked the intentionalist idea that to achieve a valid, or true, interpretation of a work we must ascertain whatever meaning its maker intended it to possess. The essay laid the groundwork for a rigorous anti-intentionalism, which held that works of art and literature are autonomous entities whose meanings are carried entirely by their internal structures and do not depend on the so-called meaning-intentions of their creators.