Dancing Out The Differences By Ruth St Deniss Summary

“Stripping the Emperor: The Africanist Presence in American Concert Dance”, and excerpt from Moving History/Dancing Cultures: A Dance History Reader, was written by Brenda Dixon Gottschild. Gottschild is a well-known author, dance historian, performer, and choreographer as well as a professor of dance studies at Temple University. She has also written multiple books including The Black Dancer Body, Waltzing in the Dark, and Digging. In her article “Stripping the Emperor: The Africanist Presence in American Concert Dance”, Gottschild explores the similarities and differences in the characteristics of Africanist and European technique, and how they draw from each other.

Moving History/Dancing Cultures is a collection of dance related essays and articles by various authors. The book was published in 2001. The article “Searching for Nijinsky’s Sacre” was written by Millicent Hodson. Hodson is a well-known choreographer and lecturer. She has also reconstructed multiple ballets; her most famous being Le Sacre du Printemps, originally choreographed by Nijinsky. As the title suggests, Hodson’s article is about her extensive research of Nijinsky’s Sacre, and the importance of remembering, preserving, and recreating such revolutionary ballets.

Martha Graham’s production of Night Journey is a unique and symbolic contemporary dance work. Graham bases many of her dance pieces on Greek myths and this is seen in her work Night Journey. Graham has manipulated elements of contemporary dance to communicate the emotion of the main character, Jocasta. Graham’s previous work focuses on depicting both the power and struggle of female idols in history. Graham has choreographed Night Journey to explore the perspective of Queen Jocasta, the main protagonist in the piece rather than the story of Oedipus. (Mueller, 2007) Graham has skilfully choreographed significant symbols and motifs to convey Jocasta’s emotions of grief, pain confusion and love through the manipulation of motifs and

Have you ever experienced a moment that changed your life? Well, “Dancer”, by Vikie Sears illustrates this concept through three key devices in literature. Moreover, the author’s exceptional use of literary devices improves the effectiveness of the story through symbolism, dialogue, and character.

In most ancient civilisations, dance was an important component in temple rites. In ancient Egypt, priest and priestesses would perform stately movements mimicking significant events that had occurred, such as war and famine. Bangarra Dance Theatre’s 2008 original production of Mathinna evokes the calamity, confusion and prejudice experienced by the members of the Stolen Generation. The performance is inspired by the true story of a young Aboriginal girls’ journey between the traditional lives of her ancestors to her western colonial adoption. In response to Bangarra’s production, Dance Critic Neville Wright composed that “Mathinna is a powerful dance work that I believe should be seen by audiences across Australia. It successfully educates and informs modern audiences about the hardships and horror that the Aboriginal people endured during what was a very shameful period of Australian history”. The following report will investigate the validly of this quote by evaluating three separate sections of the performance.

The essay “Still Separate, Still Unequal”, written by Jonathan Kozol, discusses the actuality of intercity public school systems, and the isolation and segregation of inequality that students must be subjected to in order to receive an education. Jonathan Kozol illustrates the grim reality of the inequality that African American and Hispanic children face within todays public education system. In this essay, Kozol shows the reader, with alarming statistics and percentages, just how segregated Americas urban schools have become. He also brings light to the fact that suburban schools, with predominantly white students, are given far better funding and a much higher quality education, than the poverty stricken schools of the urban neighborhoods. Jonathan Kozol brings our attention to the obvious growing trend of racial segregation within America’s urban and inner city schools. He creates logical support by providing frightening statistics to his claims stemming from his research and observations of different school environments. He also provides emotional support by sharing the stories and experiences of the teachers and students. His credibility is established by the author of Rereading America by providing us with his collegiate background. This is also created from his continual involvement with isolated and segregated educational school systems and keeps tone sincerity throughout his essay. Within the essay, Still Separate, Still Unequal, Jonathan Kozol’s argument is

While the speaker has succeeded in providing an enhanced image of the performer, the act of assigning meaning to the performance and the representation used holds the capacity to limit the experience. As the speaker continues to reconfigure her strip tease into a “[graceful] and calm” artistic dance, he makes a simultaneous attempt to distance himself from the crowd, making no mention of his gender or race directly (5). However, the speaker’s attempt to portray the dancer from objective eyes falters as his

As ballets were about telling stories or formulating movements, modern dance broke the rules and started to focus more on individual expressions. Loie Fuller (1862 – 1928), Doris Humphrey (1895-1958), and Ruth St. Denis (1877-1968) were pioneering women who took a stand and used their dance performance to speak up for women’s rights. Using dance, they significantly contributed to the Feminist movement in which they embraced self-expression and creativity so that women could be acknowledged in the dance field and in the society as a whole. During the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, they found for women’s rights by “taking dance to a new form, and creating dances to speak directly and intimately to the viewer” (Au 89). Loie Fuller, Doris Humphrey, and Ruth St. Denis demonstrated the transformation of dance with their innovation of costumes and stage lighting, incorporation of foreign cultures into performance, and creation of natural movements and individual expression that rejected the formal structures of ballet to deform a woman’s body, allowing women to be free from stereotype of a traditional woman.

Jane Desmond introduces her article, “Embodying Difference: Issues in Dance and Cultural Studies,” by describing a dance that readers can picture as the dance of tango in their minds. This helps lead to her connecting dance, or body movement, with cultural studies and social identities. In her article, Desmond focuses on connecting how dance and body movement can be portrayed differently in social identities, such as race, class, gender, nationality, and sexuality.

Lester Horton has been named, as one of the many founders of modern dance, whose style continues to be used in present day choreography. Although Hortons’ early technique was impacted by his interest in various cultures; his style eventually shifted towards a more theatrical technique. Horton used his versatile dance background and interests to develop the sub genre under modern dance, more formally known as choreodramas. His technique seen in earlier pieces and choreodramas such as “The Beloved” and “Salome” were effective in displaying the purpose of Horton’s style. Horton integrated his background in dance, props, costumes, and choreography to emphasize contemporary ideas and display the new genre of choreodramas.

Throughout history, Modern Dance has been pioneered by inspirational choreographers such as Isadora Duncan and Martha Graham. Martha Graham in particular, revolutionised the dance industry with her numerous choreographed works. By experimenting with foreign movements and establishing the fundamental technique in Modern Dance, Martha Graham clearly expressed this dramatic dance style as a new form of life. Her style, created from raw emotion, challenges the technical barriers of traditional ballet and has evolved into today’s contemporary dance form.

The stories of “Powder” by Tobias Wolff and “Mother” by Grace Paley, focus on the relationship between a parent and child. Both stories depict different parenting patterns. Children learn from their parents and its important that parents set the right examples to their children. Setting negative examples can be damaging to their children. The parent child relationship consist of a combination of feelings, behaviors, and discipline.

Dance was not a new element in the theatre realm. It had been used for years as a way of interpretation of feelings of a character that the writer or director wanted the audience to feel visually. Through movement, expression of those feelings was portrayed and helped the audience to somewhat

Films such as Shall We Dansu? and Mambo Girl both display East Asian performance of Latin American dance forms-- ballroom and a culmination of Latin American dance styles such as mambo and cha-cha respectively. However, according to dance scholar Juliet McMains, in this process of transculturation, "ballroom dancers are "dancing Latin" as a means of affirming their distance from Latin ethnic identity through consciously donning a mask of Latin-ness"--an exotic otherness (304-305). I impose and further McMains' ideas on the films Shall We Dansu?

Israeli folk dance was created by using elements from other dance cultures with themes and music of modern Israel. In this paper, I will argue that while anti-Semitism resulted in the colonization of Jewish national identity, women re-created Israeli folk dance as a means to establish a new Jewish identity, as well as an identity for themselves. By focusing on Romania and Yemen, we will identify the vestiges of colonialism in Israeli folk dance, and