Body Knowledge (Paperback)

Paperback. While female performers in the early 20th century were regularly advertised as dancers, mimics, singers, or actresses, they wove together techniques and elements drawn from a wide variety of genres and media. Onstage and onscreen, performers borrowed from musical scores and narratives, referred to contemporary shows, films, and events, and mimicked fellow performers. Behind the scenes, they experimented with cross-promotion and new advertising techniques andtechnologies to broadcast images and tales of their performances and lives well beyond the walls of American theaters, cabarets, and halls. The performances and conceptions of art that emerged wereinnovative, compelling, and deeply meaningful.Body Knowledge examines these performances and the performers behind them, highlighting the Ziegfeld Follies and The Passing Show revues, Salome dancers, Isadora Duncan's Wagner dances, Adeline Genee and Bessie Clayton's danced histories, Hazel Mackaye and Ruth St. Denis's pageants, and Anna Pavlova's opera and film projects. As a whole, it re-imagines early twentieth-century art and entertainment as both fluidand convergent. This book traces the deployment of intermedial aesthetics in the works of early twentieth-century female performers. By destabilizing medial and genre boundaries, these women created compelling and meaningful performances that negotiated turn-of-the-century American social and cultural issues, including new technologies, modes of perception, and conceptions of gender and race. This item is printed on demand. Shipping may be from our UK warehouse or from our Australian or US warehouses, depending on stock availability. …