Choreographing Difference: The Body and Identity in Contemporary Dance

Feminist theory illuminates the radical cultural work of contemporary dance.

The choreographies of Bill T. Jones, Cleveland Ballet Dancing Wheels, Zab Maboungou, David Dorfman, Marie Chouinard, Jawole Willa Jo Zollar, and others, have helped establish dance as a crucial discourse of the 90s. These dancers, Ann Cooper Albright argues, are asking the audience to see the body as a source of cultural identity ― a physical presence that moves with and through its gendered, racial, and social meanings.

Through her articulate and nuanced analysis of contemporary choreography, Albright shows how the dancing body shifts conventions of representation and provides a critical example of the dialectical relationship between cultures and the bodies that inhabit them. As a dancer, feminist, and philosopher, Albright turns to the material experience of bodies, not just the body as a figure or metaphor, to understand how cultural representation becomes embedded in the body. In arguing for the intelligence of bodies, Choreographing Difference is itself a testimonial, giving voice to some important political, moral, and artistic questions of our time.

ANN COOPER ALBRIGHT is chair of the Dance Department at Oberlin College. She is the author of Choreographing Difference, Traces of Light, and Modern Gestures, and coeditor of Moving History/Dancing Cultures and Taken by Surprise.