Moving History/Dancing Cultures: A Dance History Reader

A comprehensive and multifaceted anthology of dance history ― ideal for the classroom.

This new collection of essays surveys the history of dance in an innovative and wide-ranging fashion. Editors Dils and Albright address the current dearth of comprehensive teaching material in the dance history field through the creation of a multifaceted, non-linear, yet well-structured and comprehensive survey of select moments in the development of both American and World dance. This book is illustrated with over 50 photographs, and would make an ideal text for undergraduate classes in dance ethnography, criticism or appreciation, as well as dance history―particularly those with a cross-cultural, contemporary, or an American focus.

The reader is organized into four thematic sections which allow for varied and individualized course use: Thinking about Dance History: Theories and Practices, World Dance Traditions, America Dancing, and Contemporary Dance: Global Contexts. The editors have structured the readings with the understanding that contemporary theory has thoroughly questioned the discursive construction of history and the resultant canonization of certain dances, texts and points of view. The historical readings are presented in a way that encourages thoughtful analysis and allows the opportunity for critical engagement with the text.

ANN DILS is a professor of dance at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, and coeditor of Dance, Place, and Identity. ANN COOPER ALBRIGHT is chair of the Dance Department at Oberlin College, coeditor of Taken by Surprise, and author of Choreographing Difference, Traces of Light, and Modern Gestures.