Alien Bodies: Representations of Modernity, 'Race' and Nation in Early Modern Dance

by Ramsay Burt

Overview

Alien Bodies is a fascinating examination of dance in Germany, France, and the United States during the 1920s and 1930s. Ranging across ballet and modern dance, dance in the cinema and Revue, Ramsay Burt looks at the work of European, African American, and white American artists.
Among the artists who feature are:
* Josephine Baker
* Jean Borlin
* George Balanchine
* Jean Cocteau
* Valeska Gert
* Katherine Dunham
* Fernand Leger
* Kurt Jooss
* Doris Humphrey
Concerned with how artists responded to the alienating experiences of modern life, Alien Bodies focuses on issues of:
* national and 'racial' identity
* the new spaces of modernity
* fascists uses of mass spectacles
* ritual and primitivism in modern dance
* the 'New Woman' and the slender modern body

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781134758340
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
Publication date:	09/11/2002
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	232
File size:	9 MB

About the Author

Ramsay Burt is the author of the highly acclaimed The Male Dancer (Routledge 1995). He is currently Senior Research Fellow in Dance at De Montfort University, Leicester.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1 Introduction; Chapter 2 Choreographing the Disturbing New Spaces of Modernity; Chapter 3 ‘Savage’ Dancer; Chapter 4 The Chorus Line and the Efficiency Engineers; Chapter 5 Totalitarianism and the Mass Ornament; Chapter 6 Dancing Across the Atlantic; Chapter 7 American Moderns; Chapter 8 Primitivism, Modernism and Ritual in the Work of Mary Wigman, Katherine Dunham and Martha Graham; Chapter 9 Conclusion;

Editorial Reviews

"To this collective enterprise Ramsay Burt's "Alien Bodies makes a notable contribution. ...I cannot imagine pursuing my work without going back to "Alien Bodies again and again."
-"The Drama Review

From the Publisher