Dancing Women: Female Bodies Onstage

by Sally Banes

Overview

Dancing Women: Female Bodies Onstage is a spectacular and timely contribution to dance history, recasting canonical dance since the early nineteenth century in terms of a feminist perspective. Setting the creation of specific dances in socio-political and cultural contexts, Sally Banes shows that choreographers have created representations of women that are shaped by - and that in part shape - society's continuing debates about sexuality and female identity.
Broad in its scope and compelling in its argument Dancing Women:
* provides a series of re-readings of the canon, from Romantic and Russian Imperial ballet to contemporary ballet and modern dance
* investigates the gaps between plot and performance that create sexual and gendered meanings
* examines how women's agency is created in dance through aspects of choreographic structure and style
* analyzes a range of women's images - including brides, mistresses, mothers, sisters, witches, wraiths, enchanted princesses, peasants, revolutionaries, cowgirls, scientists, and athletes - as well as the creation of various women's communities on the dance stage
* suggests approaches to issues of gender in postmodern dance
Using an interpretive strategy different from that of other feminist dance historians, who have stressed either victimization or celebration of women, Banes finds a much more complex range of cultural representations of gender identities.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780415096713
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
Publication date:	01/29/1998
Pages:	296
Product dimensions:	6.12(w) x 9.19(h) x (d)

About the Author

Sally Banes is Marian Hannah Winter Professor of Theatre and Dance History at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She has published widely on dance.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements. List of Illustrations. Introduction. 1. The Romantic Ballet 2. The Russian Imperial Ballet 3. Early Modern Dance 4. Early Modern Ballet 5. Modern Dance 6. Modern Ballet Envoi.

Editorial Reviews

In this thoughtful and thought-provoking work, dance critic and historian Banes (Terpsichore in Sneakers: Post-Modern Dance, LJ 12/1/79) surveys the canon of Western dance through a feminist lens, arguing that "choreographers have created images of women that are shaped byand that in part shapesociety's continuing debate about sexuality and female identity." According to Banes, "through dance, men's attitudes toward women and women's attitudes about themselves are literally given body on stage." Some 13 ballets and ten modern dance works are described in choreographic detail and analyzed in sociological terms. The time period covered extends from the mid- and late 19th through the middle decades of the 20th century. Accented with photographs of key moments and movements, this study will be a welcome addition to performing arts and women's history collections.Carolyn M. Mulac, Chicago P.L.

Library Journal

From the Romantic ballet to modern ballet, dance historian Banes examines 23 works, including La Sylphide, Swan Lake, Revolutionary Etude, The Rite of Spring, Witch Dance, and Rodeo, and analyses how representations of women in dance are connected to society's complex notions of gender. She particularly focuses on what she terms "the marriage plot," and argues that dance has, for the most part, participated in and reflected the growing European and American anxiety toward marriage as it is associated with women's destiny. Annotation c. by Book News, Inc., Portland, Or.

Booknews

"Banes, an internationally known dance historian and critic, has written an extraordinary, fresh interpretation of dance history from a feminist perspective. . . . [S]he suggests new ways of seeing the female dancer. . . . Banes supports her work with in-depth, well-documented evidence, but she retains a reader-friendly style. An excellent addition to collections serving upper-division undergraduates through professionals, this book will have an audience that extends beyond scholars of dance."
-"Choice, November 1998
"Banes...grounds her sophisticated critical reflections in the material realities of dance production, performance, and audience reception. In the process, she offers what is a rarity in any field: an inquiry that sustains itself over the course of an eminently readable book."
-"Interchange, 1998
"Is the sort of narrative that draws one on in fascinated pursuit of the author's guiding thread as it snakes through more than a century of danceperformance...Banes' is the sort of book that makes me want to sit down with the author and argue a bit, I disagree with this, find that misleading, note an error here, want to pursue a question there. In other words, it's provocative. And a remarkable achievement."
-"Village Voice
"After Banes, ballerina brides and modern dance witches will never seem the same. Neither victim nor vamp but a little of everything in between, the mainstream dancing woman, thanks to Banes, recovers some of a real woman's complexity."
-Cathryn Harding, "The Isthmus
..."and impressive attempt to recast western dance history since the early 19th century from a feminist perspective, Banes's assiduously researched and often imaginativetext is aimed primarily at fellow academics and dance practitioners, but even the uninitiated, who only occasionally attend a dance performance, may find the book entertaining and intellectually stimulating."
-"Montreal Gazette

From the Publisher