Anarchic Dance


Book Description

Liz Aggiss and Billy Cowie, known collectively as Divas Dance Theatre, are renowned for their highly visual, interdisciplinary brand of dance performance that incorporates elements of theatre, film, opera, poetry and vaudevillian humour. Anarchic Dance, consisting of a book and downloadable resources, is a visual and textual record of their boundary-shattering performance work. The downloadable resources feature extracts from Aggiss and Cowie's work, including the highly-acclaimed dance film Motion Control (premiered on BBC2 in 2002), rare video footage of their punk-comic live performances as The Wild Wigglers and reconstructions of Aggiss's solo performance in Grotesque Dancer. These films are cross-referenced in the book, allowing readers to match performance and commentary as Aggiss and Cowie invite a broad range of writers to examine their live performance and dance screen practice through analysis, theory, discussion and personal response. Extensively illustrated with black and white and colour photographs Anarchic Dance, provides a comprehensive investigation into Cowie and Aggiss’s collaborative partnership and demonstrates a range of exciting approaches through which dance performance can be engaged critically.




Soundscapes of Wellbeing in Popular Music


Book Description

Unearthing the messy and sprawling interrelationships of place, wellbeing, and popular music, this book explores musical soundscapes of health, ranging from activism to international charity, to therapeutic treatments and how wellbeing is sought and attained in contexts of music. Drawing on critical social theories of the production, circulation, and consumption of popular music, the book gathers together diverse insights from geographers and musicologists. Popular music has become increasingly embedded in complex and often contradictory discourses of wellbeing. For instance, some new genres and sub-cultures of popular music are associated with violence, drug-use, and the angst of living, yet simultaneously define the hopes and dreams of millions of young people. At a service level, popular music is increasingly used as a therapeutic modality in holistic medicine, as well as in conventional health care and public health practice. The genre of popular music, then, is fundamental to human wellbeing as an active and central part of people’s emotional lives. By conceptually and empirically foregrounding place, this book demonstrates how - music whether from particular places, about particular places, or played in particular places ” is a crucial component of health and wellbeing.




Embodied Performances


Book Description

With a companion website that includes short online film episodes, this book proposes expansive ways of deconstructing and re-constituting sexuality and gender and thus more embodied and ethical ways of 'doing' life, and offers an understanding and critique of embodiment through an integration of performance, psychotherapy and feminist philosophy.




The Oxford Handbook of Screendance Studies


Book Description

The Oxford Handbook of Screendance Studies offers a full overview of the histories, practices, and critical and theoretical foundations of the rapidly changing landscape of screendance. Drawing on their practices, technologies, theories, and philosophies, scholars from the fields of dance, performance, visual art, cinema and media arts articulate the practice of screendance as an interdisciplinary, hybrid form that has yet to be correctly sited as an academic field worthy of critical investigation. Each chapter discusses and reframe current issues, as a means of promoting and enriching dialogue within the wider community of dance and the moving image. Topics addressed embrace politics of the body; agency, race, and gender in screendance; the relationship of choreography to image; constructs of space and time; representation and effacement; production and curatorial practice; and other areas of intersecting disciplines. The Oxford Handbook of Screendance Studies features newly-commissioned and original scholarship that will be essential reading for all those interested in the intersection of dance and the moving image, including film and video-makers, dance artists, screendance artists, academics and writers, producers, composers, as well as the wider interested public. It will become an invaluable resource for researchers and professionals in the field.




The Rough Guide to South America on a Budget: Travel Guide eBook


Book Description

This South America on a Budget guidebook is perfect for independent travellers planning a longer trip. It features all of the must-see sights and a wide range of off-the-beaten-track places. It also provides detailed practical information on preparing for a trip and what to do on the ground. And this South America on a Budget travel guidebook is printed on paper from responsible sources, and verified to meet the FSC’s strict environmental and social standards. This South America on a Budget guidebook covers: Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, The Guianas, Paraguay, Peru, Uruguay, Venezuela. Inside this South America on a Budget travel book, you’ll find: A wide range of sights – Rough Guides experts have hand-picked places for travellers with different needs and desires: off-the-beaten-track adventures, family activities or chilled-out breaks Itinerary examples – created for different time frames or types of trip Practical information – how to get to South America on a Budget, all about public transport, food and drink, shopping, travelling with children, sports and outdoor activities, tips for travellers with disabilities and more Author picks and things not to miss in South America on a Budget – Inca Trail, Peru; Carretera Austral, Chile; Cycling the Death Road, Bolivia; Ruta 40, Argentina; Serra Verde Railway, Brazil; The Circuit, Torres del Paine, Chile; Valparaíso, Chile; Historic Centre, Salvador, Brasil; Cusco, Peru; Niemeyer's Masterpiece; Cartagena de Indias, Colombia; La Compañía de Jesús, Ecuador; The Pantanal, Brazil; Galápagos Islands, Ecuador; Amazonian Basin, Bolivia, Brazil, Ecuador and Peru; Cañon del Colca, Peru; Beagle Channel, Argentina; Los Llanos, Venezuela Insider recommendations – tips on how to beat the crowds, save time and money, and find the best local spots When to go to South America on a Budget – high season, low season, climate information and festivals Where to go – a clear introduction to South America on a Budget with key places and a handy overview Extensive coverage of regions, places and experiences – regional highlights, sights and places for different types of travellers, with experiences matching different needs Places to eat, drink and stay – hand-picked restaurants, cafes, bars and hotels Practical info at each site – hours of operation, websites, transit tips, charges Colour-coded mapping – with keys and legends listing sites categorised as highlights, eating, accommodation, shopping, drinking and nightlife Background information for connoisseurs – history, culture, art, architecture, film, books, religion, diversity Essential Spanish, Portuguese dictionary and glossary of local terms Fully updated post-COVID-19 The guide provides a comprehensive and rich selection of places to see and things to do in South America on a Budget, as well as great planning tools. It’s the perfect companion, both ahead of your trip and on the ground.




Jacques Prévert


Book Description

A wide-ranging study of Prévert’s promethean imagination and creativity in the interwoven realms of theatre, film, poetry, art, photography, and song, Michael Bishop’s Jacques Prévert seeks to demonstrate the originality of a genial fabricator of image and word whose essential focus, unpretentious yet urgently felt, unintellectualised yet buoyantly and wittily intelligent, ever remains the quality of our daily being-in-the-world, the possibility of our self-transformation, the stunning availability – should we truly will it, and despite all that can weigh upon existence, above all ideologically – of joy and love and freedom.




The Oxford Handbook of Dance and Theater


Book Description

The Oxford Handbook of Dance and Theater collects a critical mass of border-crossing scholarship on the intersections of dance and theatre. Taking corporeality as an idea that unites the work of dance and theater scholars and artists, and embodiment as a negotiation of power dynamics with important stakes, these essays focus on the politics and poetics of the moving body in performance both on and off stage. Contemporary stage performances have sparked global interest in new experiments between dance and theater, and this volume situates this interest in its historical context by extensively investigating other such moments: from pagan mimes of late antiquity to early modern archives to Bolshevik Russia to post-Sandinista Nicaragua to Chinese opera on the international stage, to contemporary flash mobs and television dance contests. Ideologically, the essays investigate critical race theory, affect theory, cognitive science, historiography, dance dramaturgy, spatiality, gender, somatics, ritual, and biopolitics among other modes of inquiry. In terms of aesthetics, they examine many genres such as musical theater, contemporary dance, improvisation, experimental theater, television, African total theater, modern dance, new Indian dance theater aesthetics, philanthroproductions, Butoh, carnival, equestrian performance, tanztheater, Korean Talchum, Nazi Movement Choirs, Lindy Hop, Bomba, Caroline Masques, political demonstrations, and Hip Hop. The volume includes innovative essays from both young and seasoned scholars and scholar/practitioners who are working at the cutting edges of their fields. The handbook brings together essays that offer new insight into well-studied areas, challenge current knowledge, attend to neglected practices or moments in time, and that identify emergent themes. The overall result is a better understanding of the roles of dance and theater in the performative production of meaning.




Decentring Dancing Texts


Book Description

Eleven authors analyse recent dance practices in the theatre, in club culture and on film, addressing dance in interdisciplinary relationship with music, painting and play texts. This text attempts to fill a gap with an up-to-date account of exciting and challenging new work, illuminated by fascinating new theoretical frameworks.




Anarchism


Book Description

The term anarchism derives from the Greek word ἀναρχία meaning ‘without ruler or leader, and without law’. Although the roots of the word can be traced back to Ancient Greece, anarchism as a political ideology is relatively new. Anarchism developed as a political ideology at the end of the eighteenth century at the time of the emergence of the modern State. And, as is well known, anarchism developed both a politics and a way of life that did not include the State as its compass, support and structure. In contrast to the extensive contemporary literature about anarchist politics and ideas, this book focuses on the practices and attitudes that constitute what the author refers to as an anarchist ‘art of life’. The book draws on archival material that records the life and actions of the anarchist Emma Goldman and her associates, legal documents and writings by classical (Pierre Joseph Proudhon, Peter Krotopkin) and contemporary anarchists (David Graeber, Saul Newman, Ciarra Bottici), as well as contemporary groups such as the Clandestine Insurgent Rebel Clown Army and Occupy Wall Street. By studying the idiosyncrasies of this art of life, it argues, we are better able to appreciate how anarchism is not some future utopian oriented project, waiting to come into existence after a revolution, but rather exists in parallel to the life and politics offered by the State. Anarchism: An Art of Living Without Law will be of interest to graduate students and academics working on critical legal theory, political theory, sociology and cultural studies.




Physical Theatres


Book Description

This new edition of Physical Theatres: A Critical Introduction continues to provide an unparalleled overview of non-text-based theatre, from experimental dance to traditional mime. It synthesizes the history, theory and practice of physical theatres for students and performers in what is both a core area of study and a dynamic and innovative aspect of theatrical practice. This comprehensive book: traces the roots of physical performance in classical and popular theatrical traditions looks at the Dance Theatre of DV8, Pina Bausch, Liz Aggiss and Jérôme Bel examines the contemporary practice of companies such as Théatre du Soleil, Complicite and Goat Island focuses on principles and practices in actor training, with reference to figures such as Jacques Lecoq, Lev Dodin, Philippe Gaulier, Monika Pagneux, Etienne Decroux, Anne Bogart and Joan Littlewood. Extensive cross references ensure that Physical Theatres: A Critical Introduction can be used as a standalone text or together with its companion volume, Physical Theatres: A Critical Reader, to provide an invaluable introduction to the physical in theatre and performance. New to this edition: a chapter on The Body and Technology, exploring the impact of digital technologies on the portrayal, perception and reading of the theatre body, spanning from onstage technology to virtual realities and motion capture; additional profiles of Jerzy Grotowski, Wrights and Sites, Punchdrunk and Mike Pearson; focus on circus and aerial performance, new training practices, immersive and site-specific theatres, and the latest developments in neuroscience, especially as these impact on the place and role of the spectator.