Dance, Access and Inclusion


Book Description

The arts have a crucial role in empowering young people with special needs through diverse dance initiatives. Inclusive pedagogy that integrates all students in rich, equitable and just dance programmes within education frameworks is occurring alongside enabling projects by community groups and in the professional dance world where many high-profile choreographers actively seek opportunities to work across diversity to inspire creativity. Access and inclusion is increasingly the essence of projects for disenfranchised and traumatised youth who find creative expression, freedom and hope through dance. This volume foregrounds dance for young people with special needs and presents best practice scenarios in schools, communities and the professional sphere. International perspectives come from Australia, Brazil, Cambodia, Canada, Denmark, Fiji, Finland, India, Indonesia, Jamaica, Japan, Malaysia, New Zealand, Norway, Papua New Guinea, Portugal, Singapore, South Africa, Spain, Taiwan, Timor Leste, the UK and the USA. Sections include: inclusive dance pedagogy equality, advocacy and policy changing practice for dance education community dance initiatives professional integrated collaborations




Perspectives on Dance Fusion in the Caribbean and Dance Sustainability


Book Description

This volume examines the theme of fusion in Caribbean dance from a wide range of perspectives, including its socio-cultural-historical formation. The contributions are drawn from a conference entitled “Caribbean Fusion Dance Works: Rituals of Modern Society”, which focused primarily on the Caribbean as a unique locale. However, chapters on dance fusions in other diasporic locations and the sustainability of dance as an art form are also included here in order to offer a sense of an inevitable and, in some instances, desirable evolution due to the globalizing forces that continue to influence dance.




Perspectives on American Dance


Book Description

Dancing embodies cultural history and beliefs, and each dance carries with it features of the place where it originated. Influenced by different social, political, and environmental circumstances, dances change and adapt. American dance evolved in large part through combinations of multiple styles and forms that arrived with each new group of immigrants. Perspectives on American Dance is the first anthology in over twenty-five years to focus exclusively on American dance practices across a wide span of American culture. This volume and its companion show how social experience, courtship, sexualities, and other aspects of life in America are translated through dancing into spatial patterns, gestures, and partner relationships. This volume of Perspectives on American Dance features essays by a young generation of authors who write with familiarity about their own era, exploring new parameters of identity and evaluating a wide variety of movement practices being performed in spaces beyond traditional proscenium stages. Topics include "dorky dancing" on YouTube; same-sex competitors on the TV show So You Think You Can Dance; racial politics in NFL touchdown dances; the commercialization of flash mobs; the connections between striptease and corporate branding; how 9/11 affected dance; the criminalization of New York City club dancing; and the joyous ironies of hipster dance. This volume emphasizes how dancing is becoming more social and interactive as technology opens up new ways to create and distribute dance. The accessible essays use a combination of movement analysis, thematic interpretation, and historical context to convey the vitality and variety of American dance. They offer new insights on American dance practices while simultaneously illustrating how dancing functions as an essential template for American culture and identity. Contributors: Jennifer Atkins - Jessica Berson - J. Ellen Gainor - Patsy Gay - Ansley Jones - Kate Mattingly - Hannah Schwadron - Sally Sommer, Ph.D. - Ina Sotirova - Dawn Springer - Michelle T. Summers - Latika L. Young - Tricia Henry Young 




Dance Ethnography and Global Perspectives


Book Description

Dance Ethnography and Global Perspectives presents the work of dance scholars whose professional fieldwork spans several continents and includes studies of the dance and movement systems of varied global communities.




Dance and Creativity within Dance Movement Therapy


Book Description

Dance and Creativity within Dance Movement Therapy discusses the core work and basic concepts in dance movement therapy (DMT), focusing on the centrality of dance, the creative process and their aesthetic-psychological implications in the practice of the profession for both patients and therapists. Based on interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary inputs from fields such as philosophy, anthropology and dance, contributions examine the issues presented by cultural differences in DMT through the input of practitioners from several diverse countries. Chapters blend theory and case studies with personal, intimate reflections to support critical descriptions of DMT interventions and share methods to help structure practice and facilitate communication between professionals and researchers. The book’s multicultural, multidisciplinary examination of the essence of dance and its countless healing purposes will give readers new insights into the value and functions of dance both in and out of therapy.




Scientific Perspectives and Emerging Developments in Dance and the Performing Arts


Book Description

In the last few years, concerns about dancers’ health and the consequences of physical training have increased considerably. The physical requirements and type of training dancers need to achieve to reach their highest level of performance while decreasing the rate of severe injuries has awakened the necessity of more scientific knowledge concerning the area of dance, in part considering its several particularities. Scientific Perspectives and Emerging Developments in Dance and the Performing Arts is a pivotal reference source that provides vital research designed to reduce the gap between the scientific theory and the practice of dance. While highlighting topics such as burnout, mental health, and sport psychology, this publication explores areas such as nutrition, psychology, and education, as well as methods of maintaining the general wellbeing and quality of the health, training, and performance of dancers. This book is ideally designed for dance experts, instructors, sports psychologists, researchers, academicians, and students.




Dancing Across Borders


Book Description

Dancing Across Borders presents formal and non-formal settings of dance education where initiatives in different countries transcend borders: cultural and national borders, subject borders, professional borders and socio-economic borders. It includes chapters featuring different theoretical perspectives on dance and cultural diversity, alongside case narratives that show these perspectives in a specific cultural setting. In this way, each section charts the processes, change and transformation in the lives of young people through dance. Key themes include how student learning is enhanced by cultural diversity, experiential teaching and learning involving social, cross-cultural and personal dimensions. This conceptually aligns with the current UNESCO protocols that accent empathy, creativity, cooperation, collaboration alongside skills- and knowledge-based learning in an endeavour to create civic mindedness and a more harmonious world. This volume is an invaluable resource for teachers, policy makers, artists and scholars interested in pedagogy, choreography, community dance practice, social and cultural studies, aesthetics and interdisciplinary arts. By understanding the impact of these cross-border collaborative initiatives, readers can better understand, promote and create new ways of thinking and working in the field of dance education for the benefit of new generations.




Perspectives in Motion


Book Description

Focusing on visual approaches to performance in global cultural contexts, Perspectives in Motion explores the work of Adrienne L. Kaeppler, a pioneering researcher who has made a number of interdisciplinary contributions over five decades to dance and performance studies. Through a diverse range of case studies from Oceania, Asia, and Europe, and interdisciplinary approaches, this edited collection offers new critical and ethnographic frameworks for understanding and experiencing practices of music and dance across the globe.




Looking Out


Book Description

Looking Out is the first collection of writings to address the impact of multiculturalism on the dance world. It is unique in offering various perspectives, enlisting leading dance critics, performers, choreographers, and academics in a wide-ranging discussion of how dance from around the world can be better understood. Inspired by a groundbreaking 1990 conference of the Dance Critics Association, the book consists of a series of essays, each addressing a different facet of the problems and possibilities of multiculturalism.




Perspectives on Contemporary Dance History


Book Description

While Impulse was recognized as the platform for dance scholarship during the years of its publication, following its cessation in 1970, only a handful of libraries and collections retained a full complement of its issues. Over time, many upcoming dance scholars were unaware of its rich history and seminal contributions to the field. In 2008 a project was initiated to preserve Impulse as a digital collection and bring together a cohort of dance scholars to analyze each issue from todays point of view. Their collected works are presented in this text. There is no comparable study or project designed to preserve and facilitate access to original source materials in dance at this time. This book stands alone as a compendium of critical analyses of the full roster of a publication dedicated to dance. As eminent authors of the time were invited to contribute to issues of Impulse, contemporary dance scholars were invited to contribute to this book that examines Impulse from todays point of view. This book revisits the journals breadth of commentary, scope of authorship, and provocative yet engaging discourses.