Reinventing Dance in the 1960s: Everything Was Possible

The 1960s was a pivotal decade in dance, an era of intense experimentation and rich invention. In this volume a range of dance critics and scholars examine the pioneering choreographers and companies of the era, such as Anna Halprin's West Coast experiments, the innovative Judson Dance Theater, avant-garde dance subcultures in New York, the work of Meredith Monk and Kenneth King, and parallel movements in Britain. The contributors include Janice Ross, Leslie Satin, Noel Carroll, Gus Solomons Jr, Deborah Jowitt, Stephanie Jordan, Joan Acocella and Sally Banes.

Table of Contents:
Anna Halprin and the 1960s - acting in the gap between the personal, the public, and the political, Sally Banes; James Waring and the Judson Dance Theater - influences, intersections, divergences, Janice Ross; The philosophy of art history, dance, and the sixties, Leslie Satin; Dance quote unquote, Noeel Carroll; Dancing in New York - the sixties, Jill Johnston; Monk and King - the sixties kids, Gus Solomons, Jr; One route from ballet to postmodern, Deborah Jowitt; Radical discoveries - pioneering post-modern dance in Britain, Wendy Perron; Ballet review's beginnings - an interview with Arlene Croce, Stephanie Jordan; PastForward - choreographers' statements, Joan Acocella & Sally Banes.

About the Author :
Sally Banes is the Marian Hannah Winter Professor of Theater History and Dance Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Her many books include Terpsichore in Sneakers, Dancing Women, Democracy's Body, and Greenwich Village 1963.

Review :
This thoughtful collection of essays edited by Sally Banes, the preeminent historian of U.S. dance at mid-century, looks back at that tumultuous decade from a multiplicity of new perspectives. - Lynn Garafola, Barnard College; ""With the wave of interest Baryshnikov has cultivated in the 1960s, this scems exactly the right time to look again at the aesthetics and accomplishments of this era. And if I could choose any guide for this journey, it would be Sally Banes. She has claimed this fertile territory as her own, illuminating the dances of this era while meticulously grounding her discussion in American culture and the social turmoil of the 1960s."" - David Gere, University of California, Los Angeles; ""People who write about experimental dance in the 1960s often stress its conceptual nature, its ideas, but what I liked so much... was the human immediacy.... What you saw was not a metaphor. It was them, and when it worked, it was you too."" - Mikhail Baryshnikov, from the foreword