About the Book
Fields in Motion: Ethnography in the Worlds of Dance examines the deeper meanings and resonances of artistic dance in contemporary culture. The book comprises four sections: methods and methodologies, autoethnography, pedagogies and creative processes, and choreographies as cultural and spiritual representations. The contributors bring an insiders insight to their accounts of the nature and function of these artistic practices, giving voice to dancers, dance teachers, creators, programmers, spectators, students, and scholars. International and intergenerational, this collection of groundbreaking scholarly research points to a new direction for both dance studies and dance anthropology. Traditionally the exclusive domain of aesthetic philosophers, the art of dance is here reframed as cultural practice, and its significance is revealed through a chorus of voices from practitioners and insider ethnographers.
Table of Contents:
Table of Contents for Fields in Motion: Ethnography in the Worlds of Dance , edited by Dena Davida Foreword | Naomi Jackson (Canada/USA) Acknowledgements Introduction: Anthropology at Home in the Art Worlds of Dance | Dena Davida (Canada) Section 1: Inventing Strategies, Models, and Methods 1. Shifting Positions: From the Dancers' Posture to the Researchers' Posture | Anne Cazemajou (France) 2. A Template for Art World Dance Ethnography: The Luna 'Nouvelle Danser' Event | Dena Davida (Canada) 3. Interview Strategies for Concert Dance World Settings | Jennifer Fisher (Canada/USA) 4. The 'Why Dance?' Projects: Choreographing the Text and Dancing the Data | Michèle Moss (Canada) 5. What is the Pointe?: The Pointe Shoe as Symbol in Dance Ethnography | Kristin Harris Walsh (Canada) Section 2: Embodying Autoethnographies 6. Writing, Dancing, Embodied Knowing: Autoethnographic Research | Karen Barbour (New Zealand) 7. The Body as a Living Archive of Dance/Movement: Autobiographical Reflections | Janet Goodridge (England) 8. Self-Portrait of an Insider Researching Contemporary Dance and Culture in Vitória, Brazil | Eluza Maria Santos (Brazil/USA) 9. Reflections on Making the Dance Documentary Regular Events of Beauty : Negotiating Culture in the Work of Choreographer Richard Tremblay | Priya Thomas (Canada) 10. Angelwindow : 'I dance my body double' | Inka Juslin (Finland) Section 3: Examining Creative Processes and Pedagogies 11. The Montréal Danse Choreographic Research and Development Workshop: Dancer-Researchers Examine Choreographer-Dancer Relational Dynamics during the Creative Process | Pamela Newell and Sylvie Fortin (Canada) 12. How the Posture of Researcher-Practitioner Serves an Understanding of Choreographic Activity | JoÃ"lle Vellet (France) 13. A Teacher 'Self-Research' Project: Sensing Differences in the Teaching and Learning of Contemporary Dance Technique in New Zealand | Warwick Long (Canada/New Zealand), Ralph Buck (New Zealand), and Sylvie Fortin (Canada) 14. Dance Education and Emotions: Articulating Unspoken Values in the Everyday Life of a Dance School | Teija Löytönen (Finland) 15. Black Tights and Dance Belts: Constructing a Masculine Identity in a World of Pink Tutus in Corner Brook, Newfoundland | Candice Pike (Canada) 16. The Construction of the Body in Wilfride Piollet's Classical Dance Classes | Nadége Tardieu and Georgiana Gore (France) Section 4: Revealing Choreographies as Cultural and Spiritual Practices 17. Vincent Sekwati Mantsoe: Trance as a Cultural Commodity | Bridget E. Cauthery (Canada) 18. Anthropophagic Bodies in Flea Market : A Study of Sheila Ribeiro's Choreography | MÃ'nica Dantas (Brazil) 19. The Bridge From Past to Present in Lin Hwai-min's Nine Songs (1993): Literary texts and dance images | Yin-ying Huang (Taiwan) 20. Revealed By Fire : Lata Pada's Narrative of Transformation | Susan McNaughton (Canada) 21. Spectres of the Dark: The Dance-Making Manifesto of Latina/Chicana Choreographies | Juanita Suarez (USA) 22. Not of Themselves: Contemporary Practices in American Protestant dance | Emily Wright (USA) Epilogue: Theory That Acts Like Dancing: The Autoethnographic Strut | Lisa Doolittle and Anne Flynn (Canada) List of Contributors Copyright Acknowledgements Index Contributors Karen Barbour is a senior lecturer in dance in the School of Education at the University of Waikato, New Zealand. Returning to academic study after dance training presented rich spaces for negotiation and tension between traditional and dancerly forms of knowledge and inspired her doctoral thesis on women's solo contemporary dance. Karen's work as a dance lecturer encompasses choreography, contemporary dance, improvisation, and performance. Barbour has just published Dancing across the Page: Narrative and Embodied Ways of Knowing (2011), choreographs professionally, creates digital dance works, and publishes articles in a range of academic journals. Ralph Buck is associate professor and head of Dance Studies, University of Auckland. He holds a PhD from the University of Otago. His research interests are in dance education, curriculum, pedagogy, and community dance. Ralph has presented his research in networks such as Congress on Research in Dance, World Dance Alliance (WDA), Dance and the Child International. He has given keynote addresses at national and international conferences. He is chair, Education and Training Network, WDA: Asia-Pacific; chairperson, Executive Council, World Alliance for Arts Education; and isan honorary life member of the Australian Dance Council. Bridget Cauthery is a lecturer, journalist, and arts consultant based in Toronto, Canada. She received her doctorate in dance studies from the University of Surrey, UK, in 2007, where her research focused on the applicability of trance to Western concert dance forms. She lectures in the dance department at York University and in the theatre department at Ryerson University and is currently working with ten international choreographers on a book project provisionally titled Choreographing the North , funded by the Canada Council for the Arts. Anne Cazemajou completed an MA in philosophy, two DEA in the performing arts, and, in 2010, a PhD in dance anthropology at Université Blaise Pascal, Clermont Université. Her doctoral research examines the body's experience of transmission in a case study of a contemporary dance class for dance-interested adults in which the teacher, Toni D'Amelio, had integrated a yoga technique. Since 2007, she has taught the Université Blaise Pascal, Clermont Université, Université Paris 13 and Université Paris 8. Cazemajou practises Iyengar yoga and is a founding member of the Atelier des Doctorants at the Centre National de la Danse in Paris. MÃ'nica Dantas earned her PhD in the program 'Ãtudes et pratiques des arts' at the Université du Québec à Montréal. She has a master's in human movement sciences, and since 1995 has been a professor at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul in Porto Alegre, Brazil, teaching in the physical education department and the master's program of performing arts. She has published articles in scientific journals on the subject of contemporary dance, and in 1999 authored the monograph Dança, o enigma do movimento (Dance, the enigma of movement) . Dantas is also a practising contemporary dancer and choreographer. Dena Davida, an American living in Montréal since 1977, earned her MA in movement studies from Wesleyan University (1995), and later her PhD in the Ãtudes et pratiques des arts program at the Université du Québec à Montréal (2006), where she taught improvisation, composition and theory classes for twenty-five years. She co-founded the Festival international de nouvelle danse in 1978 and, in 1981, Tangente, Québec's first dance performance space, for which she remains co-artistic director. She is also a veteran contact improviser, contemporary dancer, and dance curator who has published numerous essays in dance journals and magazines on issues of contemporary dance, ethnography, and culture. Lisa Doolittle is professor in theatre arts at the University of Lethbridge. She holds an MA in Movement Studies from Wesleyan University, and has worked as a dancer, choreographer, journalist and lecturer in the USA, Canada, UK, Italy, and Japan. With Anne Flynn, her SSHRC-supported research examines indigenous and 'folk' dance in Canada, national identities, and Canadian multicultural policy. International presentations and publications include studies of Canadian dance in the twentieth century, concepts of folk dance and social dance, and the roles of performance in social change. Her community-based performance projects have focused on immigrant issues and health promotion in Lethbridge, London (UK), and Malawi. Jennifer Fisher, PhD, is the author of Nutcracker Nation: How an Old World Ballet Became a Christmas Tradition in the New World (Yale University Press, 2003), which won the de la Torre Bueno special citation. Co-editor, with Anthony Shay, of When Men Dance: Choreographing Masculinities across Borders (Oxford University Press, 2009), she is an associate professor in the dance department of the University of California, Irvine, where she created Dance Major Journal , a publication for undergraduate writing. She has written about dance for The Globe and Mail (Toronto), the Los Angeles Times , and The New York Times , as well as for scholarly journals. Anne Flynn has long been involved in the Calgary dance community as a performer, artistic director, teacher, writer, administrator, and dance education advocate. She earned her MA in movement studies from Wesleyan University. Professor in the Department of Dance at the University of Calgary, Faculties of Arts and Kinesiology, her dance research on Canadian wome
About the Author :
Dena Davida has taught university courses and lectured on contemporary dance and culture and has published various essays in academic journals and professional periodicals. Her doctoral work was an ethnographic study of meaning in a contemporary dance event in Montreal, the outcome of her earlier practice as a postmodern dancer and current work as performing arts presenter and dance educator.
