Choreographies of Landscape: Signs of Performance in Yosemite National Park(8 Dance and Performance Studies)

As an international ecotourism destination, Yosemite National Park welcomes millions of climbers, sightseers, and other visitors from around the world annually, all of whom are afforded dramatic experiences of the natural world. This original and cross-disciplinary book offers an ethnographic and performative study of Yosemite visitors in order to understand human connection with and within natural landscapes. By grounding a novel “eco-semiotic” analysis in the lived reality of parkgoers, it forges surprising connections, assembling a collective account that will be of interest to disciplines ranging from performance studies to cultural geography.

Table of Contents:
List of Illustrations Acknowledgements PART I: APPROACH Introduction: Landscape Performance Theory, an Introduction PART II: VISITING Chapter 1. Bouldering: Movements of the Unforetold Chapter 2. Climbing: Scenic-Obscenic Movement Chapter 3. Hiking: Self-World Transformations PART III: MOVING ON Chapter 4. Unwinding and Changing Course Chapter 5. The Spartanburg Coincidence Index

About the Author :
Sally Ann Ness is Professor of Anthropology at University of California, Riverside. She is author of Where Asia Smiles (2003) as well as Body Movement and Culture (1992), which won the de la Torre Bueno Prize and the CORD Outstanding Publication in Dance Research Award. She has also co-edited, with Carrie Noland, the collection Migrations of Gesture (2008).  Her research in Yosemite was funded in part by a 2007 John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship.

Review :
“Ness provides conceptual insights which connect a range of disciplines, drawing upon detailed research undertaken over many years – including in-depth ethnographic work. The book addresses new challenges and deepens our understanding of landscape from a number of disciplinary perspectives. The delight of this book is that it provides a serious engagement with a web of theories, yet it retains a light touch in style. Through careful attention to observation-performance, it offers an intimate approach to its subject that is both complex and beautifully poetic.” • Cultural Geographies “This is an extremely original, theoretically surprising, very clearly written, and thought-provoking project. By focusing on encounters with Yosemite National Park, Sally Ann Ness takes her reader along unexpected paths while constructing an innovative and deeply personal anthropology of experience.” • André Lepecki, New York University “The delight of this book is that it seriously engages with a web of theory yet retains a light touch. Through careful observation-performance, it offers an intimate approach to its subject that is both complex and beautifully poetic.” • David Crouch, University of Derby