Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-t7fkt Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-26T13:04:55.677Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

When Is Contemporary Dance?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 December 2017

SanSan Kwan
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This article interrogates the multivalent understandings of the term “contemporary dance” in concert, commercial, and world dance contexts. I argue that placing multiple uses of the term “contemporary” alongside one another can provide insight into the ways that “high art” dance, popular dance, and non-Western dance are increasingly wrapped up with each other and, at the same time, the ways that their separations reveal our artistic, cultural, and political prejudices, as well as the forces of the market.

Keywords

commercial dancecompetition danceconcert dancecontemporarycontemporaneityethnic dancelyrical dancenon-Western dancetemporalityworld dance
Type
Articles
Information
Dance Research Journal , Volume 49 , Issue 3 , December 2017 , pp. 38 - 52
Copyright
Copyright © Dance Studies Association 2017 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Works Cited

Acocella, Joan. 2005. “Mystery Theatre: Downtown Surrealists.” New Yorker, August 8.Google Scholar
Agamben, Giorgio. 2009. “What is the Contemporary.” In What is an Apparatus? and Other Essays, 39–54. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Austin, Linda. 2015. (Un)Made Solo Relay Series. Performance Works NW, Portland, March–August.Google Scholar
Banes, Sally. 1980. Terpsichore in Sneakers: Post-Modern Dance. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.Google Scholar
Belmar, Sima. 2015. “Easier Said than Done: Talking Identity in Late Twentieth-Century American Concert Dance.” Ph.D. diss., University of California, Berkeley.Google Scholar
Berman, Leslie. 2008. “Writing Nostalgia: Dance Criticism at the New York Times in the Age of Internet Journalism.” Unpublished paper, Barnard College.Google Scholar
Birringer, Johannes H. 2005. “Dance and Not Dance.” PAJ: A Journal of Performance and Art 27 (2): 10–27.Google Scholar
Birringer, Johannes H. 2011. “Dancing in the Museum.” PAJ: A Journal of Performance and Art 33 (3): 43–52.Google Scholar
Burridge, Stephanie, and Frumberg, Fred. 2010. Beyond the Apsara: Celebrating Dance in Cambodia. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Burt, Ramsay. 2004. “Undoing Postmodern Dance History.” Sarma: Laboratory for Discursive Practices and Expanded Publication. http://sarma.be/docs/767. Accessed May 15, 2016. Google Scholar
Burt, Ramsay. 2017. Ungoverning Dance: Contemporary European Theatre Dance and the Commons. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Chang, Ting-Ting. 2015. “Linking the Tradition to Modernity with the Choreographic Aesthetics of Shen Wei's and Xiaoxiong Zhang's the Rite of Spring.” http://ausdance.org.au/articles/details/linking-tradition-to-modernity. Accessed May 15, 2016.Google Scholar
Chatterjea, Ananya. 2013. “On the Value of Mistranslations and Contaminations: The Category of ‘Contemporary Choreography’ in Asian Dance.” Dance Research Journal 45 (1): 4–21.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Desmond, Jane. 1991. “Dancing Out the Difference: Cultural Imperialism and Ruth St. Denis' Radha of 1906.” Signs 17 (1): 28–49.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Evans, Moriah. 2015. Social Dance 1–8: Index (dance performance). Issue Project Room, Brooklyn, January 22.Google Scholar
Fabian, Johannes. 1983. Time and the Other: How Anthropology Makes its Object. New York: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
Foster, Susan Leigh. 1997. “Dancing Bodies.” In Meaning in Motion: New Cultural Studies in Dance, edited by Desmond, Jane, 235–58. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Foster, Susan Leigh. 2009. Worlding Dance. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Franko, Mark, and Lepecki, André, eds. 2014. “Special Issue: Dance in the Museum.” Dance Research Journal 46 (3).Google Scholar
Freeman, Elizabeth. 2010. Time Binds: Queer Temporalities, Queer Histories. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Frumberg, Fred. 2010. “Beyond Revival and Preservation: Contemporary Dance in Cambodia.” In Beyond the Apsara: Celebrating Dance in Cambodia, 140–154. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Gutierrez, Miguel. 2015. Age & Beauty Part 1: Mid-Career Artist/Suicide Note or &:-/ (dance performance). Counterpulse, San Francisco, March 8.Google Scholar
Huynh, Emmanuelle, Luccioni, Denise, and Perrin, Julie, eds. 2012. Histoire(s) et Lectures: Trisha Brown/Emmanuelle Huynh. Dijon, France: Les presses du reel.Google Scholar
Jackson, Shannon. 2014. “The Way We Perform Now.” Dance Research Journal 46 (3): 53–61.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Katrak, Ketu H. 2011. Contemporary Indian Dance: New Creative Choreography in India and the Diaspora. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kedhar, Anusha. 2014. “Flexibility and Its Bodily Limits: Transnational South Asian Dancers in an Age of Neoliberalism.” Dance Research Journal 46 (1): 23–40.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kim, Sam. 2015a. Sister to a Fiend (dance performance). Studio C and Gibney Dance: Agnes Varis Performing Arts Center, New York, March 5.Google Scholar
Kim, Sam. 2015b. “Sister to a Fiend: Incantation, Energy, and Terrific Force.” Interview by Stormy Budwig. Culturebot: Maximum Performance, March 2. http://www.culturebot.org/2015/03/23381/sister-to-a-fiend-incantation-energy-and-terrific-force/. Accessed June 2, 2017.Google Scholar
Kolb, Alexandra. 2013. “Current Trends in Contemporary Choreography: A Political Critique.” Dance Research Journal 45 (3): 29–52.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kourlas, Gia. 2016. “Review: To Sam Kim, One Is the Most Narcissistic Number That You'll Ever Know.” New York Times, November 10. https://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/11/arts/dance/review-to-sam-kim-one-is-the-most-narcissistic-number-that-youll-ever-know.html?_r=0. Accessed April 9, 2017.Google Scholar
Kwan, SanSan. 2014. “Even as we Keep Trying: An Ethics of Interculturalism in Jérôme Bel's Pichet Klunchun and Myself .” Theatre Survey 55 (2): 185–201.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kwan, SanSan. 2016. “What Is the Time of Contemporary Dance?” Representations 136 (1): 147–153.Google Scholar
Larasati, Rachmi Diyah. 2013. The Dance that Makes You Vanish: Cultural Reconstruction in Postgenocide Indonesia. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.Google Scholar
La Rocco, Claudia. 2011. “With Bach as Innocent Bystander, Message for the Senses, Not the Mind.” New York Times, September 30. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/01/arts/dance/compagnie-thor-performs-to-the-ones-i-love-review.html. Accessed April 9, 2016.Google Scholar
Lefebvre, Elodie. 2012. Cassa Cassa! Danced Encounters Between Africa and its Diaspora (film). Jerome Robbins Dance Division, The New York Public Library. New York Public Library Digital Collections. http://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/42b27cc0-a9e9-0133-2780-60f81dd2b63c. Accessed June 5, 2016. Google Scholar
Lemon, Ralph. 2010. How Can You Stay in the House All Day and Not Go Anywhere? Roy and Edna Disney/CalArts Theater, Los Angeles, November 13.Google Scholar
Lepecki, André. 2004. “Concept and Presence: The Contemporary European Dance Scene.” In Rethinking Dance History: A Reader, edited by Carter, Alexandra, 170–81. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Lepecki, André. 2012. “Introduction: Dance as a Practice of Contemporaneity.” In Dance, edited by Lepecki, André, 14–23. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Lin, Yatin. 2014. “Choreographing Multiple Corporealities in the Sinophone World.” Korean Society of Dance Journal 71 (6): 293–303.Google Scholar
Livet, Anne, ed. 1978. Contemporary Dance. New York: Abbeville Press.Google Scholar
Manning, Susan. 1988. “Modernist Dogma and Post-Modern Rhetoric: A Response to Sally Banes' ‘Terpsichore in Sneakers’.” Drama Review 32 (4): 32–39.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mapp, Juliette. 2016. Luxury Rentals (dance performance). Danspace Project, New York, May 20.Google Scholar
McKinley, James C. 2011.“ Beyoncé Accused of Plagiarism Over Video.” New York Times, October 10. https://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/10/10/beyonce-accused-of-plagiarism-over-video/?_r=1. Accessed June 3, 2016.Google Scholar
Meyer, Richard. 2013. When Was Contemporary Art? Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.Google Scholar
Mitra, Royona. 2015. Akram Khan: Dancing New Interculturalism. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mohd, Anis Md, and Burridge, Stephanie. 2011. Sharing Identities: Celebrating Dance in Malaysia. New York: Routledge. Peridance Capezio Center. 2017. Accessed May 14. http://www.peridance.com/. Accessed May 14.Google Scholar
Pontbriand, Chantal. 2014. “Expanded Dance.” In Danse: An Anthology, edited by Solomon, Noémie, 283–94. Paris: Les Presses du Réel.Google Scholar
Pouillaude, Frédéric. 2007. “Scène and Contemporaneity.” Drama Review 51 (2): 124–35.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pouillaude, Frédéric. 2016. “Dance as Documentary: Conflictual Images in the Choreographic Mirror (On Archive by Arkadi Zaides).” Dance Research Journal 48 (2): 80–94.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rainer, Yvonne. 1965. “Some Retrospective Notes on a Dance for 10 People and 12 Mattresses Called ‘Parts of Some Sextets.’” Drama Review 10 (2): 178.Google Scholar
Rastovac, Heather. 2016. “Performing (Trans)National Iranianness: The Choreographic Cartographies of Diasporic Iranian Dancers and Performance Artists.” Ph.D. diss., University of California, Berkeley.Google Scholar
Robinson, Danielle. 2015. Modern Moves: Dancing Race during the Ragtime and Jazz Eras. New York: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rowe, Nicholas. 2009. “Post-Salvagism: Choreography and Its Discontents in the Occupied Palestinian Territories.” Dance Research Journal 41 (1): 45–68.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Solomon, Noémie. 2013. “Introduction.” In Danse: An Anthology, edited by Solomon, Noémie, 9–26. Paris: Les Presses du Réel.Google Scholar
Srinivasan, Priya. 2007. “The Bodies Beneath the Smoke, Or What's Behind the Cigarette Poster: Unearthing Kinesthetic Connections in American Modern Dance.” Discourses in Dance 4 (1): 7–48.Google Scholar
Wong, Yutian. 2010. Choreographing Asian America. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press.Google Scholar
Wozny, Nancy. 2010. “The Contemporary Conundrum.” Dancespirit. http://www.dancespirit.com/the_contemporary_conundrum-2326050236.html. Accessed April 12, 2016.Google Scholar
Yeoh, Francis. 2013a. “Choreographers' Moral Right of Integrity.” Journal of Intellectual Property Law and Practice 8 (1): 43–58.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Yeoh, Francis. 2013b. “The Copyright Implications of Beyoncé's Choreographic ‘Borrowings’.” Choreographic Practices 4 (1): 95–117.CrossRefGoogle Scholar