At the dawn of the European refugee crisis, and in the middle of the ongoing sociopolitical and financial crisis in Greece, Greek choreographers started creating dance works that engaged immigrants and refugees. In most such initiatives, improvisation became the tool for bridging the disparity between the professional dancers and the “untrained” participants, who were often the vulnerable populations of refugees and asylum seekers. In this essay, I question the ethics and aesthetics of these methodological approaches utilized for staging encounters between natives and migrants through dance. In particular, I consider the significance of improvisation as potentially perpetuating hierarchical inequalities in the framework of Western concert dance, while I also highlight the ways that such artistic endeavors end up presenting immigrants and refugees as “Others.”

This article argues that nationalism and international diplomacy are embodied practices, as evidenced through the movement of international ballet dancers in South Africa. Under the apartheid regime, South African professional ballet received generous support from governmental sources. Since the transition to democracy, professional ballet companies have utilized creative strategies to court new sources of support including that of the ruling African National Congress. A key move in this campaign has been “ballet diplomacy” with Cuba—the transnational circulation of dancers, teachers, techniques, and performances in the name of the nation. Professional ballet's buy-in into South African nationalism locates dancers’ bodies in the maintenance and dissemination of state politics.

Descriptions of nineteenth-century American social dances from which to make reconstructions are readily available. They are present in those neat, usually palm-sized, dance manuals and miscellaneous pamphlets which bounce out of a card catalogue or present themselves on library shelves: The names of Thomas Hillgrove, Elias Howe, Thomas Wilson, Henri Cellarius, and John Ferrero are familiar to those of us – folk dancers, teachers, and revivalists – who work with these books in our variety of ways. The questions that concern me are: What is the nature of the material in these “little” books from which we can begin to make reconstructions of nineteenth-century social dances? Can we make reliable reconstructions using them alone? What else do we need to consider when using these sources?

In general discourse on cultural representation, dance tends to be absent and its contribution to the cultural life of society and its specific role in the social production of gender identity are largely ignored (1). When feminist scholars have addressed dance, the focus has tended to be on ballet as a “high” art form has been significant in forming ideological constructs of an idealised femininity. The following exposition aims to extend the debate by offering a case study located in the Victorian/Edwardian era, when ballet was the main attraction at the rival Alhambra and Empire palaces of varieties in London's Leicester Square. An examination of the period reveals the complexities of the representations of women in the ballet and demonstrates that, whilst the ideology of the dominant culture is embodied in the body of the dancer, that ideology is not singular but plural. It is argued that such a plurality is not at odds, but is commensurate with, co-existing notions of femininity (2).

How marvelous to observe what pure ecstasy dance brings to small children where the movement has become an exploration of the total being. “spontaneity and creativity working together toward a knowing, doing, and valuing experience” (Dimondstein 249). But dance as defined in America, when applied to the young means one thing, to the middle-aged another, and to the aged something entirely different.

The whole spectrum of movement is diminished for the aged. Within our system we have subtle culturally determined reinforcers which encourage negative self-images and attitudes as people grow old. Our society prescribes, along with what we eat, wear, and think, even how and when we shall grow old. Individuals are forced to assume the characteristic physical and mental attitudes of the aged, once they have acquired a certain number of years. The current aged population is a product of its upbringing - of the youth culture and “the Pepsi generation.” Forced into obsolescence, the bodies of the aged become “folded inward” reflecting and enforcing their withdrawal from society. Their perception of themselves as fragile is visible in their every movement.

This paper focuses on aging as a natural biological process and studies the role of movement and exercise in this process. It puts forth the thesis that regular programs of dance and movement are vital for the physical and mental well-being of the aged in our society.

These papers were originally given as a panel entitled What Constitutes a Dance at the 1989 Congress on Research in Dance Conference in Williamsburg, Virginia. Panelists selected Antony Tudor's 1937 Dark Elegies as a case study and basis for examining general questions regarding elements to be considered in identifying a dance work. Several issues and occurrences inspired panel members, such as recent interest in revivals of dance works from the beginning of this century and scholarly debate about issues related to directing dance from Labanotation scores. While Nelson Goodman's 1968 book Languages of Art served as a theoretical springboard for discussion, Judy Van Zile's 1985–86 article “What is the Dance? Implications for Dance Notation” proved a thought-provoking precedent for this investigation.

This paper announces a forthcoming bibliography for dance scholars and details some of the major sources it will list. The publication originated as a bibliography for a course on French music and dance taught at the University of California, Riverside, by Dr. Judith Schwartz, Wendy Hilton (guest artist), and the author. It has since taken on larger dimensions, including the cooperation of another scholar, Dr. Meredith Little of Stanford University. The collaborators sought to develop a definitive bibliography on French dance of the period 1643-1793.

The bibliography will be published by Joseph Boonin, Inc., in the series Music Indexes and Bibliographies, George R. Hill, General Editor. The full title is French Court Dance and Dance Music during the Reigns of Louis XIV-Louis XVI: An Annotated Bibliography of Primary Sources. Part I contains printed and manuscript collections of notated chorégraphies, and an index of musical incipits for notated chorégraphies. Part II contains writings about dance and dance notation. Part III contains writings about dance music, with a selective list of composers of dance music in the French manner.

This article analyzes two contemporary pieces, Faustin Linyekula's La Création du Monde 1923–2012 and Vera Mantero's A mysterious thing said e. e. Cummings, which respond to dance productions presented in Europe in the early decades of the twentieth century by criticizing their “negrophilic” attitude. The article juxtaposes the analysis of these two contemporary pieces with rereadings of the historical choreographies/events of the 1920s to which they refer, namely, Les Ballets Suédois's La Création du Monde (1923) and Josephine Baker's performances. Theoretically revisiting historical works that developed within such a “negrophilic” framework alongside contemporary pieces relating to them can be taken as attacking this very framework, trying to “undo” the Eurocentrism inherent in its cannibalistic processes. Such a perspective may allow for the acknowledgement of plural, multiple views of Africanistic presences in an otherwise “negrophilic” context.

The following is a transcription of the presentation by Kendall Thomas, co-creator with William Forsythe of the performance installation Human Writes, followed by a discussion with Thomas Keenan and Mark Franko. Kendall Thomas's talk was given simultaneously with a screening of a silent video documentation of the work. (The reader can find moving images of Human Writes at <http://www.art-tv.ch/human_writes.html>). The panel “Rights to Move: Choreographing the Human Rights Struggle,” of which this discussion was a part, also included the participation of Leah Cox, dancer of the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company. The event was curated and moderated by Mark Franko and produced by Alan Pally, and it took place at the Bruno Walter Auditorium of the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, Lincoln Center, on October 12, 2009.

This essay examines Jay Pather's site-specific work Cityscapes (2002) within a theoretical discussion of the conjuncture and disjuncture of space and race in South Africa. Jay Pather, a South African of Indian ancestry, an innovative choreographer and curator of site-specific works, creatively uses space to inspire social change by providing access and challenging exclusions—social, cultural, political—of black and colored South Africans during apartheid (1948–1994) and after. A progressive vision underlies his avant-garde work expressed via a hybrid choreographic palette of South African classical and popular dance styles, Indian classical dance, modern and contemporary dance. His choreography is performed across South Africa and the African continent as well as in Denmark, Mumbai, and New York City.

Although scholars, including myself, use Blood Memory to quote Martha Graham as evidence, other academics and dancers themselves have asserted that Graham did not write or construct the “autobiography.” The cross-reading of archives uncovers the narrative history of the making of Blood Memory, and how Graham, editors, and handlers constructed and reconstructed the book. In conclusion, by reading Graham's extensive oral histories and early writings, both scholars and dancers can recover the voice of the choreographer and woman.