A growing number of practitioners in the international community of choreographers and performers has begun to experiment with computer-assisted work linking dance and new technologies. This hardly comes as a surprise, since dance-on-film and videodance had already attracted considerable attention, at least since the 1980s. Earlier experiments, such as the astonishing films by Maya Deren, take us back to the 1940s, and today's motion capture-based animations find their historical roots in late nineteenth century motion studies in chronophotography and early cinema (Muybridge, Marey, Méliès). Furthermore, dancemakers, researchers, and teachers have used film or video as a vital means of documenting or analyzing existing choreographies. Some scholars and software programmers published tools (LabanWriter, LifeForms) that attracted attention in the field of dance notation and preservation as well as among choreographers (e.g., Merce Cunningham) who wanted to utilize the computer for the invention and visualization of new movement possibilities.

Can contemporary choreography claim to challenge the societal status quo by producing liberatory or transgressive work, or has it rather become enshrined in the logic of capitalism and establishment culture? This paper looks critically at twenty-first-century participatory, collaborative modes of performance to investigate how their corresponding aesthetic choices and working methods reflect (often implicit) political stances, such as manifestations of democracy. Using examples from several Western countries, current trends will be assessed against the backdrop of 1960s and 1970s performance theory and practice by assessing the ramifications of the shifting fault lines between dance/performance, the market economy, and political ideologies.

This article focuses on the idea of choreography as a possible medium of protest. Dealing with the media theory of Niklas Luhmann in the framework of social communication, and adopting Randy Martin's idea of an interrelation of (danced) movement and politics, the focus lies in the moments of migration of gestures from everyday life into art and then into the realm of politics. By analyzing the example of the Istanbul Duran Adam and the performance of choreographer Ehud Darash in Tel Aviv, I address the key question in which moments and what kind of formats choreography serves as a medium of protest by blurring the boundaries between everyday life, art, and politics.

The development of pointe technique rightly can be viewed as a “technical revolution” in the history of ballet, but its origins and early manifestations are among the intriguing mysteries of this ephemeral art. The discussion that follows will explore those mysteries by examining sources heretofore largely ignored: the technical treatises about dancing written by ballet masters of the late-eighteenth through the early nineteenth centuries. These books and manuscripts reveal the most frequently taught steps and positions performed on full pointe, the dance phrases in which those movements occurred, and the exercises deemed necessary to “gain strength on the points of the toes.” Such an examination suggests that early pointe work was not an exclusively feminine activity, nor was the earliest exponent of this phenomenon a ballerina of the nineteenth century.

It would seem reasonable to expect dance technique notebooks and manuals to yield clear documentation and definitions of such a “revolutionary” phenomenon as pointe work. At the very least it would seem that the authors of those treatises would call attention to the new “discovery” which soon was to become “one of the prime features of the Romantic ballet.” But, that view of the revolutionary nature of dancing on pointe comes from our own twentieth century hindsight, not from those who first experienced the phenomenon. Rather, the earliest nineteenth century accounts by dancing masters treat pointe work in a casual manner, thus suggesting they were depicting a quite logical, but hardly remarkable, development. For example, E.A. Théleur's book on technique, Letters on Dancing (London, 1831), describes and illustrates poses corresponding to second, fourth, and fifth positions that can be made either “on the balls of the feet or on the points of the toes.” Théleur, in an even more nonchalant manner, uses his only two illustrations of dancers on the tips of their toes as examples of proper positions for the arms rather than as depictions of positions on the points of the toes.

In this essay I propose new initiatives I hope to see in U.S. dance studies in the next decade. Rather than attempting a comprehensive literature survey, or citing all possible relevant material, I want to identify what appears to me to be terrae incognitae—unmapped and un- or under-explored realms of dance research—and to suggest that we collectively consider what the effects might be if they were brought into focus. While there are many such terrae incognitae, I want to concentrate here on issues relating to ethnography, suggesting that we expand our methods of analysis to include more ethnographies of institutions and audiences. While some work in these areas is already part of “dance studies,” it does not predominate and has been overshadowed by work on the history or representational practices of concert dance, especially modern dance and ballet.

I suggest that we use the potential of fieldwork—that is, the sustained participation in and observation of communities, institutions, and practices—and apply this widely to a variety of sectors in the U.S., including modern dance and ballet companies, dance institutions such as archives, training schools, community dance centers, and even our own scholarly organizations. While I hope there will be more ethnographies of dancing communities, like the contact improvisers Cynthia Cohen Bull analyzes, or the dancers of the Philippine ritual dance form sinulog that Sally Ness engages, there has already been some movement in this direction and those books provide excellent models. I want to emphasize here, instead, the important potential of critical ethnographic examination of institutions and organizations. These investigations will parallel new initiatives in anthropology, where scholars such as Richard Handler and Eric Gable have taken as the subject of their analyses The Colonial Williamsburg Foundation and historical site, and Sharon Traweek, who has made a point of studying physics labs (1).

There are many assumptions about dance conditioning which are thought to be “myths” and have no basis in fact. The use of kinesiological analysis is relatively new to dance and many of the “old wive's tales” of dance conditioning are still passed on in some dance studios. Following are listed four assumptions about dance conditioning:

1. The dancer who works with weights will develop excessive muscle bulk.

2. If a dancer increases strength of a given area or muscle group, there will be a reduction of the range of motion of that area.

3. If a dancer increases range of motion at a given joint in one direction (for example: inward rotation of the hip joint), there will be an equal reduction of the range of motion in the opposite direction (in this case, outward rotation).

4. The cardiovascular conditioning received in technique class is sufficient to achieve high physical performance levels.

The image and interpretation of the ballerina has shifted over time since she first took her place in the pantheon of romantic female performers in the early nineteenth century. For many, she is still romanticized, respected, and revered; in other circles, she has become suspect as a creature who may be obsessed, exploited, and retrogressive in light of the egalitarian strides women have made or are still trying to make. The female ballet dancer's basic contradiction—her ethereal exterior and her iron-willed interior—has not been sufficiently accounted for in either scheme, nor has it been woven into the kind of complex, contextualized analysis that includes practitioners who embody the form, audience members of various kinds, and the multiple, shifting locales and attitudes that surround them. As an elite art form, ballet has until recently relied on the more univocal discourse of bouquets and brickbats from critics and other specialists. In 1993, when dance anthropologist Cynthia Jean Cohen Bull called for a consideration of ballet's relationship of dance to life in ways that other cultural forms are investigated, few took up the call.

A special Fall 1993 issue of Time magazine titled “The New Face of America. How Immigrants Are Shaping the World's First Multicultural Society” examines the explosion of the immigrant population in the United States. The editors tell us:

In the small island state of Hawai‘i the intermixing of cultures simultaneous with retaining individual identities has long been a fact of life. At the same time awareness of ethnic identity and native rights is increasing nationwide, Hawai‘i is experiencing a push for sovereignty from some sectors of its population together with a continuation, from other sectors, of public displays of ethnic identity of many different peoples that have been part of daily life for many years. As the strands of this ethnic tapestry continue to weave their way into the fabric of this island state, dance is one cultural manifestation that has become an integral part of the visible pattern and a reflection—or rather, embodiment—of issues relating to identity.

“Dance is movement that has been organized so that it is rewarding to behold,” writes Anderson (1974, p. 9), and many of those who talk or write about dance have attempted to explain the way in which dance rewards the beholder by considering the processes by which dance communicates. Anderson goes on to say: “…dance communicates because it prompts responses within us. Dance is not simply a visual art, it is kinesthetic as well; it appeals to our inherent sense of motion” (p. 9). This distinction between visual and kinesthetic communication is one which many dancers find appealing. The kinesthetic communication is not analyzed further, but rather, it becomes an easy way of stating the special status of dance as an art form. That is, there is a special sense for which only dance can provide aesthetic satisfaction.

Since Ballet Frankfurt was reconstituted as the Forsythe Company in 2004, William Forsythe has increasingly explored formats of installation art practice. Works such as Human Writes (in collaboration with Kendall Thomas, 2005) and You made me a monster (2005) develop within an interactive and intermedial space and experiment with new ways to experience the production and perception of movement. “Performance installation” is the new term for this intertwined process of movement production and movement perception. The choreographic composition itself grows out of procedures of performative sensing by the dancers, which spreads to onlookers. This multiplex awareness of movement for which the dancer's body is the medium constitutes what I shall call the “media-body” as an essential moment of performance installation as choreographic event. Compared to earlier Forsythe installations—which he called “choreographic objects”—like White Bouncy Castle (1997), City of Abstracts (2000), or Scattered Crowd (2002), with their accessible spaces of movement (in White Bouncy Castle the spectator was a visitor moving about freely inside a white inflatable castle, and City of Abstracts featured choreographic projections of movement on large screens in open spaces) performance installations take place squarely in the theatrical context: in theater lobbies, exhibit halls, or accessible public performance spaces where dancers and the audience come together in a mutually shared yet operationally divided space that leads them into an interactive relationship.

The first part of the twenty-first century has been marked by particularly fraught social and racial tensions in the United States, brought to awareness internationally by the Black Lives Matter protest movement that started in 2014 and the vitriol espoused by the 2016 Republican presidential candidate. Randy Martin's work offers paradigms for interrogating the relationships between dance and its sociopolitical contexts that are highly relevant at this historical juncture. Drawing on some of Martin's key concepts, this article explores choreographic agency and creative strategies in dances that respond to issues of social injustice, mass incarceration, and racial disparities in the criminal justice system. Works by Joanna Haigood (Zaccho Dance Theatre), Amie S. Dowling, filmmaker Justin Forbord, and Kyle Abraham (Abraham.In.Motion) focus on narratives of oppression and disenfranchisement yet also inspire resistance and hope.

What various experiences does dance elicit? And why do people involve themselves in it? Aestheticians have often debated such questions from an audience standpoint, but much less frequently from that of the dancer. Yet many theories, representing mainstream psychology's various subdisciplines, as well as related traditions such as psychoanalysis and existentialism, do suggest, either openly or by implication, reasons for indulging in creative work. Of these, a particularly promising avenue to the dancer's psychology has come from an author who is seldom thought of as a “psychologist” at all. We speak of Jean-Paul Sartre, and his analysis of interpersonal interaction known as the gaze, or the look (le regard).

Sheets has used other Sartrian notions to describe the phenomenology of dance from an audience perspective, and the gaze figures prominently in Sartre's own analyses of such creative persons as Baudelaire, Jean Genet, and even himself, but to our knowledge it has not previously been applied to the dancer. So that will be our purpose here. However, an initial clarification, and disclaimer, seems appropriate. We shall describe the gaze more fully later, but essentially it portrays all human interactions, without exceptions, as struggles for power and dominance. Therefore such interactions allow only two reactions: the sadistic, that seeks such power over others, and the masochistic, that submits to others, voluntarily or otherwise. We will argue that dancers almost inevitably must choose the second reaction, which may help us understand some of their typical psychological characteristics. But we must emphasize that in Sartre's usage, and therefore ours, the term “masochism” is not pejorative, nor necessarily suggestive of pathology. Everyone, the psychologically afflicted and all others, must choose one of these two reactions.

Very little is known about the process of teaching dance as it naturally occurs in daily classes at university level (Lunt, 1974). In the actual context of research on teaching, the identification of significant variables necessitates the systematic description of teaching activities as they naturally occur in class. The present study is a systematic observation of two types of dance classes: choreography and technique. It seeks to characterize the behaviors of two experienced teachers observed in their regular classes at the university level. This characterization is made in terms of (a) the proportion of verbal and nonverbal behaviors (b) the directness or indirectness of the instructional approach, and (c) the dominant teaching patterns. The study is regarded as a first attempt to gather valid descriptive data to be used as basis for identifying significant issues in the teaching of dance and eventually in dance teacher education.

Observational studies conducted in movement classes reveal that few systems specifically designed to objectively describe movement classes (Anderson and Barrette, 1978; Costello and Laubach, 1978; Fishman and Tobey, 1978) have satisfied standards of research objectivity and reliability. They show, on the other hand, that numerous valid observational instruments have been developed by adapting systems designed for academic settings to make them compatible with the particularities of the movement setting.

This essay set out to explore the paradox of the Middle Eastern woman. The dichotomy of concealment vs. display is a stereotype in western culture and a function of sexual division in modern Arabian society. From the Saudi point of view, seclusion is necessary in the public domain whereas in the private domain display is appropriate. Private space is usually female space. It logically follows that belly dancing, a display mechanism, is done in female space by females for other females when the audience includes nonkin.

In the college community, “proper” belly dancing (as defined by the Saudi subgroup of the community Dhahran) can take place only under certain cultural conditions. When constraints break down, both the style and the message change. There are two alternative explanations for the aberrant performance. It may be considered (1) a simple example of deviance, i.e., a violation of the rules, or (2) an example of culture change in mental notions and hence “airport art.” No attempt has been made to assign priority to either explanation or to say that one is more correct. Deviance compounded and perpetuated is culture change. Also, it is necessary to remember that in a multicultural community the same behavior may be categorized differently by different subgroups. Little is to be gained, except, perhaps, a false simplification of the data, by assigning priority to either of the analytical or folk interpretations.

Head tossed back wearing a mile-wide grin, ecstatic arms stretched to the sky, jutting knees counterbalancing a substantial backside—the Jazz Age had no symbol more potent than the moving black body (Figure 1). Nearly always an illustration, and in many cases a caricature, these images depicted anonymous black movers rather than recognizable individuals. Yet, looking beyond this superficial representation, it was actually visibly white dance professionals who primarily marketed jazz steps to the American public as teachers and choreographers. A quick glance through the pages of the nascent Dance Magazine of the 1920s reveals numerous jass dance routines with names such as “High Yaller,” “Pickin’ Cotton,” “The Savannah Stomp,” and the “Hula-Charleston,” each represented by a specific white Broadway performer (Fig. 2). Standing just behind each dancer, however, is a dark dancing figure that remains nameless and faceless.

In America, around 1900, Edith Wharton wrote in her autobiography, “[O]nly two kinds of dancing were familiar…: waltzing in the ballroom and pirouetting on the stage”. Wharton missed her earliest opportunity to see Duncan, in 1899, when a Boston philanthropist and Newport hostess featured the young dancer at a garden party:

No doubt, the young Duncan's earliest performances must have looked peculiar. She neither waltzed nor pirouetted. She did not kick up her legs; she manipulated no skirts; she rarely portrayed any specific character. Legend even has it (though not quite accurately) that she was maverick enough at a very tender age to disavow her toe dancing lessons. In her more semantically polemical moments, Duncan rejected the label “dancer” altogether, in order to disassociate herself from the questionable antics of her colleagues. Instead, she set herself apart as an “artiste.” That is what she listed as her occupation on the birth certificate for her second child, Patrick Augustus Duncan, in 1910.

The dimming of the house lights focuses attention on the still darkened stage, although awareness of the others in the auditorium and its quieted bustle does not entirely fade. From the stage, the sound of several people taking five or six measured footsteps in unison, then stopping, momentarily precedes the lights (stage and house) fading quickly up to reveal nine performers. They stand, facing out, dressed in ordinary clothes (shirt and jacket, jumper and skirt, different colors), steady gaze directed at the audience. They stand in the gaps between a series of reflective slabs, each of the same regular dimensions, slightly wider and taller than the performers themselves. Behind the performers is a further line of panels cut from the same material. After a brief pause, the space darkens.