Dance Research Journal, December 2018

Volume 50, Number 3

Editor : Helen Thomas

Dance and politics and/or politics in/of dance ranging across time and space are again strongly present in this third issue of 2018. As such, the preceding interview with Steve Paxton by Royona Mitri fits neatly into this frame, where the politics of race are raised in various ways, in five of the six articles that follow. I have placed the articles in terms of the time frame of the dance work(s) they address. The first two articles focus on particular dance pieces by modern dancers, Mary Wigman and Hanya Holm (Kattner), and Katherine Dunham (Cadús) respectively; the third and forth articles take us to the USA in the 1960s to question first what was considered to be a minimalist dance piece by Yvonne Rainer and Steve Paxton (Morse); followed by an analysis of two postmodern dance works in the 1960s by Rainer and 1970s by Trisha Brown (Chaleff) that brings the notion of the supremacy of whiteness to the fore. The penultimate essay shifts the discussion to post-apartheid South Africa and the question of race within “ballet diplomacy” (Lauer), while the final article considers three particular works by British contemporary choreographers that can be seen to challenge the traditional power relations between “audience and performer” (Burt).

Helen Thomas 12/21/2018

Table of Contents

Title

Author

pp. 1-3

Editor’s Notes

Helen Thomas

pp. 6-18

Talking Politics of Contact Improvisation with Steve Paxton

Royona Mitra

pp. 20-37

From Totenmal to Trend: Wigman, Holm, and Theatricality in Modern Dance

Elizabeth Kattner

pp. 38-54

Katherine Dunham and Peronism: An Analysis of Dunham’s Tango (1954)

Eugenia Cadús

pp. 55-70

“Minimalist” Dance, Social Critique: Revisiting Yvonne Rainer and Steve Paxton’s 1963 Word Words

Meredith Morse

pp. 71-84

Activating Whiteness: Racializing the Ordinary in US American Postmodern Dance

Rebecca Chaleff

pp. 85-98

Dancing for the Nation: Ballet Diplomacy and Transnational Politics in Post-Apartheid South Africa

Meryl Lauer

pp. 99-119

Avoiding Capture

Ramsay Burt

pp. 121-123

Striking Beauty: A Philosophical Look at the Asian Martial Arts by Barry Allen. 2015. New York: Columbia University Press. 272 pp. $35.00 hardcover. ISBN: 9780231172721. (Book Review)

Brandon Shaw

pp. 123-126

Big Deal: Bob Fosse and Dance in the American Musical by Kevin Winkler. 2018. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 368 pp., 37 illustrations. $29.95 hardcover. ISBN: 9780199336791. (Book Review)

Ray Miller

pp. 126-128

Honest Bodies: Revolutionary Modernism in the Dances of Anna Sokolow by Hannah Kosstrin, 2017. New York: Oxford University Press. 255 pp. 40 halftones, 1 table. $35.00 paperback. ISBN: 9780199396924. (Book Review)

Mark Franko