(Re:) Claiming Ballet
- Author: Akinleye, Adesola
(Re:) Claiming Ballet
- Author: Akinleye, Adesola
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About
The collection of essays demonstrates that ballet is not a single White Western dance form but has been shaped by a range of other cultures. In so doing, the authors open a conversation and contribute to the discourse beyond the vantage point of mainstream to look at such issues as homosexuality and race. And to demonstrate that ballet’s denial of the first and exclusion of the second needs rethinking.
This is an important contribution to dance scholarship. The contributors include professional ballet dancers and teachers, choreographers, and dance scholars in the UK, Europe and the USA to give a three dimensional overview of the field of ballet beyond the traditional mainstream.
It sets out to acknowledge the alternative and parallel influences that have shaped the culture of ballet and demonstrates they are alive, kicking and have a rich history. Ballet is complex and encompasses individuals and communities, often invisiblized, but who have contributed to the diaspora of ballet in the twenty-first century. It will initiate conversations and contribute to discourses about the panorama of ballet beyond the narrow vantage point of the mainstream – White, patriarchal, Eurocentric, heterosexual constructs of gender, race and class.
This book is certain to be a much-valued resource within the field of ballet studies, as well as an important contribution to dance scholarship more broadly. It has an original focus and brings together issues more commonly addressed only in journals, where issues of race are frequently discussed.
The primary market will be academic. It will appeal to academics, researchers, scholars and students working and studying in dance, theatre and performance arts and cultural studies. It will also be of interest to dance professionals and practitioners.
Academics and students interested in the intersection of gender, race and dance may also find it interesting.
Contents
- Introduction: Regarding claiming ballet / reclaiming ballet
- Part One - Histories
- Chapter 1: Ballet, from property to Art - Adesola Akinleye
- Chapter 2: Should there be a Female ballet canon? Seven Radical Acts of Inclusion - Julia Gleich and Molly Faulkner
- Chapter 3: Arabesque en Noir: The Persistent Presence of Black Dancers in the American Ballet World - Joselli Audain Deans
- Chapter 4: Portrayals of Black people from the African Diaspora in western narrative ballets - Sandie Bourne
- Part Two - Knowledges
- Chapter 5: The traces of my ballet body - Mary Savva
- Chapter 6: Ballet Beyond Boundaries - Personal History. Brenda Dixson Gottschild
- Chapter 7:"Auftanzen statt Aufgeben" and The Anti Fascist Ballet School -Elizabeth Ward
- Chapter 8: Dancing Across Historically Racist Borders - Kehinde Ishangi
- Part Three - Resiliences
- Chapter 9: Dance Theatre of Harlem's radicalization of ballet in 1970s & 1980s - Theresa Ruth Howard
- Chapter 10: Personal testimony as social resilience - Theara J. Ward
- Chapter 11: "Can you feel it?": Pioneering Pedagogies that Challenge Ballet's Authoritarian Traditions - Jessica Zeller
- Chapter 12: The Ever After of Ballet - Selby Wynn Schwartz
- Chapter 13: Ballethnic Dance Company Builds Community: Urban Nutcracker leads the way - Nena Gilreath
- Part four - Consciousnesses
- Chapter 14: The Counterpoint Project - When Life Doesn't Imitate Art - Endalyn Taylor
- Chapter 15: Ballet's Binary Genders in a Rainbow-Spectrum World:
- A call for progressive pedagogies - Melonie B. Murray
- Chapter 16: Dancing through Black British ballet: Conversations with dancers - Adesola Akinleye and Tia-Monique Uzor
- Chapter 17: Ballet Aesthetics of Trauma, Development, and Functionality - Luc Vanier & Elizabeth Johnson
- About the contributors
- Index
