Synopses & Reviews
Watching contemporary American dance is a unique and electrifying experience. Swept along with the dancers, one wonders how the unorthodox movement and unexpected tempo came about. To provide at least one answer to this question, Brenda Dixon Gottschild charts a "geography" that maps a unique, yet startlingly ubiquitous, region of influence in the history of American dance: the black dancing body. The author invites the reader on a journey of sorts and says, "The black dancing body (a fiction based on reality, a fact based upon illusion) has infiltrated and informed the shapes and changes of the American dancing body." Using interviews with black, white, and brown dance practitioners as well as performance analysis and personal recollections of her own life in the world of dance, Brenda Dixon Gottschild charts the endeavors, ordeals, and triumphs of "black" dance and dancers by exposing perceptions, images, and assumptions, past and present. In her journey to discover the contours and importance of the black dancing body, the author spoke to some of the greatest dancers and choreographers of our time - Fernando Bujones, Trisha Brown, Garth Fagan, Bill T. Jones, Ralph Lemon, Meredith Monk, Merián Soto, Doug Elkins, Jawole Willa Jo Zollar and a cadre of their esteemed colleagues. The "embattled territories" of the black dancing body are probed chapter by chapter: feet, buttocks, hair, skin color. The whole of the black dancing body is "re-membered" in the final chapters on soul and spirit.
The Black Dancing Body is a key to the ineffable rhythms and movement of dance in America.
Review
"To read Brenda Dixon Gottschilds new book is to march with her right across some of the most controversial terrain in dance.... this invigorating, argumentative and highly presonable book is a must."(Laura Shapiro, New York Magazine, Dec 22 2003 )
Review
"Anyone interested in dance and in African-American culture will find much to ponder here."(Publishers Weekly Annex, Jul 21 2003 )
Review
"Anyone interested in dance and in African-American culture will find much to ponder here."--
Publishers Weekly Annex"Dixon Gottschild's happiest readers will share her adventurousness, her inclination to listen deeply and learn, and her honesty." --Eva Yaa Asantewaa, Dance Magazine
"For anyone who's ever sat in an audience wondering why the folks onstage look so very unlike the folks outside, this invigorating, argumentative, and highly personable book is a must." --Laura Shapiro, New York Magazine
"With typical generosity, Brenda Dixon Gottschild convenes a discussion of some of the most crucial issues defining black-white relations in contemporary American society. Skillfully weaving her own voice among those of diverse artists, she raises questions about racial stereotypes, expectations, and prejudices as they are experienced by performers and viewers. Because it focuses on the dancing body, situating its cultivation of physicality as part of more general cultural elaborations of corporeality, The Black Dancing Body addresses the experience of race at a profound and vital level. Candidly pursuing the racialized experiences of feet, butts, hair, and skin, Dixon Gottschild gives readers an abundance of perspectives, both historical and cultural, on the physical. She invites readers into a dialogue, marked by honesty, courage, and soul, that is capable of moving our bodies and our spirits."--Susan Foster, author of Reading Dancing: Bodies and Subjects in Contemporary American Dance
"The Black Dancing Body is a fresh and surprising collage of a book. It walks around its subject, looking at it from new angles, carefully knocking down cliches and stereotypes, allowing dancers' voices to be heard. The quietest, truest voice is the author's own, as she meditates on her own body and the associations it calls up from her own dancing past and her life as an African American woman. This book must be read, to understand once again why our culture is such a painful and exhilarating mixture of black and white elements, and why, in the midst of celebrating the mixture, we must never forget the African-American contribution."--Elizabeth Kendall, author of American Daughter: Discovering My Mother
Synopsis
Using interviews with dance practitioners as well as performance analysis and personal recollections of her own life in the world of dance, Brenda Dixon Gottschild charts the endeavors, ordeals, and triumphs of "black" dance and dancers by exposing perceptions, images, and assumptions, both past and present.
Synopsis
Includes bibliographical references (p. [312]-316) and index.
Synopsis
What is the essence of "black" dance in America, and what is the black dancing body? To answer these question, Brenda Dixon Gottschild charts an unorthodox history by mapping the geography of the black dancing body and showing its central place in our culture. From feet to buttocks, hair, skin, face and beyond to soul and spirit, the author explores the endeavors, ordeals and triumphs of this body with some of the major dancers and choreographers of our time--Fernando Bujones, Brenda Bufalino, Trisha Brown, Garth Fagan, Rennie Harris, Bill T. Jones, Ralph Lemon, Susanne Linke, Meredith Monk and a cadre of their esteemed colleagues. Since race and color are usually taboo subjects in the dance world, what the author finds out is sure to cause controversy and turn heads. Written by one of the foremost American dance critics of our day,
The Black Dancing Body is a key to the ineffable rhythms and movement of dance in America.
About the Author
Brenda Dixon Gottschild, author of
Digging the Africanist Presence in American Performance: Dance and Other Contexts and
Waltzing in the Dark: African American Vaudeville and Race Politics in the Swing Era, is Professor Emerita of Dance Studies at Temple University. She is a senior consultant/writer for
Dance Magazine and performs with her husband, choreographer Hellmut Gottschild.
Table of Contents
List of Illustrations * Acknowledgements * Introduction *
Part I: Topography of Things to Come * Latitude I * Black White Dance Dancers * The Physical Terrain * Position/Disposition: Bujones/Zollar Interviews * Location: "Who Is There?" *
Part II: Mapping the Territories * Latitude II * Feet * Butt * Skin/Hair * Location: "To Be or Not . . ." *
Part III: The Continent * Latitude III * Soul/Spirit * Blood Memories, Spirit Dances * Position/Disposition: From Coon to Cool * Location: Horizon * Notes * Bibliography
List of Illustrations * Acknowledgements * Introduction * Part I: Topography of Things to Come * Latitude I * Black White Dance Dancers * The Physical Terrain * Position/Disposition: Bujones/Zollar Interviews * Location: "Who Is There?" * Part II: Mapping the Territories * Latitude II * Feet * Butt * Skin/Hair * Location: "To Be or Not . . ." * Part III: The Continent * Latitude III * Soul/Spirit * Blood Memories, Spirit Dances * Position/Disposition: From Coon to Cool * Location: Horizon * Notes * Bibliography
CITATION: "Anyone interested in dance and in African-American culture will find much to ponder here."(Publishers Weekly Annex, Jul 21 2003 )
CITATION: "To read Brenda Dixon Gottschild's new book is to march with her right across some of the most controversial terrain in dance.... this invigorating, argumentative and highly presonable book is a must."(Laura Shapiro, New York Magazine, Dec 22 2003 )