Famous for its ‘Modern Dance on Baby Oil’, the Taipei Dance Circle (1984–2019) changed how we think about movements. This book captures a rare behind-the-scenes look in dance ethnography at the group's final experimental years (2014-2017) after losing their founder, Shaw-Lu Liu.

Subjects: Performance Studies Cultural Studies (General) Anthropology (General)

In rural Punu communities, song and dance are shaped through ritual encounters between humans and spirit beings. This ethnography explores how performance creates connection and participation in the water spirit world, offering a matrifocal perspective that rethinks affect and embodied life.

Subjects: Performance Studies Anthropology (General)

An illuminating ethnographic study of Balinese dance traditions, Children Dancing in Bali examines how children navigate the nexus of power, practice, and performance through the medium of Balinese culture, in order to negotiate fluctuations in their identity and society.

Subjects: Performance Studies Anthropology (General) Heritage Studies

An illuminating investigation into the ‘professionalization’ of classical Indian dance forms in Britain, Towards a British Natyam critically analyzes the cultural, social, and political frameworks that make a ‘profession’ within the arts possible, highlighting the transformational power of classical Indian dance within society to decenter white supremacy and recenter pluriversality.

Subjects: Performance Studies Heritage Studies Sociology

Reversible America negotiates the spectacle of Rodeo, cattle ranching, and bullfighting as it has manifested in California through cross border convergences of Iberian bullfighting, Native American hunting methods, and ethics in human and non-human relationships.

Subjects: Performance Studies History: 18th/19th Century Anthropology (General)

Based in extensive ethnographic research, Melanesian Mainstream provides a detailed representation of the roots, context, evolution, and impact of stringband music in the Melanesian Republic of Vanuatu.

Subjects: Cultural Studies (General) Anthropology (General) Performance Studies

Through a post-1968 perspective on Europe, Performing Memory newly approaches the performative dimensions of memory within the historical cluster of visuality, corporeality and mobility. In a series of focused case studies from emerging and leading scholars, this volume enlarges the focus of memory across the histories of dance, theatre, the media, cinema, and other forms of artistic and political performances.

Subjects: History: 20th Century to Present Performance Studies Mobility Studies

The increasing number of historical reenactments, along with their growing popularity, are catching both attention in popular culture and in multiple academic disciplines. Historical Reenactment takes a transdisciplinary and global approach to define and theorize reenactments as an embedded cultural and material phenomenon.

Subjects: Memory Studies Performance Studies

Through a diverse range of case studies from Oceania, Asia, and Europe, and interdisciplinary approaches, Perspectives in Motion explores visual approaches to performance in global cultural contexts, offering new critical and ethnographic frameworks for understanding and experiencing practices of music and dance across the globe.

Subjects: Performance Studies Cultural Studies (General)

What kinds of critical insights are made possible only or especially via creative strategies? This volume examines how creative modes of writing might facilitate or inform new ways to critically engage with Shakespeare.

Subjects: Literary Studies Performance Studies Cultural Studies (General)

Memory and commemoration play a vital role not only in the work of Shakespeare, but also in the process that has made him a world author. As the contributors of this collection demonstrate, the phenomenon of commemoration has no single approach, as it occurs on many levels, has a long history, and is highly unpredictable in its manifestations.

Subjects: Cultural Studies (General) Performance Studies Literary Studies Memory Studies

Contrary to persistent depictions of an ethnically and economically homogeneous Japan, “ghetto” or “gangsta” J-hop music gives voice to the suffering, deprivation, and social exclusion experienced by many modern Japanese. 24 Bars to Kill gives a fascinating ethnographic account of this music as well as the subculture around it.

Subjects: Performance Studies Anthropology (General) Cultural Studies (General)

Through extensive archival research and conversations with renowned publicists, musicians and insiders, author Michael Rauhut examines more than fifty texts to give an in-depth overview of the historical development of blues music in East and West Germany during the postwar period.

Subjects: History: 20th Century to Present Performance Studies Cultural Studies (General)

Why is Germany imagined as the ‘land of music’? How has that image been made over time? Exploring examples that range from Bruckner to the Beatles, from classical song to sex-club dance music, a team of historians and musicologists explores these perennial questions in innovative and exciting ways.

Subjects: Media Studies History (General) Cultural Studies (General) Performance Studies

Situated at the crossroads of performance practice, museology, and cultural studies, live arts curation has grown in recent years to become a vibrant interdisciplinary project. Curating Live Arts brings together innovative essays from international theorist-practitioners to pose vital questions, propose future visions, and survey the landscape of this rapidly evolving discipline.

Subjects: Performance Studies Museum Studies Cultural Studies (General)

Lullabies and Battle Cries examines the relationship between music, emotion, memory, and identity in Northern Irish republican parading bands, exploring how rebel parade music provides a foundational idiom of national and republican expression, acting as a critical medium for shaping new political identities.

Subjects: Performance Studies Anthropology (General)

Staging Citizenship explores a wide range of Roma performances and representations—from live music and cultural performances to Gypsy soaps and reality TV shows, demonstrating how disenfranchised urban Roma claim cultural citizenship and belonging in music, dance, activism and everyday encounters.

Subjects: Anthropology (General) Performance Studies

The songs of the beloved Irish poet Máire Bhuí Ní Laeire (Yellow Mary O’Leary) explore themes of colonial subjection, oppression and injustice, representing an integral contribution to the development of anti-colonial thought in Ireland. Singing Ideas explores the significance of her work, and the immense power of her chosen medium.

Subjects: Performance Studies History: 18th/19th Century Anthropology (General) Literary Studies

Considering the concept of power in capoeira, an Afro-Brazilian ritual art form, Varela describes ethnographically the importance that capoeira leaders (mestres) have in the social configuration of a style called Angola in Bahia, Brazil.

Subjects: Anthropology (General) Performance Studies

Across varied domains, music and dance both emerge from and give rise to intimate collaboration. This theoretically rich collection takes an ethnographic approach to understanding the collaborative dimension of sound and movement in everyday life, drawing on genres and practices in contexts as diverse as Japanese shakuhachi playing, Peruvian huayno, and the Greek goth scene.

Subjects: Performance Studies Anthropology (General)

Odissi dance has transformed over the centuries from an Indian temple ritual to a transnational genre performed—and consumed—throughout the world. Building on ethnographic research in multiple locations, this book reveals the complexity of odissi as it is practiced today, at the intersection of identity, nationalism, tradition, and neoliberal economics.

Subjects: Performance Studies Anthropology (General)

This collection documents war magic and warrior religion as performed in diverse cultures and historical time periods. By foregrounding embodiment, practice, and performance, the anthropological approaches to magic, sorcery, shamanism, and religion that the authors apply go beyond what magic ‘represents’ to consider what magic does.

Subjects: Anthropology (General) Anthropology of Religion Performance Studies

In this wide-ranging volume’s twelve compact essays, scholars from across the disciplines trace Gesamtkunstwerk—the ideal of the “total work of art”—from its foundations in the early nineteenth century to its manifold articulations and reimaginings in the twentieth century and beyond.

Subjects: History (General) Cultural Studies (General) Performance Studies

This original and cross-disciplinary book studies the experiences of Yosemite park visitors in order to understand human connection with and within natural landscapes. It grounds a sophisticated semiotic analysis in the lived experiences of parkgoers, assembling a collective account that will be of interest in disciplines ranging from performance studies to cultural geography.

Subjects: Performance Studies Anthropology (General) Environmental Studies (General)

Every year, young adults from Western nations travel to Brazil to train in the dance/martial art of capoeira. This ethnography uses the concept of apprenticeship pilgrimage—studying with a local master at a historical point of origin—to explore how non-Brazilians learn their art and claim legitimacy within capoeira communities.

Subjects: Performance Studies Anthropology (General)

Bringing together scholars from the fields of musicology and international history, this book investigates the significance of music to foreign relations, and how it affected the interaction of nations since the late 19th century.

Subjects: History: 20th Century to Present Media Studies Performance Studies

Subjects: Performance Studies Anthropology (General)

Subjects: Film and Television Studies Performance Studies

A historically informed ethnography of creativity, agency, and the fashioning of selves through the different life stages in urban Senegal, this book explores the significance of multiple engagement with dance in a context of economic uncertainty and rising concerns over morality in the public space.

Subjects: Performance Studies Anthropology (General)

Subjects: Performance Studies Travel and Tourism Anthropology (General)

Subjects: Performance Studies Anthropology (General)

Subjects: Performance Studies Travel and Tourism Anthropology (General)

Subjects: History: 18th/19th Century Performance Studies Cultural Studies (General) Literary Studies

Subjects: Cultural Studies (General) Performance Studies History: 20th Century to Present

Subjects: Medical Anthropology Performance Studies

Subjects: Performance Studies Anthropology (General)

Subjects: Anthropology of Religion Anthropology (General) Performance Studies

Subjects: Performance Studies Anthropology (General) Cultural Studies (General)

Subjects: Performance Studies Anthropology (General) Mobility Studies

Subjects: Anthropology (General) Performance Studies Colonial History

Subjects: Performance Studies Anthropology (General) Cultural Studies (General)

Subjects: Performance Studies Anthropology (General)

Subjects: History: 18th/19th Century Performance Studies Literary Studies

Subjects: Performance Studies History: World War II Gender Studies and Sexuality

Subjects: Performance Studies History: World War II Literary Studies

Subjects: Performance Studies Anthropology (General)

Subjects: Performance Studies History: World War II Literary Studies

Subjects: Performance Studies Anthropology (General) Anthropology of Religion