Edited book
Dancing the world smaller: staging globalism in mid-century America
Oxford studies in dance theory, Oxford University Press
2020
DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780190265311.001.0001
Appears in Recent Books by UI Authors
Abstract
"Dancing the World Smaller examines international dance performances in New York City in the 1940s as sites in which dance artists and audiences contested what it meant to practice globalism in mid-twentieth-century America. During and after the Second World War, modern dance and ballet thrived in New York City, a fertile cosmopolitan environment in which dance was celebrated as an emblem of American artistic and cultural dominance. In the ensuing Cold War years, American choreographers and companies were among those the U.S. government sent abroad to serve as ambassadors of American cultural values and to extend the nation's geo-political reach. Less-known is that international dance performance, or what was then-called 'ethnic' or 'ethnologic' dance, enjoyed strong support among audiences in the city and across the nation as well. Produced in non-traditional dance venues, such as the American Museum of Natural History, the Ethnologic Dance Center, and Carnegie Hall, these performances elevated dance as an intercultural bridge across human differences and dance artists as transcultural interlocutors. Dancing the World Smaller draws on extensive archival resources, as well as critical and historical studies of race and ethnicity in the U.S., to uncover a hidden history of globalism in American dance and to see artists such as La Meri, Ruth St. Denis, Asadata Dafora, Pearl Primus, José Limón, Ram Gopal, and Charles Weidman in new light. Debates over globalism in dance proxied larger cultural struggles over how to reconcile the nation's new role as a global superpower. In dance as in cultural politics, Americans labored over how to realize diversity while honoring difference and manage dueling impulses toward globalism, on the one hand, and isolationism, on the other"-- Provided by publisher.
Details
- Title: Subtitle
- Dancing the world smaller: staging globalism in mid-century America
- Creators
- Rebekah J Kowal - University of Iowa, Dance
- Resource Type
- Edited book
- Table of contents
- EPILOGUE; REASSESSMENT AND TRANSITION AT THE AMNH; AMERICAN GLOBALISM AT MID-CENTURY; THE 1948 INTERNATIONAL DANCE FESTIVAL; APPROPRIATION AND AUTHENTICITY; 4 Staging Diversity/Staging Containment: Paradoxes of Mid-Century Globalism; Cover; ARCHIVAL SOURCES; 3 Staging Diaspora: Asadata Dafora and Black Cultural Diplomacy; THE EMBODIED ARCHIVE; AN AMBASSADOR FOR INDIA; Dancing the World Smaller: Staging Globalism in Mid-Century America; CHARLES WEIDMAN: “AMERICA’S LEADING MALE DANCER”; BRIDGING THE GAP BETWEEN EAST AND WEST; A PANORAMA OF MANY LANDS AND MANY PEOPLE; STAGING GLOBALISM; MEDIATING DIFFERENCE(S); Dancing the World Smaller; A DANCE AMBASSADOR; SPEAKING FOR AFRICA; BUT NEW YORK WAS THIS VERY INSTANT, THIS NOW; CHAPTER SUMMARIES; Foreword; NOTES; INTERNATIONALIZING UNIVERSALISM: 1949–1952; “MUSEUMS IN A CHANGING WORLD”: DEMOCRATIZATION ATMID-CENTURY; CREATIVE ADAPTATIONS; MID-CENTURY FORMATIONS OF RACE AND ETHNICITY; “STEPPING UP” THE DANCE; POSTSCRIPT: DISCERNING DAFORA’S POLITICS; EVERY MAN HAS HIS TIME; TWO PRECEDENTS/TWO INTERPRETATIONS; EDIFICATION VERSUS ENTERTAINMENT; THE PUBLIC MALIGNING OF SERGE LIFAR; Dedication; THE PROBLEM OF AUTHORITY; Introduction; Contents; BIBLIOGRAPHY; PREJUDICE SPRINGS FROM IGNORANCE; THE PROBLEM OF CREDIBILITY; UNDERSTANDING THROUGH ART AND CULTURE; LA MERI AND ST. DENIS: ETHNIC DANCE/MODERN DANCE; CONCLUSION; 1 Staging Integration: Around the World with Dance and Song at the American Museum of Natural History, 1943–1952; TAK[ING] SOME LIBERTIES WITH TRADITION; AN AFRICAN DANCE FESTIVAL; INDEX; SHAR[ING] IN THE ABUNDANCE OF ONE ANOTHER’S CULTURE; PERFORMING INTERCULTURAL INTEGRATION; 2 Staging Ethnologic Dance: La Meri, Whiteness, and the Problems of Cross-EthnicEmbodiment; ACKNOWLEDGMENTS; BUILDING BRIDGES; JOINT APPEARANCES; WORLD TRAVELER OF DANCE; Copyright; THE LURE OF ARMCHAIR TRAVEL; ‘SWAN LAKE’ IN THE IDIOM OF THE INDIAN DANCE; LA MERI’S MODERNISM; CHARLES WEIDMAN: “DANCER FOR AMERICA”; PEDAGOGIES OF ETHNICITY
- Series
- Oxford studies in dance theory
- DOI
- 10.1093/oso/9780190265311.001.0001
- ISBN
- 9780190265311; 9780190265328
- eISBN
- 9780190265335; 0190265337; 0190265353; 9780190265359; 9780190265342; 0190265345
- Publisher
- Oxford University Press; New York
- Number of pages
- x, 282 pages
- Language
- English
- Date published
- 2020
- Academic Unit
- Dance
- Record Identifier
- 9983902996702771
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