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Book Reviews

A black and white still of a scene from Daniel Stein’s Inclined to Agree, 1986. A muscular Stein lunges his bent left leg upstage, bending his torso to his left, wearing dress slacks , movement shoes and shirtless. He is stepping on two bunches of taught chords that run diagonally from his right ankle up to the rafters where more chords of varying lengths hang with weights attached . An empty door frame hangs from chords just upstage of Stein, it tilts towards him on a steep incline.
Photo: Daniel Stein
  • Book Reviews

B.F.F. (Before the Fringe Festival: A Moving History)

Walter Bilderback

A reflection on the 2023 memoir of Michael Pedretti of Movement Theatre International, pre-Philadelphia Fringe Festival.

n a soft, blurry black and white photo, dancer Mary Wigman performs in Idolatry (Götzendienst), part of the solo cycle from Ecstatic Dances as revised for her first solo tour in 1919. She wears opaque black tights, shoeless, and a thick fringed black dress that covers her entire torso. It’s difficult to tell, but the shadowy form looks to be throwing her head back. Photograph Courtesy of the Mary Wigman Archive, Academy of Arts, Berlin.
Photo: Hugo Erfurth
  • Book Reviews

The Rear-View Mirror: Hindsight from a Dance Scholar

Megan Mizanty

How does the lens switch as time passes? Susan Manning's essays are collected in Dancing on the Fault Lines of History.

Fanned out in a circle on a white surface are 12 booklets in a range of colors. Here and there are sections of text covered or obscured by other booklets. In the center of this circle is the title piece in a wash of brown darker at the bottom and lightening toward the top. The vague image of pine tree tops on its surface. It reads, Dance across the top and History(s) across the bottom with the subtitle Imagination as a Form of Study in the center. Underneath in smaller letters it reads edited by Thomas F. DeFrantz and Annie-B Parson.
Photo: Jack Lazar
  • Book Reviews

To Us/Because of Us

Emilee Lord

Dance is a Weed

Photo: James R. Perales
  • Book Reviews

Locating the Body in Postrevolutionary Mexico

Amy Schofield

Reynoso gestures toward decolonial and pluriversal possibilities of mestizaje.

  • Book Reviews

Book Review: A Magic Carpet Ride Through Ballet’s History of Orientalism

Catja Christensen

Banishing Orientalism is an intellectually stimulating, essential read.

Photo: Annie-B Parson
  • Book Reviews

Threading through life and choreography with Annie-B Parson

Kristen Shahverdian

What is in choreography and how does it exist around us?

Photo: Noel Bégin/Decidedly Jazz Danceworks
  • Book Reviews

Book Review: Getting Down to the Roots of Jazz Dance

Darcy Grabenstein

The Africanist aesthetic as essential to jazz dance theory, pedagogy, and choreography.

Photo: Stephan Koplowitz
  • Book Reviews, Interviews

Koplowitz’s On Site: A Book Review and Conversation

Jonathan Stein

“Listening to the site leads to acts of discovery-” Debra Loewen

Notation: Gabe Valentine
  • Book Reviews, Interviews

Embodying Marks: Dance Notation and Scores in Conversation

Emilee Lord

A conversation on motif description and scores with Emilee Lord and Brendan McCall.

Photo: Kara Nepomuceno
  • Book Reviews, thINKpieces

Loose ribbons

Kara Nepomuceno

A “more socially just future” reaches beyond drastic changes in ballet’s foundations.