African American Dance: An Illustrated History by
This pictorial history of African American dance traces its roots back to slavery and lists its characteristics. The photographs offer compelling glimpses into the world of slavery, minstrel show, the honky-tonk, the vaudeville stage, dance halls, nightclubs, movies, and more.
Myth Performance in the African Diasporas by
The authors contend that performance traditions across artistic disciplines reveal a shared journey among diasporic artists to reconnect with their African ancestors. Provides overview of how dramatists, choreographers, and performance artists have approached the task of interpreting African myth. The individual chapters reveal how specific artists, dramatists, and choreographers have interpreted African myth and what performative approaches and traditions they have used.
Ballroom, Boogie, Shimmy Sham, Shake: A Social and Popular Dance Reader by
Documents the rich and varied history of social dance and the multiple styles it has generated, while drawing on some of the most current forms of critical and theoretical inquiry. The essays cover different historical periods and styles; encompass regional influences from North and South America, Britain, Europe, and Africa; and emphasize a variety of methodological approaches, including ethnography, anthropology, gender studies, and critical race theory.
Steppin' on the Blues: the Visible Rhythms of African American Dance by
Former dancer Jacqui Malone throws a fresh spotlight on the cultural history of black dance, the Africanisms that have influenced it, and the significant role that vocal harmony groups, black college and university marching bands, and black sorority and fraternity stepping teams have played in the evolution of dance in African American life.
Ring Shout, Wheel About: The Racial Politics of Music and Dance in North American Slavery by
In this ambitious project, historian Katrina Thompson examines the conceptualization and staging of race through the performance, sometimes coerced, of black dance from the slave ship to the minstrel stage. Drawing on a rich variety of sources, Thompson explicates how black musical performance was used by white Europeans and Americans to justify enslavement, perpetuate the existing racial hierarchy, and mask the brutality of the domestic slave trade.
Dancing Many Drums: Excavations In African American Dance Book Jacket Series: by
Essays on African American dance history, theory, and practice. It reevaluates 'black' and 'African American' as both racial and dance categories. Abundantly illustrated, the volume includes images of a wide variety of dance forms and performers, from ring shouts, vaudeville, and social dances to professional dance companies and Hollywood movie dancing.
African-American Concert Dance: the Harlem Renaissance and Beyond by
Early influences on Black concert dance -- Hemsley Winfield -- Edna Guy, Randolph Sawyer, and Ollie Burgoyne -- Charles Williams -- Asadata Dafora -- Katherine Dunham -- Pearl Primus
Modern Dance, Negro Dance: Race in Motion by
Susan Manning's book integrates critical race theory into the traditional narrative of concert dance to expose the racial underpinnings of dance and offers meticulously researched theoretical examination of race, sexuality, gender, spectatorship, and reception in American theatre dance.
The Dance Claimed Me: A Biography of Pearl Primus by
Pearl Primus (1919-1994) blazed onto the dance scene in 1943 with stunning works that incorporated social and racial protest into their dance aesthetic. In The Dance Claimed Me, Peggy and Murray Schwartz, friends and colleagues of Primus, offer an intimate perspective on her life and explore her influences on American culture, dance, and education.
Dancing in Blackness: A Memoir by
Dancing in Blackness is a professional dancer's personal journey over four decades, across three continents and 23 countries, and through defining moments in the story of black dance in America. In this memoir, Halifu Osumare reflects on what blackness and dance have meant to her life and international career. Osumare's story begins in 1960s San Francisco amid the Black Arts Movement, black militancy, and hippie counterculture.
Alvin Ailey: A Life in Dance by
Alvin Ailey (1931–1989) was a choreographic giant in the modern dance world and a champion of African-American talent and culture. His interracial Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater provided opportunities to black dancers and choreographers when no one else would. His acclaimed “Revelations” remains one of the most performed modern dance pieces in the twentieth century. But he led a tortured life, filled with insecurity and self-loathing.
Night's Dancer: The Life of Janet Collins by
Dancer Janet Collins, born in New Orleans in 1917 and raised in Los Angeles, soared high over the color line as the first African-American prima ballerina at the Metropolitan Opera. Night's Dancer chronicles the life of this extraordinary and elusive woman, who became a unique concert dance soloist as well as a black trailblazer in the white world of classical ballet. During her career, Collins endured an era in which racial bias prevailed, and subsequently prevented her from appearing in the South.
Judith Jamison, Aspects of a Dancer by
Examines the life of the dancer, Judith Jamison, and focuses on her performances as a member of the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater
Katherine Dunham: a Biography by 
Josephine Baker in Art and Life by
Josephine Baker (1906-1975) was a dancer, singer, actress, author, politician, militant, and philanthropist, whose images and cultural legacy have survived. Neither an exercise in postmodern deconstruction nor simple biography, Josephine Baker in Art and Life presents a critical cultural study of the life and art of the Franco-American performer whose appearances as the savage dancer Fatou shocked the world.
Last Night on Earth by
In a book that is part memoir, part meditation, and part performance, 'today's most daring choreographer' (Newsweek) charts his dance's origins and development in the context of his remarkable life. And he brings to his account all of the honesty, dignity, and moral conviction that are the hallmarks of his work
Dance Composition by
Dance composition is an important part of dance education because it is the discipline that translates ideas into dances. This book explores essential guidelines and thus contributes to a greater understanding of dance composition as a discipline.
Geography: Art, Race, Exile by
Geography, a rich tapestry of journal entries, choreographic scores, drawings, and photographs, leads us through the creation of an evening-long dance, "Geography," a collaboration about being American, African, brown, black, blue black, male, and artist.
Story/Time: the Life of an Idea by
African American dancer, choreographer, and director Bill T. Jones reflects on his art and life as he describes the genesis of Story/Time, a recent dance work produced by his company and inspired by the modernist composer and performer John Cage. Includes personal stories, and color photographs of the work's original stage production.
Urban Bush Women: Twenty Years of African American Dance Theater, Community Engagement, and Working It Out by
Provocative, moving, powerful, explicit, strong, unapologetic. These are a few words that have been used to describe the groundbreaking Brooklyn-based dance troupe Urban Bush Women. Their unique aesthetic borrows from classical and contemporary dance techniques and theater characterization exercises, incorporates breath and vocalization, and employs space and movement to instill their performances with emotion and purpose.
The Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater by
Depicts twelve dances from the Ailey company repertory, capturing in pictures the company's vitality and the importance of its work in expressing through dance the essence of American black culture.
