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This book is a collection of essays that capture the artistic voices at play during a staging process. Situating familiar practices such as reimagining, reenactment and recreation alongside the related and often intersecting processes of transmission, translation and transformation, it features deep insights into selected dances from directors, performers, and close associates of choreographers. The breadth of practice on offer illustrates the capacity of dance as a medium to adapt successfully to diverse approaches and, further, that there is a growing appetite amongst audiences for seeing dances from the near and far past. This study spans a century, from Rudolf Laban's Dancing Drumstick (1913) to Robert Cohan's Sigh (2015), and examines works by Mary Wigman, Madge Atkinson (Natural Movement), Doris Humphrey, Martha Graham, Yvonne Rainer and Rosemary Butcher, an eclectic mix that crosses time and borders.
List of contents
1. Introductions; Lesley Main.- 2. Transmission: from archive to production. Re-imagining Laban - contemporizing the past, envisioning the future; Alison Curtis-Jones.- 3. Impure transmissions; traditions of modern dance across historical and geographical boundaries; Fabián Barba.- 4. Performing history: Wind Tossed (1936), Natural Movement and the hyper-historian; Maria Salgado Llopis.- 5. The Transmission-Translation--Transformation of Doris Humphrey's Two Ecstatic Themes (1931); Lesley Main.- 6. Transmission as Process and Power in Graham's Chronicle (1936); Kim Jones.- 7. Transmitting Trio A (1966): The Relations and Sociality of an Unspectacular Dance; Sara Wookey.- 8. Silent Transformations in Choreography-Making over Time: Rosemary Butcher's Practice of 'Looking Back and Ahead'; Stefanie Sachsenmaier.- 9. The Living Cultural Heritage of Robert Cohan; Paul R W Jackson.
About the author
Lesley Main is Head of the Department of Performing Arts at Middlesex University, UK, and Director of the Doris Humphrey Foundation UK. She stages Humphrey’s dances for companies in Europe and the USA, and is the author of Directing the Dance Legacy of Doris Humphrey: the Creative Impulse of Reconstruction (2012).
Summary
This book is a collection of essays that capture the artistic voices at play during a staging process. Situating familiar practices such as reimagining, reenactment and recreation alongside the related and often intersecting processes of transmission, translation and transformation, it features deep insights into selected dances from directors, performers, and close associates of choreographers. The breadth of practice on offer illustrates the capacity of dance as a medium to adapt successfully to diverse approaches and, further, that there is a growing appetite amongst audiences for seeing dances from the near and far past. This study spans a century, from Rudolf Laban’s Dancing Drumstick (1913) to Robert Cohan’s Sigh (2015), and examines works by Mary Wigman, Madge Atkinson (Natural Movement), Doris Humphrey, Martha Graham, Yvonne Rainer and Rosemary Butcher, an eclectic mix that crosses time and borders.
Additional text
“This edited collection will resonate with both practitioners and academics. The examples it gathers together uncover the difficulties, joys, and complexities of communicating earlier dances to current performers and audiences—raising issues, triggering debate, and providing marvelous resources for further study. It is an innovative and useful collection.” (Geraldine Morris, Dance Research Journal, Vol. 52 (1), April, 2020)
“Transmissions is, therefore, recommended reading for all with a stake in our moving past, including dance practitioners, historians, critics, and philosophers of art.” (Renee M. Conroy, Dance Research, Vol. 37 (2), November, 2019)
Report
"This edited collection will resonate with both practitioners and academics. The examples it gathers together uncover the difficulties, joys, and complexities of communicating earlier dances to current performers and audiences-raising issues, triggering debate, and providing marvelous resources for further study. It is an innovative and useful collection." (Geraldine Morris, Dance Research Journal, Vol. 52 (1), April, 2020)
"Transmissions is, therefore, recommended reading for all with a stake in our moving past, including dance practitioners, historians, critics, and philosophers of art." (Renee M. Conroy, Dance Research, Vol. 37 (2), November, 2019)
