| A Game for Dancers: Performing Modernism in the Postwar Years, 1945-1960 Contributor(s): Morris, Gay (Author) |
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ISBN: 0819568058 ISBN-13: 9780819568052 Publisher: Wesleyan University Press OUR PRICE: $22.46 Product Type: Paperback - Other Formats Published: May 2006 Annotation: A Game for Dancers examines the difficulties American modern dancers faced as the Cold War took hold and the genre became institutionalized after its pioneering phase. It draws on the sociology of Pierre Bourdieu to explore the interconnections between art and politics while paying close attention to modern dance's ambivalent relationship to the market. At the heart of the book is an inquiry into modernism itself, and how dancers struggled with modernist ideas of abstraction and autonomy while rarely questioning them. Crucial, too, is the issue of embodiment, which appeared to answer modernist skepticism of representation and aid modern dance's elusive pursuit of independence. Subjects include modernist dance theory, the emergence of new constituencies including African-American choreographers, and the work of Merce Cunningham and Alwin Nikolais, whose objectivism was declared a new modern dance vanguard in the 1950s. |
| Additional Information |
| BISAC Categories: - Art | Performance - Performing Arts | Dance - Classical & Ballet |
| Dewey: 792.809 |
| LCCN: 2006000181 |
| Physical Information: 0.8" H x 6.1" W x 8.94" (0.95 lbs) 288 pages |
| Descriptions, Reviews, Etc. |
| Publisher Description: The first in-depth study of the modern dance world of the 1940s and 1950s A Game for Dancers examines the difficulties American modern dancers faced as the Cold War took hold and the genre became institutionalized after its pioneering phase. It draws on the sociology of Pierre Bourdieu to explore the interconnections between art and politics while paying close attention to modern dance's ambivalent relationship to the market. At the heart of the book is an inquiry into modernism itself, and how dancers struggled with modernist ideas of abstraction and autonomy while rarely questioning them. Crucial, too, is the issue of embodiment, which appeared to answer modernist skepticism of representation and aid modern dance's elusive pursuit of independence. Subjects include modernist dance theory, the emergence of new constituencies including African-American choreographers, and the work of Merce Cunningham and Alwin Nikolais, whose objectivism was declared a new modern dance vanguard in the 1950s. |