New German Dance Studies offers fresh histories and theoretical inquiries that resonate across fields of the humanities. Sixteen essays range from eighteenth-century theater dance to popular contemporary dances in global circulation. In an exquisite trans-Atlantic dialogue that demonstrates the complexity and multilayered history of German dance, American and European scholars and artists elaborate on definitive performers and choreography, focusing on three major thematic areas: Weimar culture and its afterlife, the German Democratic Republic, and recent conceptual trends in theater dance.

 

Contributors are Maaike Bleeker, Franz Anton Cramer, Kate Elswit, Susanne Franco, Susan Funkenstein, Jens Richard Giersdorf, Yvonne Hardt, Sabine Huschka, Claudia Jeschke, Marion Kant, Gabriele Klein, Karen Mozingo, Tresa Randall, Gerald Siegmund, and Christina Thurner.

Susan Manning is a professor of English, theatre, and performance studies at Northwestern University and the author of Ecstasy and the Demon: The Dances of Mary Wigman.Lucia Ruprecht teaches German literature and culture at Cambridge University and is the author of Dances of the Self in Heinrich von Kleist, E.T.A. Hoffmann, and Heinrich Heine.

“Regardless of the areas within which we teach or practice, this book has something valuable to contribute. . . . A remarkable body of work in German dance over the past three centuries.”--Journal of Dance Education

"Rich in illuminating historical detail. . . . pulsating with freshness of perception, and very well documented with abundant and quite valuable endnotes." --H-German