University of Pittsburgh Press, 2004 Cloth: 978-0-8229-4239-9 | Paper: 978-0-8229-6300-4 | eISBN: 978-0-8229-7088-0 Library of Congress Classification GV1588.3.F724 2004 Dewey Decimal Classification 792.801
ABOUT THIS BOOK | REVIEWS | TOC | REQUEST ACCESSIBLE FILE
ABOUT THIS BOOK
Combining critical analysis with personal history and poetry, Dancing Identity presents a series of interconnected essays composed over a period of fifteen years. Taken as a whole, these meditative reflections on memory and on the ways we perceive and construct our lives represent Sondra Fraleigh's journey toward self-definition as informed by art, ritual, feminism, phenomenology, poetry, autobiography, and-always-dance.
Fraleigh's brilliantly inventive fusions of philosophy and movement clarify often complex philosophical issues and apply them to dance history and aesthetics. She illustrates her discussions with photographs, dance descriptions, and stories from her own past in order to bridge dance with everyday movement. Seeking to recombine the fractured and bifurcated conceptions of the body and of the senses that dominate much Western discourse, she reveals how metaphysical concepts are embodied and presented in dance, both on stage and in therapeutic settings.
Examining the role of movement in personal and political experiences, Fraleigh reflects on her major influences, including Moshe Feldenkrais, Kazuo Ohno, and Twyla Tharp. She draws on such varied sources as philosophers Simone de Beauvoir and Martin Heidegger, the German expressionist dancer Mary Wigman, Japanese Butoh founder Tatsumi Hijikata, Hitler, the Bomb, Miss America, Balanchine, and the goddess figure of ancient cultures. Dancing Identity offers new insights into modern life and its reconfigurations in postmodern dance.
REVIEWS
“Part theory, part memoir, part dance analysis, Dancing Identity shakes loose many traditionally held assumptions about the dancing body. In this highly original series of essays, ranging from ballet to Butoh, Sondra Fraleigh offers illuminating insights in her quest to unravel the mind/body split.”
—Julie Malnig, The Gallatin School, New York University
"A kaleidoscope of what it is to be human. Fraleigh's project is not just to articulate the human potential of an existential metaphysics, but dancing as the mode of existential being par excellence."
—Nigel Stewart, Lancaster University
"An arresting and relentless examination of dance, gender, and identity. Fraleigh's autobiographical elements are remembered with wonder against overwhelming odds. I felt empowered as a woman through her words."
—Tamah Nakamura, Kyushu University
TABLE OF CONTENTS
<Fraleigh, Contents>
<p. vii, no folio, p. viii, cont'd or blank>
Contents
Preface 000
Introduction: Beauty's Ways 000
Writing Self 000
Descending Pathways 000
Unfinished Work 000
On Special Metaphysics 000
On Dualism 000
Postmodern Hope and Staging Metaphysics 000
Part I: Beginning
1. Embodying Metaphysics 000
Mastering the Body 000
Historical Backdrop 000
Embodying Feminism 000
Body as Spirit in Japan 000
2. First Sounds 000
Melodramatic Utterance 000
Hysteria: Cooling the Witch 000
Niwa: Goddess or Cyborg 000
3. Thickening Ambiguity 000
The Dance Is in Process 000
Dancing Beings 000
Bringing Body to Mind 000
Wholes and Holiness 000
I Will Walk 000
Our First Horizon 000
Somatics and Wholeness 000
Coherent Speech 000
Moving Off-Center 000
Part II: Becoming
4. Anti-Essentialist Trio 000
Setting the Stage 000
Trio 000
Reflections of Being and Sexuality
Critique of the Trio 000
Reassembling the Trio 000
Breaking the Mold in Ballet 000
Shakable Ballet 000
Gender-Bending Solutions 000
Phusis: Performing Nature 000
5. A Dance of Time Beings 000
Ecstasis: Mastery or Matching 000
Touch and Kinesthesia 000
Soma 000
Matching Space 000
We Limp a Little 000
6. Letting the Difference Happen 000
Inmost Sway 000
The Dance of Equals 000
Lack of Art 000
Marking Time 000
Molecules of Motion 000
Part III: Descen-dance
7. Messy Beauty and Butoh Invalids 000
Descen-dance, Obedience, and Resistance 000
Organic Faults, Somatic Solutions 000
Somatic Kinesiology 000
Nuclear Fallout and Butoh Invalids 000
Descendant Beauty 000
The Girl Who Lives with Cockroaches 000
8. Existential Haircut 000
Agency, Sexuality, and Natural Powers 000
Performing Freedom: Synergetic Humanism 000
Shadows and Broken Symmetries 000
Yin-Yang Reciprocity 000
Shared Pleasures 000
Dances to Do 000
9. The Morality of Joy 000
In the Beginning Is My Body 000
Falling Bravely 000
Ancestors, Wait! 000
Epilogue: The Fugitive in Her 000
Notes 000
Index 000
REQUEST ACCESSIBLE FILE
If you are a student who cannot use this book in printed form, BiblioVault may be able to supply you
with an electronic file for alternative access.
Please have the accessibility coordinator at your school fill out this form.
University of Pittsburgh Press, 2004 Cloth: 978-0-8229-4239-9 Paper: 978-0-8229-6300-4 eISBN: 978-0-8229-7088-0
Combining critical analysis with personal history and poetry, Dancing Identity presents a series of interconnected essays composed over a period of fifteen years. Taken as a whole, these meditative reflections on memory and on the ways we perceive and construct our lives represent Sondra Fraleigh's journey toward self-definition as informed by art, ritual, feminism, phenomenology, poetry, autobiography, and-always-dance.
Fraleigh's brilliantly inventive fusions of philosophy and movement clarify often complex philosophical issues and apply them to dance history and aesthetics. She illustrates her discussions with photographs, dance descriptions, and stories from her own past in order to bridge dance with everyday movement. Seeking to recombine the fractured and bifurcated conceptions of the body and of the senses that dominate much Western discourse, she reveals how metaphysical concepts are embodied and presented in dance, both on stage and in therapeutic settings.
Examining the role of movement in personal and political experiences, Fraleigh reflects on her major influences, including Moshe Feldenkrais, Kazuo Ohno, and Twyla Tharp. She draws on such varied sources as philosophers Simone de Beauvoir and Martin Heidegger, the German expressionist dancer Mary Wigman, Japanese Butoh founder Tatsumi Hijikata, Hitler, the Bomb, Miss America, Balanchine, and the goddess figure of ancient cultures. Dancing Identity offers new insights into modern life and its reconfigurations in postmodern dance.
REVIEWS
“Part theory, part memoir, part dance analysis, Dancing Identity shakes loose many traditionally held assumptions about the dancing body. In this highly original series of essays, ranging from ballet to Butoh, Sondra Fraleigh offers illuminating insights in her quest to unravel the mind/body split.”
—Julie Malnig, The Gallatin School, New York University
"A kaleidoscope of what it is to be human. Fraleigh's project is not just to articulate the human potential of an existential metaphysics, but dancing as the mode of existential being par excellence."
—Nigel Stewart, Lancaster University
"An arresting and relentless examination of dance, gender, and identity. Fraleigh's autobiographical elements are remembered with wonder against overwhelming odds. I felt empowered as a woman through her words."
—Tamah Nakamura, Kyushu University
TABLE OF CONTENTS
<Fraleigh, Contents>
<p. vii, no folio, p. viii, cont'd or blank>
Contents
Preface 000
Introduction: Beauty's Ways 000
Writing Self 000
Descending Pathways 000
Unfinished Work 000
On Special Metaphysics 000
On Dualism 000
Postmodern Hope and Staging Metaphysics 000
Part I: Beginning
1. Embodying Metaphysics 000
Mastering the Body 000
Historical Backdrop 000
Embodying Feminism 000
Body as Spirit in Japan 000
2. First Sounds 000
Melodramatic Utterance 000
Hysteria: Cooling the Witch 000
Niwa: Goddess or Cyborg 000
3. Thickening Ambiguity 000
The Dance Is in Process 000
Dancing Beings 000
Bringing Body to Mind 000
Wholes and Holiness 000
I Will Walk 000
Our First Horizon 000
Somatics and Wholeness 000
Coherent Speech 000
Moving Off-Center 000
Part II: Becoming
4. Anti-Essentialist Trio 000
Setting the Stage 000
Trio 000
Reflections of Being and Sexuality
Critique of the Trio 000
Reassembling the Trio 000
Breaking the Mold in Ballet 000
Shakable Ballet 000
Gender-Bending Solutions 000
Phusis: Performing Nature 000
5. A Dance of Time Beings 000
Ecstasis: Mastery or Matching 000
Touch and Kinesthesia 000
Soma 000
Matching Space 000
We Limp a Little 000
6. Letting the Difference Happen 000
Inmost Sway 000
The Dance of Equals 000
Lack of Art 000
Marking Time 000
Molecules of Motion 000
Part III: Descen-dance
7. Messy Beauty and Butoh Invalids 000
Descen-dance, Obedience, and Resistance 000
Organic Faults, Somatic Solutions 000
Somatic Kinesiology 000
Nuclear Fallout and Butoh Invalids 000
Descendant Beauty 000
The Girl Who Lives with Cockroaches 000
8. Existential Haircut 000
Agency, Sexuality, and Natural Powers 000
Performing Freedom: Synergetic Humanism 000
Shadows and Broken Symmetries 000
Yin-Yang Reciprocity 000
Shared Pleasures 000
Dances to Do 000
9. The Morality of Joy 000
In the Beginning Is My Body 000
Falling Bravely 000
Ancestors, Wait! 000
Epilogue: The Fugitive in Her 000
Notes 000
Index 000
REQUEST ACCESSIBLE FILE
If you are a student who cannot use this book in printed form, BiblioVault may be able to supply you
with an electronic file for alternative access.
Please have the accessibility coordinator at your school fill out this form.
It can take 2-3 weeks for requests to be filled.
ABOUT THIS BOOK | REVIEWS | TOC | REQUEST ACCESSIBLE FILE