Jazz Practice In The Modern Era
Jazz Practice in the Modern Era: Methodology for the Aspiring Artist is an essential and visionary guide for the next generation of musicians, those who seek to break free from traditional confines and explore jazz as both an art form and a cultural language. In this groundbreaking manual, acclaimed composer, performer, and educator Antonio Underwood presents a transformative methodology that speaks directly to classically trained musicians eager to navigate the world of jazz improvisation, interpretation, and innovation.More than a music theory book, this work is a manual of creative process, a rare blend of philosophical insight, cultural awareness, and practical instruction that draws on Underwood's unique experiences across genres, continents, and generations. With a background that spans Grammy Award-winning performances and academic rigor from institutions like Yale, Underwood guides readers through a deeper understanding of jazz as a living, evolving tradition.Whether you're studying at a conservatory, exploring music independently, or teaching the next wave of artists, this book offers a multidimensional approach that will expand your musical and creative horizons.Inside this book, you'll discover: How to transition from classical structure to jazz spontaneity with confidenceKey improvisational strategies rooted in tradition and modern applicationTechniques for integrating jazz concepts into academic and real-world performance settingsThe cultural and historical roots of jazz and its role in shaping modern musicInspirational insights that encourage self-expression, intuition, and authenticityWays to connect technical training to storytelling, collaboration, and personal voiceFrom bebop to hip-hop, from spirituals to swing, Jazz Practice in the Modern Era challenges aspiring artists to embrace a more expansive view of music, one that values interpretation over imitation, dialogue over direction, and soul over scale.This book is perfect for: Young musicians raised in classical music systemsEducators seeking to bridge classical and contemporary teaching methodsJazz students looking for a structured yet flexible practice frameworkMulti-genre artists pursuing a deeper understanding of improvisationAnyone passionate about the creative intersection of music, identity, and cultureWith clarity, passion, and purpose, Antonio Underwood invites musicians of all levels and backgrounds to step beyond the notes and into the freedom of expression that jazz offers. This isn't just a method book, it's a modern-day manifesto for the artist within.
Nevertheless
A legendary choreographer's personal and practical guide to the art of dance-making Yvonne Rainer was a founding member of Judson Dance Theater, a 1960s New York artists' collective that championed ordinary, spare movements and spontaneity. Rainer's decades of creativity--in dance and in filmmaking--have inspired generations of avant-garde, political, and feminist choreographers. Her many works include the iconic dance Trio A and the film Hand Movie. In this book, Rainer dancer and choreographer Emmanu癡le Phuon helps Rainer gather teaching notes from her dance classes and workshops, passages from her creative journals, and her newer thoughts on movement and art, opening a window on to the life's work of a transformative artist. With fifty prompts for improvisational movement ("39. Travel a long distance as fast as you can while making regular changes in your means of locomotion"), sly illustrations by Pascal Lema簾tre, and an illuminating interview with Phuon, this workbook makes Rainer's friendly, humorous, and down&-to-earth creative practice available to everyone. Because, as Rainer says, if you can move, you are a dancer.
Shostakovich's Ballets and the Search for Soviet Dance
The late 1920s and early 1930s were a pivotal moment in Russian cultural development: a time of uncertainty but also of openness and experimentation in the arts and especially in dance. During this period in Leningrad, Dmitri Shostakovich composed three ballets--The Golden Age, The Bolt, and The Limpid Stream--at a time when he was consolidating his position as Soviet Russia's preeminent young composer. His three ballets aimed at creating Soviet ballet, or works that commanded the technical legacy of the genre but that promoted contemporary topics and Soviet cultural policies. The Limpid Stream proved hugely successful and was even staged as part of the 1935 celebrations for Stalin's birthday at the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow. Six weeks later, however, the ballet was condemned, just a week after Shostakovich's opera Lady Macbeth suffered a similar fate. Shostakovich never wrote another ballet. Shostakovich's ballets of the early 1930s occupied a unique moment in Soviet cultural history and in the development of early Soviet dance. As author Laura E. Kennedy demonstrates, cultural policy shifted frequently and rapidly in these years, summoning all areas of Soviet life to new orthodoxies. Like other arts, ballet emerged as a testing ground for the marriage of artistic innovation to Soviet ideology. Kennedy argues that Shostakovich's three ballets shaped the search for a Soviet approach to the genre in offering three distinct responses to these demands. At the same time, they illuminated the pressures and concerns that vied for dominance in the experimental environment of the late 1920s and early 1930s. Throughout, Kennedy draws on extensive archival materials from St. Petersburg and Moscow--many of which have not previously been published--that preserve the creative record of Shostakovich's ballets in scores, r矇p矇titeurs, photographs, libretti, costume sketches, set designs, theatre documents, and annals of performance. Backed by these primary sources, she charts the complex histories of Shostakovich's ballets, their contributions to dance in Russia, and their impact on the composer's artistic career and the genre of ballet in the twentieth century.
Shostakovich's Ballets and the Search for Soviet Dance
The late 1920s and early 1930s were a pivotal moment in Russian cultural development: a time of uncertainty but also of openness and experimentation in the arts and especially in dance. During this period in Leningrad, Dmitri Shostakovich composed three ballets--The Golden Age, The Bolt, and The Limpid Stream--at a time when he was consolidating his position as Soviet Russia's preeminent young composer. His three ballets aimed at creating Soviet ballet, or works that commanded the technical legacy of the genre but that promoted contemporary topics and Soviet cultural policies. The Limpid Stream proved hugely successful and was even staged as part of the 1935 celebrations for Stalin's birthday at the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow. Six weeks later, however, the ballet was condemned, just a week after Shostakovich's opera Lady Macbeth suffered a similar fate. Shostakovich never wrote another ballet. Shostakovich's ballets of the early 1930s occupied a unique moment in Soviet cultural history and in the development of early Soviet dance. As author Laura E. Kennedy demonstrates, cultural policy shifted frequently and rapidly in these years, summoning all areas of Soviet life to new orthodoxies. Like other arts, ballet emerged as a testing ground for the marriage of artistic innovation to Soviet ideology. Kennedy argues that Shostakovich's three ballets shaped the search for a Soviet approach to the genre in offering three distinct responses to these demands. At the same time, they illuminated the pressures and concerns that vied for dominance in the experimental environment of the late 1920s and early 1930s. Throughout, Kennedy draws on extensive archival materials from St. Petersburg and Moscow--many of which have not previously been published--that preserve the creative record of Shostakovich's ballets in scores, r矇p矇titeurs, photographs, libretti, costume sketches, set designs, theatre documents, and annals of performance. Backed by these primary sources, she charts the complex histories of Shostakovich's ballets, their contributions to dance in Russia, and their impact on the composer's artistic career and the genre of ballet in the twentieth century.
Theatres of the Body
Theatres of the Body is Lynn Matluck Brooks' critical examination of danced stage productions in antebellum Philadelphia. Starting in the 1820s, Brooks explores visual art and social and theatrical dancing across different classes, focusing on the work of E. W. Clay. Continuing through the 1830s, she looks at pantomime ballets and blackface minstrelsy through a political lens, asking questions regarding citizenship, slavery, and freedom. At the time, the city boasted the largest number of native-born ballet dancers in the young nation. Philadelphia also became a creative home to blackface star T. D. Rice, who helped popularize that performance genre. Reviewing print culture in the 1840s, Brooks shows how newspapers, magazines, and popular fiction provided documentation of dancing in Philadelphia as well as the responses of dance commentators, practitioners, and moralists. Theatres of the Body also considers the interplay of science with dance in the 1850s, which impacted both dance practices and reception. Providing an expansive historiography of these significant contributions to dance in the United States, Brooks deepens our understanding of antebellum culture and history.
Theatres of the Body
Theatres of the Body is Lynn Matluck Brooks' critical examination of danced stage productions in antebellum Philadelphia. Starting in the 1820s, Brooks explores visual art and social and theatrical dancing across different classes, focusing on the work of E. W. Clay. Continuing through the 1830s, she looks at pantomime ballets and blackface minstrelsy through a political lens, asking questions regarding citizenship, slavery, and freedom. At the time, the city boasted the largest number of native-born ballet dancers in the young nation. Philadelphia also became a creative home to blackface star T. D. Rice, who helped popularize that performance genre. Reviewing print culture in the 1840s, Brooks shows how newspapers, magazines, and popular fiction provided documentation of dancing in Philadelphia as well as the responses of dance commentators, practitioners, and moralists. Theatres of the Body also considers the interplay of science with dance in the 1850s, which impacted both dance practices and reception. Providing an expansive historiography of these significant contributions to dance in the United States, Brooks deepens our understanding of antebellum culture and history.
Diaspora Without Displacement
Capoeira--a game of combat primarily developed by enslaved West Central Africans--has become an icon of both Brazilian national culture and pride in the country's diasporic African heritage. Yet the sport remains less accessible in Africa itself, overshadowed in large part by participants in the Global North. In Diaspora Without Displacement, Celina de S獺 tells the story of capoeira as it 'returns' to the African continent through the creative initiatives of young urban professionals in Senegal. De S獺 demonstrates how a new generation of African capoeiristas are taking up their own Afro-diasporic performance tradition, effectively reframing notions of diaspora and race through their social practice. Though capoeira has largely Angolan roots, and the agents of return are typically white Brazilians and Europeans, the West African practitioners de S獺 documents nonetheless form an exceptional relationship to capoeira that, in turn, becomes a mode of political and social consciousness. Drawing on ethnographic research in Senegal as well as analyzing a capoeira network across West Africa, de S獺 shows how urban West Africans use capoeira to explore the relationship between Blackness, diaspora, and African heritage.
The Dance; Historic Illustrations of Dancing From 3300 B. C. to 1911 A. D.
The Dance; Historic Illustrations of Dancing From 3300 B. C. to 1911 A. D.
Magic no Mystery; Conjuring Tricks With Cards, Balls, and Dice, Magic Writing, Performing Animals, etc., etc.
Magic no Mystery; Conjuring Tricks With Cards, Balls, and Dice, Magic Writing, Performing Animals, etc., etc.
Kinaesthetic Empathy, Ethics and Care
Kinaesthetic Empathy, Ethics and Care develops a philosophy of dance that highlights the psychological, aesthetic and ethical significance of dancer-viewer interaction in the moment of performance.Leroy draws on phenomenology, psychoanalysis, dance studies and care ethics to analyse kinaesthetic empathy as a form of intersubjective performance. She shows how, in the contagion or interweaving between corporealities of dancer and viewer, each party supports or upholds the other in a process of mutual care. Dance movement involves a play with gravity which alleviates the weight of repressed desire and redefines the contours of the body image, facilitating psychological self-repair. Through projection into the body of another, we can develop our independence and autonomy as subjects, even in the midst of relational being. Richly illustrated with theatre dance examples, Leroy's argument develops a corporeal basis for ethics and reveals how a return to the moving body through dance helps lay the foundations for a more humane society.The book will interest philosophers, dance researchers, care ethicists and care practitioners, as well as advanced students in these fields and general readers curious about the aesthetic and ethical potency of theatre dance.
Staging Decadence
Winner of the 2024 TaPRA David Bradby Monograph Prize How is decadence being staged today - as a practice, issue, pejorative, and as a site of pleasure? Where might we find it, why might we look for it, and who is decadence for? This book is the first monographic study of decadence in theatre and performance. Adam Alston makes a passionate case for the contemporary relevance of decadence in the thick of a resurgent culture war by focusing on its antithetical relationship to capitalist-led growth, progress, and intensified productivity. He argues that the qualities used to disparage the study and practice of theatre and performance are the very things we should embrace in celebrating their value - namely, their spectacular uselessness, wastefulness, outmodedness, and abundant potential for producing forms of creativity that flow away from the ends and excesses of capitalism. Alston covers an eclectic range of examples by Julia Bardsley (UK), Hasard Le Sin (Finland), jaamil olawale kosoko (USA), Toco Nikaido (Japan), Martin O'Brien (UK), Toshiki Okada (Japan), Marcel-l穩 Ant繳nez Roca (Spain), Normandy Sherwood (USA), The Uhuruverse (USA), Nia O. Witherspoon (USA), and Wunderbaum (Netherlands). Expect ruminations on monstrous scenographies, catatonic choreographies, turbo-charged freneticism, visions of the apocalypse - and what might lie in its wake.
The Planetary Gestures in Eurythmy
Celebrated eurythmist Werner Barfod details the seven planetary gestures in eurythmy and outlines how each expresses a different relationship of the human being to the world. Eurythmy is an art form that makes sounds visible through movement. As well as gestures for speech and music, eurythmy also incorporates gestures that relate to the stars and the planets, as indicated by Rudolf Steiner. In this fascinating book, a companion volume to The Zodiac Gestures in Eurythmy, Werner Barfod describes the seven planetary gestures and how each one expresses a different relationship of the human being to the world. He explains how the planetary forces work in different people, and the meditative development and ways of working that eurythmists need to cultivate to bring creativity into their art. This book will appeal to eurythmy teachers and practitioners who want to deepen their art and spiritual work.
The Routledge Companion to Contemporary European Theatre and Performance
The Physically Disabled Dancer and the Affirmative Model of Disability
This volume investigates the contributions and achievements of the physically disabled dancer while at the same time challenging and recognizing the inherent inequities in the field of integrated dance in the UK which currently places greater emphasis on the learning-disabled performer.This is the first book ever written by a physically disabled dancer on the subject of physically disabled dancers. Inherent in this examination is the model of examining disability that is most closely associated with the disability arts movement which is the 'affirmative model of disability'. This model is defined as an approach to disability in which the disabled person is neither an object of medical care nor a victim of social indifference but a self-respecting, autonomous individual in which their disability is a positive and affirming aspect of their self-identity. The book, based on interviews with physically disabled dancers, choreographers, academics and arts producers all in a UK context, combines a wide range of perspective of disability dance together with the intellectual rigor of disability studies to produce a new definition of the physically disabled dancer as an affirming, positive, indispensable practitioner of contemporary performance art. The volume pioneers perspectives of the physically disabled dancer prioritizing first person accounts from the performers themselves to produce an unprecedented contribution to the study of disability arts from a uniquely British perspective.This book will offer educators as well as arts and cultural professionals a critical resource for facilitating work by and in alliance with practitioners of integrated dance.
