bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Dance Notation Preserved at Mōtsuji (An addendum to “Dance to Song in Japan”1)
Authors: Hoff Frank 
Published: May 2006

In the northeastern part of the main island of Japan at the temple of Mōtsuji, documents survive which show notational practices used to preserve the choreography of dances performed there as part of the Buddhist ceremony of Ennen. I have discussed the Ennen of Mōtsuji in the section called “Ennen: Dance to a Buddhist Text” in my article on “Dance to Song in Japan” and would like to explore here the records of some of its dances since they exemplify a notational concept specially appropriate to the documentation of a tradition of dance to song.According to Professor Honda Yasuji of Waseda University in his book Ennen the original documents date to the early part of the nineteenth century, although some go back to the middle of the eighteenth century, and one item contains elements which date to 1706. The dances themselves, however, go back much further. With a few exceptions, the diagrams published in Ennen are Honda's own drawings based on the older material preserved by various priestly families associated with the temple and the performances which are part of the Buddhist ceremony there.In addition to reproducing these historical records, Honda has made his own annotations to document the choreography of dances which he saw performed at the temple, giving a brief verbal description of the dancer's movements for each section of the song. Full texts of the songs and his movement annotations of dances of the sort described in “Dance to Song in Japan” can be found in Ennen; in addition, there are texts, meant to be sung, of four plays in which danced sections served as climaxes. Of these, the one with the earliest date is that of 1761; another, though undated, appears to be even older. The diagrams for movement in certain sections of the play Ominaeshi, which are reproduced and explained here together with a translation, are preserved in two documents. The one in the Hakuōin collection is dated 1822.
Translated Excerpts of Chinese Dance Notation
Authors: Strauss Gloria B. , Wing Camella , Yuen-wah Leung 
Published: May 2006

In a society which judged the culture of its members less by the building of cities than by the transforming influence of writing, it is not unexpected to find that written dance notation is of a high quality. And, when it is further understood that the writing of this society is, itself, a form of line drawing, one is not surprised to find that excellent and accurate line drawings accompany the written text.This is as true for dance description in present-day revolutionary China as it was in traditional China where the accuracy and complete documentation of Ming dynasty (1378–1644) ritual dance anticipated and exceeded Western efforts in this area. Although historical records suggest that dance notations in China may have existed as early as in the first millenium B.C., they appear to have been destroyed by the book-burning Emperor Shih Huang-ti at the end of the third century B.C. In other instances like those of the T'ang dynasty dance tablatures found in the caves of Tun-huang, the notations have not yet been adequately deciphered; thus, fully-documented rituals in China are best known to us from a period of time (circa. 1600), not far in years from the notes made regarding the famed Ballet Comique de la Reine or Arbeau's OrchésographieOne observes in the Ming dynasty records that movements were illustrated as well as described, the descriptions tending to be terse while the illustrations were more complete. In fact, the dance is better understood by studying the complete picture sequence than by following the characters. (Figures 1 and 2 are examples of two movements in sequence as shown in notation of Ming dynasty ritual dance). Regarding the translation of the characters that are found on the illustrations, Figs. 1 and 2: the vertical characters are essentially numerical, roughly equivalant to saying in English, “index number 5 and index number 6.” The larger characters, which are read horizontally from right to left, are descriptive in general terms only, and require a study of the drawings in sequence to be fully understood.
Dancers as Emissaries in Irigwe, Nigeria
Authors: Sangree Walter H. 
Published: May 2006

The Irigwe, numbering around 17,000, are the third largest of several dozen so-called “plateau pagan” tribes on the Jos Plateau in Benue-Plateau State, Nigeria. Situated on the western edge of the Plateau around 20 miles west of the towns of Jos and Bukuru, the Irigwe have their own language and social traditions which clearly distinguish them from the other plateau tribes. They are currently reknowned all over the Plateau, indeed all over Nigeria, as skilled dancers. The focus of this paper will be to describe and analyze briefly the importance of Irigwe dance groups as emissary delegations, traditionally between various Irigwe sub-groups, and nowdays also between Irigwe as a whole and the rest of Nigeria. The maintenance of boundaries between socio-cultural groupings which regularly interact often involves agents of one sort of another who serve (on a de facto if not on an explicit basis) as bridges between the groupings. Dance group members in effect form such bridging agents in Irigwe.Irigwe is a segmentary society lacking any traditional political chieftaincy. Twenty-five semi-autonomous agnatically based tribal “sections” are bound together on the one hand by each section's having exclusive responsibility for performing one or another ritual felt to be necessary for the tribe, and on the other hand by cross-cuting affinal and cognatic bonds mediated by both primary and “secondary” intersection marriages (Sangree 1972). The Irigwe divide their 25 sections into two geographically discrete clusters: Rigwe, the “parent” division, south of the swiftly flowing Ngell River with 10 sections, and Nyango, the “child” division, north of the river, with 15 sections.
Dance, Myth and Ritual in Time and Space
Authors: Kealiinohomoku Joann W. 
Published: May 2006

A recent, inconspicuous story in the newspaper, one of our most revered keepers and transmitters of traditions, added to our cosmology. It reported “galaxies formed at high rates when the universe was half to one-fourth its current age—earlier than thought. If one assumes the universe is 15 billion years old … this discovery would put the galactic baby boom at about 8 billion—11 billion years ago…. Astronomers are able to witness galactic births because light takes so long to reach Earth, but they've not seen them on the scale reported in the new findings—namely, 40 cosmic infants” (Anonymous 1995).This carrier of tales, the newspaper, also reports “America Online has been offering Road Trips since June, with customized interactive trips through its own areas and sites on the World Wide Web. The service allows users to designate favorite places while being able to chat in real-time with friends about the experience…. The Internet is a kind of strange, scary place and [Road Trips] can make it more friendly” (Haring 1995 ).Theoretical physicist Stephen W. Hawking writes that “life, at least as we know it, can exist only in regions of space-time in which [there are] one time and three space dimensions” (1988:165) (1). Space-time is ever fascinating to us humans because it is where we live, and its dimensions continue to expand.
Dance and Technology: A Pas de Deux for Post-humans
Authors: De Spain Kent 
Published: May 2006

Encounter #1 Hand-drawn Spaces: I step around the corner and into a small room, pitch black except for the dull glow of three projection screens; the center one flat in front of me, the other two angling out like welcoming arms reaching to the edges of the darkness. I stay back, keeping what distance is allowed me, so I can take it all in. With little fanfare, a figure moves into view. The figure is clearly a representation of a human, a biped whose movement quality is instinctually recognizable, yet it lacks all of the features by which we categorize and contextualize in that instant of perceiving an “other.” (Check the order of your personal list and see how you were socialized—Gender? Age? Race? Ability?) Instead, this figure is formed, or perhaps I should say indicated, by lines: a chest cavity of swirling blue; a kinked, mustard-yellow appendage extending out from what seem like perpetually hunched shoulders.From even a few feet away I feel a bit detached from this “dancer.” Lacking individuality in the way I am used to experiencing it, I don't feel compelled to attend to its dancing. So I step closer. Here, almost surrounded by the screens, my customary fourth wall protection is lost. As if on stage, I finally join this dance, beginning to feel some of that sense, that connection—my body to your body, your moving to my moving—that has kept me in this field through many lean years. Yet who am I connecting with?More figures begin to appear and disappear: some retreat out of sight; some seem to step off into the darkness only to emerge on a different screen; and some eerily advance at me, growing into looming giants just moments before fading into darkness. It's as if they are attempting to leave their screened-in world, but disappointed to find themselves no more than projected pixels of light.
Athena Meets Venus: Visions of Women in Social Dance in the Teens and Early 1920s
Authors: Malnig Julie 
Published: May 2006

In a 1915 editorial of The Ladies Home Journal, social commentator Dorothy Mills pondered the issue of the “woman question,” and in a few vivid sentences summed up much of the public's reaction to women's readjusted place in society during the Progressive era. What was one to make of the fact that women were declaring the right to vote, divorcing their husbands at a greater pace than ever and demanding fulfilling work outside of marriage? Said Mills:The “New Girl” that some of us proclaim, and many of us don't believe in at all and more of us dread, is not a fantastic creature, a third sex, a superwoman. She is the eternal woman, with her love for man and child her eternal necessity, plus perhaps only one thing: a certain awkward realization of herself as more of a personality, a unit. Do you see how that can be the starting point of an infinite variety of developments, of activities, of theories? (Mills 1915, 3)
Somatic Authority and the Myth of the Ideal Body in Dance Education
Authors: Green Jill 
Published: May 2006

Recently, the field of somatics has provided dance scholarship with a growing body of literature. Research has been conducted in the areas of dance science and education. Dance medicine and somatic education scholars have been able to help dance teachers find ways of using the body effectively in technique classes. For example, Glenna Batson (1990, 1993) and Sylvie Fortin (1993, 1995) have investigated the role of somatics in the improvement of technical dance skills. Further, Fortin (1995) has investigated learning and teaching theory as applied to somatics and dance pedagogy.As a somaticist and educator, I acknowledge and appreciate the impressive work conducted by these researchers and educators. However, my current work moves somatics into another direction. I am interested in looking at somatic theory and practice through a socio-cultural lens. I am particularly interested in investigating how the body is shaped by society and the dance world, in which performers constantly strive for perfection.
Three Historians of the Imperial Russian Ballet
Authors: Wiley Roland John 
Published: May 2006

As interest in the history of Russian ballet grows, it is logical – inevitable, one hopes – that Russian writers of a century ago who specialized in ballet be scrutinized ever more closely. Who were the ballet historians of the time? What were their credentials? their points of view? To consider just three – Alexander Pleshcheyev, Konstantin Skalkovsky and Sergei Khudekov – formidable names with reputations to match, is not to deny the importance of yet others who in many ways also deserve our attention. But there are good reasons to start with these three.All were publitsisty or “publicists”, a useful if not precisely translatable term that connotes writers on current affairs, who went beyond regular journalism to compile histories of Russian ballet based in part on their long firsthand experience. None was a dancer or a historian by profession, so all came to ballet with a larger vision: ballet was a beloved avocation. This left them open to certain biases, but these do not detract substantially from their value as commentators on the scene. Indeed, their broader outlook is precisely what lends significance and credibility to their work. All were Petersburgers; their writings tell us little about the second imperial company in Moscow. All present to the modern scholar difficulties of access: the works of Pleshcheyev and Skalkovsky are preserved only in major western collections, and much of Khudekov's work is virtually unavailable outside the USSR.
I. A Dance Director's Investigation into Selected Constitutive Properties of Antony Tudor's Dark Elegies
Authors: Giffin John 
Published: May 2006

The question of what constitutes the essential elements of a choreographer's work is an important one for the dance director. This study concentrates on identifying some of the constitutive properties of Antony Tudor's 1937 masterpiece Dark Elegies. I will present some aspects of the work's compositional form and some details of its movement vocabulary. I will also compare these with traditional classical ballet usages of these elements.The Labanotation score of Dark Elegies was written by Airi Hynninen in 1980 during a revival of the ballet under Tudor's personal supervision. I believe it provides a complete and detailed record of the work's essential structural and stylistic properties. This score is the primary source for my choreographic investigation.
III. Dark Elegies and Gender
Authors: Dils Ann 
Published: May 2006

One of Antony Tudor's choreographic concerns is the emotional life and societal role of women. His best known early works, Lilac Garden (1936), Dark Elegies (1937), and Pillar of Fire (1942) explore the feminine realm and the differences in power between men and women that relegate women to their particular place in society. In both Lilac Garden and Pillar of Fire the central issue is the difficulty women face in finding romantic love in polite society. In both pieces women face uncertainty and confusion until the right man steps in to fulfill their destiny. In Dark Elegies, gender is not the central issue, but the scenario is the same: underneath the explorations of personal and communal grief, the struggle to cope with the loss of young children, is a clear and critical thread of gender differentiation.Tudor connects gender with the ways people handle grief—women get lost in grief, men cope with it—and with the leadership roles in the Dark Elegies community. Men are the driving forces in the community. They are the comforters and have the capacity to lead the group through the stages of the grieving process into resignation. Women are the passive members of the community. They can neither help themselves nor each other, but must depend on their men for solace and salvation.
The Philadelphia Dancing Assembly in the Eighteenth Century
Authors: Brooks Lynn Matluck 
Published: May 2006

In eighteenth century Philadelphia the evolution of cultivated society closely followed-or rather kept step with-developments among the English elite. Colonists considered Bath, England to be “the centre of refined Colonial Society”, and those who could afford the time and expense visited there in order to attend plays, participate in assemblies, and absorb the latest trends in fashion and culture. Following the British model, one important attainment of any colonial gentleman or lady was grace of physical manner, evidenced in good part by skill in dancing. These manners and skills could best be appreciated in assemblies of polite society, assemblies where refined conversation, dancing, card-playing, and supping frequently provided the forum for social mingling.Philadelphia was among the first of American cities to formalize such gatherings when, in 1749, a group of gentlemen who led the city's political, professional and mercantile life joined together in establishing the Philadelphia Assembly, sometimes also called the Dancing Assembly. As early as 1753 the fame and gentility of this assembly had spread to England, for Walter Ewer, Jr. wrote from London to his cousin William Sword in Philadelphia to ask if the latter had ever attended the city's Assembly, which Ewer wrote was reported to be “a fine one”. Another source recalled that “the dancing assembly among the gentry had high vogue, partaking, before the Revolution, of the aristocratic feelings of a monarchial government”.
Swinging at the Savoy
Authors: Engelbrecht Barbara 
Published: May 2006

With the passing of the Savoy Ballroom, a part of the show business is gone. I feel about the same way I did when someone told me the news that Bill (Bojangles) Robinson died.—Count Basie, 1958. The demolition of Harlem's Savoy Ballroom.Like Bojangles, by 1958 the Savoy had become an institution in the world of entertainment, and like Bojangles, it caught the imagination of thousands upon thousands of people during its 32-year history. The Savoy was a building, a geographic place, a ballroom, and the “soul” of a neighborhood. It personified a community and an era, and became a monument to the music and dance of “swing.” On its huge and shiny mahogany floor, the Lindy Hop was born, a dance that took the world by storm and would become as seminal as the waltz in the history of social dance. The Lindy Hop, together with countless other dances like the Flying Charleston, the Stomp, the Shim Sham Shimmy, Rhumboogie, Suzie-Q, Big Apple, Black Bottom and the Scrontch, were taken to an extraordinary level of performing perfection at the Savoy. Within its inner circle, great dancers and musicians set trends and styles in dance and music that ricocheted throughout the world. There were other ballrooms and clubs—Connie's Inn, Small's Paradise, The Cotton Club, The Lenox Club, The Kentucky Club, and the downtown clubs on 52nd Street—but there was only one Savoy.
Tamiris and the Federal Dance Theatre 1936–1939: Socially Relevant Dance Amidst the Policies and Politics of the New Deal Era
Authors: Cooper Elizabeth 
Published: May 2006

Credit is due a great many individuals for sustained, serious and heartbreaking efforts to achieve successful dance productions within the organization of the Federal Theatre Project in New York, but there is one person who has practically given all her life to it for the past three years and has repeatedly and consistently identified her own career with it. She has been responsible for four productions and has done more than any other one person to hold the whole project together and keep it going. Without her tremendous creative enthusiasm and energy, her personal and artistic integrity, her sense of social responsibility, I doubt if this project could ever have endured. I doubt it could have been organized in the first place.… I am speaking of Tamiris.The history of the Works Progress Administration's short-lived Federal Dance Theatre embodies many of the aspirations, achievements, ambiguities, handicaps and frustrations of Franklin Delano Roosevelt's New Deal. Like the other Works Progress Administration (WPA) relief programs, the Federal Dance Theatre (FDT) was created with federal funds to help alleviate the hardships brought on by the Great Depression. The FDT was established in January 1936 as a distinct artistic entity within the WPA relief organization. It employed professional dancers, choreographers, musicians, designers, and technicians, and set before them the task of producing socially relevant dance pieces for the American people, in particular, audiences that had not previously had access to the theatre. That the Federal Dance Theatre came into existence at all and managed to stay afloat and produce a few critically acclaimed productions of social portent and artistic merit was largely due to the perseverance of modern dance maverick, Helen Tamiris (1905–1966).
Eskimo Dance and Cultural Values in an Alaskan Village
Authors: Ager Lynn Price 
Published: May 2006

Although expressive aspects of a culture are generally believed to be related to the values and sentiments which prevade that culture, few studies to demonstrate the relationship have been carried out on nonverbal, more accurately non-vocal, aspects of culture. This paper is a result of my attempt to view traditional Eskimo dance as an expression of Eskimo values, sentiments, and cultural foci.Eskimo values and cultural foci are described as I perceived them during eight months of ethnological field research (1973–74) among a group of coastal Eskimos in southwestern Alaska. I cannot vouch for the universality of these values in Eskimo groups throughout the arctic, but my impression from the literature is that they are widely held. The dances I describe, however, are not universal, as dance varies from one region to another and even from village to village within some regions (Theresa Tomczak, personal communication 1972). The community I am reporting on is Tununak, on Nelson Island, Alaska.
A Recollection of Margaret H'Doubler's Class Procedure: An Environment for the Learning of Dance
Authors: Moore Ellen A. 
Published: May 2006

In 1917 Margaret H'Doubler, on a year's leave from the University of Wisconsin, had been given a difficult assignment. Blanche Trilling, her chairman, had asked if she would search the dance studios in New York City for a kind of dance activity “worth a college woman's time.” Studying philosophy that year at Columbia University, Margaret H'Doubler had complied with pronounced lack of enthusiasm, her predominant interest being in teaching basketball. Her time nearly expired, she found herself, however, suddenly excited when, at the music school of Alys Bentley, she saw children on the floor moving in their own ways to a stimulus provided by the teacher.“Of course,” she recounted later, “Get on the floor where you are relieved from the pull of gravity … and see what the natural, structural movements are.” She continued to visit Miss Bentley's studio during the short time that remained and began to organize a course in “new dancing” to be offered almost immediately in summer school in Madison.
Nineteenth Century Performing Indians: An Annotated Bibliography
Authors: Shifrin Ellen 
Published: May 2006

This bibliography grew out of a seminar entitled “Dance in the Popular Theatre in the Nineteenth Century.” A prior unfulfilled interest in the North American Indian led me to focus my search in that direction. Although a considerable amount of class time was spent in discussing the notion of “popular” art as opposed to “high” or “elite” art, this potentially problematic question did not become an issue in this search. The North American Indian's contribution to the stage definitely had the widest possible audience appeal, which may be used as a criterion for part of the definition of “popular.”Part of the seminar experience was to introduce us to unusual sources, to encourage us to probe materials which were not generally considered the dance historian's domain. As well, we were to attempt to discover as much as possible in the Toronto area libraries, and with the aid of the interlibrary loan services, to actually handle as many potentially relevant sources as possible. An unforeseen trip to New York in mid-year extended the search and admitted the inclusion of certain documents which otherwise might have been left out.