Moving History / Dancing Cultures: A Dance History Reader (review)

How often does a standard dance history text begin with a photograph of a male dancer assuming the guise of Martha Graham? Well, never, until now. With Moving History/Dancing Cultures, Ann Dils and Ann Cooper Albright launch dance history boldly into a postmodern context. It is no longer about a linear progression of great dancers and companies, but about quotation and allusion, gender bending, and playing with identity. For these editors, history shapes who we are, as people and performers, and in turn allows us to transform society. As Dils and Albright put it, "In studying moving bodies, we are ourselves moved and, potentially, as the conceptual body accommodates our actions and takes on the imprints of our dancing, we can move history" (2).

Moving History is a large format reader (the pages are 8" x 10") consisting of over forty-five mostly previously published articles by a wide range of authors. While a few of the pieces date from before 1985 and were chosen for their seminal place in dance literature, most are from the last fifteen years. As such, the majority reflect the influence of cultural and performance studies, feminism, and ethnography, as refracted through the unique perspectives of the contributors. They, in turn, represent some of the best scholars working in America, Canada, and Europe today, such as Ann Daly (US), Ramsay Burt (Britain), and Lisa Doolittle (Canada). So while the focus of the book is clearly American, it is an America staged with a self-conscious eye to a global perspective. The contributors write about, and represent, diverse dance forms and cultural traditions, including Bharatha Natyam, belly dancing, and Capoeira (a Brazilian dance form with African roots). Indeed, what is perhaps most compelling about the anthology is how the editors have structured the book to situate national issues in a global, anthropologically sensitive context. The collection is divided into four parts, each introduced by a thoughtful essay. Part 1, "Thinking about Dance History: Theories and Practices," looks at writing about dance, doing historical research, and engaging in fieldwork. The rest of the book shows just how global the editors' interests are, with the section on "America Dancing" (Part 3) framed by sections on "World Dance Traditions" (Part 2) and "Contemporary Dance: Global Contexts" (Part 4). The book concludes with a list of "Further Readings" compiled by the editors.

The hand of Dils and Albright in sensitively shaping the anthology is, in fact, central to the success of the book. Albright, who is Associate Professor of Dance at Oberlin College, and Dils, Assistant Professor of Dance at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, bring to bear their rich experience as dancer/scholars who know firsthand the problematic legacy of traditional American dance history, with its Eurocentric, racist, art-for-art's sake biases. Throughout the book they address prospective student readers directly and intimately, eager to bring to life for them the somatic as well as intellectual aspects of dance history. They do this by stressing that the contributors have "hybrid" identities and are practitioners as well as writers, and that "dance, even as a historical study, is always first a physical activity" (xiv). They are also not afraid to situate themselves in the text nor to encourage their young college readers to do the same.

Moreover, Dils and Albright stress that tradition, authenticity, and innovation are always at once reconstructed and reinvented by human beings, and that dance, "whether from Africa, Asia, or Europe, is constantly negotiating the intersecting realms of political, spiritual, social, and artistic influence" (96). In contrast to standard dance history books, like Richard Kraus's History of the Dance in Art and Education, that trace individuals and styles, this book asks such questions as: What are the aesthetic and social criteria people use to talk about what they are...