In this Book
- Women’s Work: Making Dance in Europe before 1800
- Book
- 2008
- Published by: University of Wisconsin Press
summary
Like the history of women, dance has been difficult to capture as a historical subject. Yet in bringing together these two areas of study, the nine internationally renowned scholars in this volume shed new and surprising light on women’s roles as performers of dance, choreographers, shapers of aesthetic trends, and patrons of dance in Italy, France, England, and Germany before 1800.
Through dance, women asserted power in spheres largely dominated by men: the court, the theater, and the church. As women’s dance worlds intersected with men’s, their lives and visions were supported or opposed, creating a complex politics of creative, spiritual, and political expression. From a women’s religious order in the thirteenth-century Low Countries that used dance as a spiritual rite of passage to the salon culture of eighteenth-century France where dance became an integral part of women’s cultural influence, the writers in this volume explore the meaning of these women’s stories, performances, and dancing bodies, demonstrating that dance is truly a field across which women have moved with finesse and power for many centuries past.
Through dance, women asserted power in spheres largely dominated by men: the court, the theater, and the church. As women’s dance worlds intersected with men’s, their lives and visions were supported or opposed, creating a complex politics of creative, spiritual, and political expression. From a women’s religious order in the thirteenth-century Low Countries that used dance as a spiritual rite of passage to the salon culture of eighteenth-century France where dance became an integral part of women’s cultural influence, the writers in this volume explore the meaning of these women’s stories, performances, and dancing bodies, demonstrating that dance is truly a field across which women have moved with finesse and power for many centuries past.
Table of Contents
Download Full Book
- Acknowledgments
- p. ix
- PATRONAGE AND POWER
- 2 Fabritio Caroso’s Patronesses
- pp. 49-70
- PROFESSIONAL PERFORMANCE
- 6 Marie Sall
- pp. 160-182
- 7 In Pursuit of the Dancer-Actress
- pp. 183-204
- WORLDVIEWS
- 8 Elisabeth of Spalbeek: Dancing the Passion
- pp. 207-227
- Contributors
- pp. 257-259
Additional Information
ISBN
9780299225339
Related ISBN(s)
9780299225308, 9780299225346
MARC Record
OCLC
318249746
Pages
281
Launched on MUSE
2012-01-01
Language
English
Open Access
No
Copyright
2007