Dance: Rituals of Experience [Paperback]

Jamake Highwater (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 12, 1996

This book presents a powerful view of the history of dance, contrasting its role in Western civilization with its significance in other cultures. Highwater--a renowned critic, author, and lecturer on art, theater, music, and dance--links the history of dance to cultural forces as diverse as Karl Marx and Elvis Presley. Beginning with the original, ritualistic, and primal forms of dance, he traces its decline into empty ceremonial forms while all along insisting that dance is a fundamental life impulse made visible in motion--a spontaneous transformation of experience into metaphoric meaning. Considering the historical and creative context from which dance emerged, Highwater goes on to point out the specific contributions and cultural influences of such 20th-century dance giants as Isadora Duncan, Twyla Tharp, Robert Wilson, George Balanchine, Martha Graham, Alwin Nikolais, Erick Hawkins, Jose Limon, Merce Cunningham, Meredith Monk, and Garth Fagan. Also examined are many newer artists, such as Bebe Miller and the Urban Bush Women.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Jamake Highwater has emerged as...a successor to Joseph Campbell, exploring and celebrating the function of myth and ritual as being no less important in modern art and life than in indigenous cultures."--San Francisco Chronicle

"Whether he's writing about pop music, modern dance, or American Indians, Jamake Highwater is a superb writer."--San Francisco Review of Books

"Absolutely fascinating!"--Cleveland Press

"Vastly informative....Stimulating....He manages to put and amazingly sensible history of dance in an extraordinarily few pages....Highwater's gifts are...impressive."--Dance Magazine

"Highwater rescues the art from the discussions of aesthetic niceties in which it is so often enclosed to make us see the real world where human values propel or thwart its ritualizing drive."--The Washington Post

"It never loses its magic or the compelling quality of Highwater's voice....Seduces the reader into believing one can almost pin down the elusive magic of movement with the alchemy of words."--Dance Pages/Library Research Associates

"This is a most interesting attempt to analyze dance from a fresh viewpoint, to tear away the superstructure built by years of Western dance conventions and get down to basics. Some may find the idea controversial, but clearly Highwater has important things to say and says them well."--Publishers Weekly

About the Author

Jamake Highwater is the author of over twenty books, including the award-winning Myth and Sexuality and The Primal Mind. He has written for The New York Times, Chicago Tribune, Vogue, Esquire, and The Christian Science Monitor, and has been a lecturer at Columbia University and New York University.

Product Details

• Paperback: 228 pages
• Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA; 3 edition (December 12, 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0195112059
• ISBN-13: 978-0195112054
• Product Dimensions: 10.5 x 8.2 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.7 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,071,055 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Best Book on Dance, March 31, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: Dance: Rituals of Experience (Paperback)

Most dance books are pretty lightweight. This one is a knockout. Highwater has this way of connecting things, and here he seems to be connecting the history of the human body with the social attitudes of different times and different places. The way we dance is the way we are. On the jacket choreographer Erick Hawkins tells us that this is "the most important book on dance ever published in America." He should know.

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A passionate and knowledgeable treatment of dance, August 24, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: Dance: Rituals of Experience (Paperback)

We know no other book on dance with the same passion and deep understanding that Highwater brings to this one. Even the fantastic illustrations give a sense of the movement and development of the power of this great art, and the text just as vividly explores dance's ritual, mythic, and subconscious elements, showing us at every juncture how, through the movement of the dance, our inner and outer lives meet.