How to Make Dances in an Epidemic: Tracking Choreography in the Age of AIDS [Paperback]

David Gere (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 15, 2004

    David Gere, who came of age as a dance critic at the height of the AIDS epidemic, offers the first book to examine in depth the interplay of AIDS and choreography in the United States, specifically in relation to gay men. The time he writes about is one of extremes. A life-threatening medical syndrome is spreading, its transmission linked to sex. Blame is settling on gay men. What is possible in such a highly charged moment, when art and politics coincide?
    Gere expands the definition of choreography to analyze not only theatrical dances but also the protests conceived by ACT-UP and the NAMES Project AIDS quilt. These exist on a continuum in which dance, protest, and wrenching emotional expression have become essentially indistinguishable. Gere offers a portrait of gay male choreographers struggling to cope with AIDS and its meanings.

Editorial Reviews

Review

“While the groundbreaking volume reflects a deep intellectual inquiry into the host of aesthetic and political tactics artists developed,...Gere’s lively, evocative prose and eye for the telling detail also make it a highly enjoyable read. [Gere] charts a new path for the dance scholar as impassioned activist.”—The Village Voice

"David Gere's How to Make Dances in an Epidemic is the definitive study of AIDS and dance, but its contribution extends well beyond these fields of inquiry. A model of impassioned scholarship, this book rescues a nearly forgotten queer archive from obscurity while demonstrating how the arts continue to make all the difference in our lives."—David Román, Professor of English and American Studies, University of Southern California

"This is a powerful and beautifully written book. Gere allows us to see dances as extremely rich events embodying politics, emotion, and art in varying ways, ranging from grief to insurgency. Gere’s own identity as a righteously insurgent gay man informs the book throughout in ways that are both passionate and illuminating—this is engaged scholarship at its best. Anyone interested in dance or in gay culture or in art and politics should, as I did, find this a fascinating book, impossible to put down."—Sally Banes, editor of Reinventing Dance in the 1960s

"David Gere is shifting and reshaping the paradigms of scholarship in performance studies, cultural studies, and feminist and queer studies."—Nayan Shah, author of Contagious Divides: Epidemics and Race in San Francisco’s Chinatown

About the Author

David Gere is associate professor in the Department of World Arts and Cultures at UCLA. A longtime dance critic, he has previously contributed essays to Loss within Loss and Dancing Desires, both published by the University of Wisconsin Press.

Product Details

• Paperback: 352 pages
• Publisher: University of Wisconsin Press; 1 edition (September 15, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0299200841
• ISBN-13: 978-0299200848
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 5.9 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,289,785 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

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2 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars AIDS, dance, and gay men, June 24, 2005

By 

Jeffery Mingo (Homewood, IL USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: How to Make Dances in an Epidemic: Tracking Choreography in the Age of AIDS (Paperback)

Reading Professor Gere's book reminds me so much of Eve Sedgwick. Like her minoritizing/universalizing schema, he invents an equation for defining AIDS performances. He then goes on to describe seven aspects of this artistic contributing. Like Professor Sedgwick, he uses huge words and it would benefit the reader to have a dictionary near him or her as they read. Also, the two academics are dedicated to acknowledging and celebrating the works of gay artists.

Unfortunately, like Sedgwick, you don't have to read beyond Gere's introductory chapters to get the point. The rest of the book is just lots of description. I highly doubt that professors will assign the whole book, rather than just the first part of it, to students. Only those who want to use the books for specific examples would benefit from reading the whole thing. Additionally, some of the details are gross (drinking shakes made of junk, spilling liquids meant to represents distasteful bodily fluids, etc.) The book covers cutting-edge dancers, and believe me, they succeed at shocking their audiences (or at least this reader).

Professor Gere is not only an academic describing performances after the fact, he was also a journalist who was covering AIDS and the dance community's response to it from the beginning. He must be exciting in the classroom given the multiple hats he wears as academic, journalist, and activist.

AIDS has wreaked havoc upon gay males and many professional dancers. Thus, of course, they would respond to the epidemic in their art. I am glad that a person in the academy has recorded and is responding to this urgent work and action.