Customer Reviews

Moving History/Dancing Cultures: A Dance History Reader

5 star:		(2)
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1 star:		(1)

 

 

The editors of this book want to be cultural anthropologists and have a feminist, anti-ballet agenda. There are over 50 articles in this book and only one is about ballet and it is about travesty dancers during the Romantic Period. Ballet is discussed negatively in several other articles that deal with other forms of dance. There is an article about Lincoln Kirstein who helped George Balanchine found the NYC Ballet, but this article is about Kirstein's desire to be the next Diaghilev, not about the NYC Ballet. What a disappointment that the editors could not have found a better article. There is a section called "America Dancing" that has no articles about dance in Broadway or films; there is no mention of ABT or the NYC Ballet outside the Kirstein/Diaghilev article. Just about every article in this section deals with modern dance. Surely America has more styles of dance than modern. In contrast, over 20 articles deal with dance as cultural anthropology, and four articles deal with contact improvisation, editor Albright's preferred style of dance. Most of the articles are written in a dry, pedantic style that is difficult to read. I had to purchase this book for a dance history course and will be selling it as soon as the semester is over. No one in my class outside of the instructor likes this book.

But it came faster than I expected. I mean, I thought the price was unbelievable for a textbook, but the timing was the best.

Came in perfect condition! Though it took a long time to get here, but still arrived within the time frame my shipping alloted, just cut it a little close, luckily it came on time for my class.