Overview

Gestures of Music Theater: The Performativity of Song and Dance offers new, cutting-edge essays focusing on song and dance as performative gestures that not only entertain but also act on audiences and performers. The chapters range across musical theater, opera, theater, and other artistic practices, from Glee to Gardzienice, Beckett to Disney, Broadway to Turner-Prize-winning sound installation. The chapters draw together these diverse examples of vocality and physicality by exploring their affect rather than through considering them as texts. The book's contributors derive methodologies from many disciplines. Resisting discrete discipline-based enquiry, they share methodologies and performance repertoires with discipline-based scholarship from theater studies, musicology, and cultural studies, among other approaches. Together, they view these as neighboring voices whose dialogue enriches the study of contemporary music theater.

Full Product Details

Author:   Dominic Symonds (Senior Lecturer in Drama, Senior Lecturer in Drama, University of Portsmouth, Portsmouth, England) ,  Millie Taylor (Reader in Performing Arts, Reader in Performing Arts, University of Winchester, Winchester, England)
Publisher:   Oxford University Press Inc
Imprint:   Oxford University Press Inc
Dimensions:   Width: 23.90cm , Height: 2.30cm , Length: 16.30cm
Weight:   0.612kg
ISBN:  

9780199997152

ISBN 10:   0199997152
Pages:   336
Publication Date:   16 January 2014
Audience:   College/higher education ,  Professional and scholarly ,  Tertiary & Higher Education ,  Professional & Vocational
Format:   Hardback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   Manufactured on demand  
We will order this item for you from a manufactured on demand supplier.

Table of Contents

"Introduction: Singing the Dance, Dancing the Song Chapter 1: The Song's the Thing: Capturing the ""Sung"" to Make it ""Song"" Chapter 2: The (Un)Pleasure of Song: On the Enjoyment of Listening to Opera Performativity as Dramaturgy Chapter 3: Relocating the Song: Julie Taymor's Jukebox Musical Across the Universe (2007) Chapter 4: Dynamic shape: the Dramaturgy of Song and Dance in Lloyd Webber's Cats (1981) Performativity as Transition Chapter 5: Dance Breaks and Dream Ballets: Transitional Moments in Musical Theater Chapter 6: ""Love Let Me Sing you"": The Liminality of Song and Dance in La Chiusa's Bernarda Alba (2006) Performativity as Identity Chapter 7: Tapping the Ivories: Jazz and Tap Dance in Jelly's Last Jam (1992). Chapter 8: Everything's Coming up Kurt: the Broadway Song in Glee Chapter 9: Angry Dance: Postmodern Innovation, Masculinities and Gender Subversion Performativity as Context Chapter 10: Deconstructing the Singer: the Concerts of Laurie Anderson Chapter 11: Singing and a Song: The ""Intimate Difference"" in Susan Philipsz's Lowlands (2010) Chapter 12: Acting Operatically: Body, Voice and the Actress in Beckett's Theater Performativity as Practice Chapter 13: Vox Elettronica: Song, Dance and Live Electronics in the Practice of Sound Theater Chapter 14: From Ear to Foot: How Choreographers Interpret Music Chapter 15: Singing from Stones: Physiovocality and Gardzienice's Theater of Musicality Performativity as Community Chapter 16: Singing the Community: the Musical Theater Chorus as Character Chapter 17: Singing and Dancing Ourselves: The Politics of the Ensemble in A Chorus Line (1975) Performativity as Writing Bibliography Index Bibliography"

Reviews

This book makes for a very rewarding read: it combines an excellent selection of emerging and established scholars and practitioners' voices and despite its diversity with regard to genre, time, methodology and focus, it is held together firmly by a very specific and timely common research question: how song and dance can be read as performative gestures. The editors and contributors demonstrate vividly how song and dance are not merely the concern of a limited group of musicologists and dance scholars, but are omnipresent in our culture and provide a fascinating prism through which to see and understand human communication. Dr. David Roesner, University of Kent This impressive volume offers important new insights on the act of music theatre and the performativity of song and dance. The collection of essays on vocality and physical gesture expands our understanding of how voices and bodies can be located in multiple theatrical contexts. Dr. William A. Everett, University of Missouri-Kansas City

Author Information

Dominic Symonds is Reader in Drama at the University of Lincoln and, with George Burrows, joint editor of the journal Studies in Musical Theatre. Millie Taylor is Professor of Musical Theatre at The University of Winchester and author of Musical Theatre, Realism, and Entertainment (2012).

Tab Content 6

Author Website:  

Countries Available

All regions