Overview

When the eighteenth-century choreographer Jean-Georges Noverre sought to develop what is now known as modern ballet, he turned to ancient pantomime as his source of inspiration; and when Isadora Duncan and her contemporaries looked for alternatives to the strictures of classical ballet, they looked to ancient Greek vases for models for what they termed 'natural' movement. This is the first book to examine systematically the long history of the impact of ideas about ancient Greek and Roman dance on modern theatrical and choreographic practices. With contributions from eminent classical scholars, dance historians, theatre specialists, modern literary critics, and art historians, as well as from contemporary practitioners, it offers a very wide conspectus on an under-explored but central aspect of classical reception, dance and theatre history, and the history of ideas.

Full Product Details

Author:   Fiona Macintosh (Director of the Archive of Performances of Greek and Roman Drama, Reader in the Reception of Greek and Roman Literature, Supernumerary Fellow St Hilda's College, University of Oxford)
Publisher:   Oxford University Press
Imprint:   Oxford University Press
Dimensions:   Width: 16.70cm , Height: 3.00cm , Length: 24.10cm
Weight:   1.044kg
ISBN:  

9780199548101

ISBN 10:   0199548102
Pages:   536
Publication Date:   02 September 2010
Audience:   College/higher education ,  Professional and scholarly ,  Tertiary & Higher Education ,  Professional & Vocational
Format:   Hardback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   To order  
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Table of Contents

Fiona Macintosh: Introduction I. Dance and the Ancient Sources 1: Ismene Lada-Richards: Dead but not Extinct: On Reinventing Pantomime Dancing in Eighteenth-Century England and France 2: Frederick Naerebout: 'In Search of a Dead Rat': The Reception of Ancient Greek Dance in Late Nineteenth-Century Europe and America 3: Ann Cooper-Albright: The Tanagra Effect: Wrapping the Modern Body in the Folds of Ancient Greece 4: Tyler Jo Smith: Reception or Deception? Approaching Dance through Vase-Painting 5: Kathleen Riley: A Pylades for the twentieth century: Fred Astaire and the Aesthetic of Bodily Eloquence II. Dance and Decadence 6: Ruth Webb: 'Where there is Dance there is the Devil': Ancient and Modern Representations of Salome 7: Edith Hall: 'Heroes of the Dance Floor': The Missing Exemplary Male Dancer in the Ancient Sources 8: Jennifer Thorp: Servile Bodies? The Status of the Professional Dancer in the Late Seventeenth and Early Eighteenth Centuries 9: Fiona Macintosh: Dancing Maenads in Early Twentieth-Century Britain III. Dance and Myth 10: Barbara Ravelhofer: Ancient Greece, Dance and the English Masque 11: Pantelis Michelakis: Dancing with Prometheus: Performance and Spectacle in the 1920s 12: Alessandra Zanobi: From Duncan to Bausch with Iphigenia 13: Henrietta Bannerman: Ancient Myths and Modern Moves: The Greek-Inspired Dance Theatre of Martha Graham 14: Nadine Meisner: Iphigenia, Orpheus and Eurydice in the Human Narrative of Pina Bausch IV. Ancient Dance and the Modern Mind 15: Daniel Albright: Knowing the Dancer, Knowing the Dance: The Dancer as Décor 16: Sue Jones: Modernism and Dance: Apollonian or Dionysian? 17: Vanda Zajko: Dance, Psychoanalysis and Modernist Aesthetics: Martha Graham's `Night Journey' 18: Arabella Stanger: Striking a Balance: The Apolline and Dionysiac in Post-Classical Choreography 19: Richard Cave: Caryl Churchill and Ian Spink 'allowing the past to speak directly to the present' V. The Ancient Chorus in Contemporary Performance 20: Yana Zarifi: Staniewski's Secret Alphabet of Gestures: Dance, Body and Metaphysics 21: Struan Leslie: Gesamtkunstwerk: Modern Moves and the Ancient Chorus 22: Suzy Willson & Helen Eastman: Red Ladies : Who are they and what do they want?

Reviews

Classical reception is much indebted to this much anticipated collection of critical dance history in theatre. Zachary Dubar, New Theatre Quarterly

Classical reception is much indebted to this much anticipated collection of critical dance history in theatre. * Zachary Dubar, New Theatre Quarterly *

Author Information

Fiona Macintosh became Director of the Archive of Performances of Greek and Roman Drama in January 2010, after ten years as Senior Research Fellow. In 2008 she was made Reader in Greek and Roman Drama. She is currently Supernumerary Fellow of St Hilda's College and University Lecturer in the Reception of Greek and Roman Literature. She is author of Dying Acts: Death in Ancient Greek and Modern Irish Tragic Drama (1994; 1995), Greek Tragedy and the British Theatre 1660-1914 (Oxford University Press; 2005), and Sophocles' 'Oedipus Tyrannus' (2009). She has co-edited numerous APGRD publications: Dionysus Since 69 (with Edith Hall and Amanda Wrigley) (Oxford University Press; 2004), Agamemnon in Performance 458BC to AD2005 (with Pantelis Michelakis, Edith Hall, and Oliver Taplin) (Oxford University Press; 2005).

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