6 minute read
MUSIC & PERFORMING ARTS
Ways of Voice
Vocal Striving and Moral Contestation in North India and Beyond By Matthew Rahaim An exploration of ethical dynamism in vocal life.
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Ways of Voice is the first ethnomusicological monograph to delve deeply into the diverse, variegated techniques of voice production in North India. It explicitly thematises the dynamic movement between vocal dispositions—singers who consciously retrain themselves in order to acquire a different voice, focusing on the ways in which singers not only "have" voice, but actively acquire, cultivate and contest particular vocal dispositions. The book deals extensively with the formation and contestation of particular, historically grounded ways of voice, from Bollywood film singers to modern raga vocality to pop Sufi song. Working from dozens of concrete examples, it fills an important gap both in South Asian ethnomusicology and in the emerging field of voice studies. Audio and video examples are provided on the online companion site.
MUSIC / CULTURE | WESLEYAN UNIVERSITY PRESS Hardback • 9780819579393 • November 2021 • £70.50 296 pages • 37 figs
Architecture, Theater, and Fantasy
Bibiena Drawings from the Jules Fisher Collection By Arnold Aronson, Diane Kelder, John Marciari and Laurel Peterson
Examines a group of Bibiena drawings from the collection of Jules Fisher. For nearly a century, members of three generations of the Bibiena family were the most highly sought theatre designers in Europe. Their elaborate stage designs were used for operas, festivals, and courtly performances across Europe. The distinctive Bibiena style survives through their remarkable drawings, ranging from energetic sketches to highly finished watercolours. This volume examines a group of drawings from the collection of Tony-award winning Jules Fisher.
MORGAN LIBRARY Paperback • 9781913645045 • May 2021 • £16.50 96 pages • 60 illus.
Professional Musicians and the Capital of Afro-Brazil By Jeff Packman
An ethnography about local working musicians in Brazil's "most African" city. Examines the labor of musicians in Salvador da Bahia, widely regarded as Brazil's most African city. Drawing on over sixteen years of fieldwork ranging from Carnaval parades to studio recordings, Jeff Packman reveals that the ability of musicians to earn a living wage is contingent on their navigating industry and societal conditions that are profoundly informed by the entrenched legacies of colonisation and slavery.
MUSIC / CULTURE | WESLEYAN UNIVERSITY PRESS Paperback • 9780819580481 • November 2021 • £18.50 320 pages • 10 b/w illus., 1 table, 16 figs
Performance/Art
The Venetian Lectures By Shaun Gallagher and Edited by Carlos Vara Sánchez
An exploration of the phenomenology of skilled performance from athletics to the performing arts. Gallagher reviews a variety of studies concerning different degrees of mindful awareness operative in performance, and builds on the concept of a meshed architecture, suggesting ways to make it more complex and dynamic. He draws on ideas from enactivist embodied cognition about how different types of movement can be meaningful and intelligent and can scaffold learning and problem solving and develops the idea of a double attunement to explain aesthetic experience in performance.
PHILOSOPHY | MIMESIS INTERNATIONAL Paperback • 9788869773365 • March 2021 • £17.99 190 pages
Baring Unbearable Sensualities
Hip Hop Dance, Bodies, Race, and Power By Rosemarie A. Roberts
Theorising the experiences of black and brown bodies in hip hop dance. Drawing on bold methodology, an interdisciplinary perspective, and a rich array of primary sources, this book complicates mainstream understandings of Hip Hop Dance that have reduced the style to a set of techniques divorced from social contexts. Using interviews and observations, the author proposes that Hip Hop Dance is a collective and sentient process of resisting oppressive manifestations of race and power. A companion website contains over 30 video clips referenced in the book.
WESLEYAN UNIVERSITY PRESS Hardback • 9780819500052 • November 2021 • £70.50 176 pages
Five Decades of Dance Making at the National Endowment for the Arts By Sarah Wilbur
How the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) funding policies have shaped the field of dance. Drawing upon archival documentation of NEA narratives, program eligibility guidelines, and standards of evaluation as well as testimonies from insiders, Wilbur theorizes endowment as an economic and practical struggle by people with differential power and competing investments in the production and professionalisation of dance. Grounded in previously unheard stories, this book brings clarity to the complex processes underlying the continuing struggle to achieve equitable resource distribution and parity of opportunity in American dance.
WESLEYAN UNIVERSITY PRESS Paperback • 9780819580528 • November 2021 • £19.95 360 pages • 20 b/w illus.
Sensing, Feeling, and Action
The Experiential Anatomy of Body-Mind Centering By Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen
Collected essays, interviews, and exercises written by pioneering movement educator Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen. Drawing from both Western and Eastern scientific knowledge, BMC is an experiential study of the body systems and the evolutionary developmental patterns that underlie human movement. Over the last thirty years, BMC has engaged the interest of a wide range of people involved in dance, performing arts, athletics, therapy, healthcare, child development, meditation, and other body/mind disciplines. The third edition includes sixteen additional pages with new articles on inspiration, expiration, and dancing.
WESLEYAN UNIVERSITY PRESS Paperback • 9780937645147 • April 2021 • £29.50 232 pages • 155 b/w illus.
Handbook in Motion
An Account of an Ongoing Personal Discourse and Its Manifestations in Dance By Simone Forti
Combines drawings, "dance reports", and documentary materials to explore the work of Simone Forti. Tracing a period in her life from the 1969 Woodstock Festival through the following years living on the land, this singular dance artist's direct and poetic writings bring a turbulent transitional era to life. Her work spans from early minimalist dance-constructions, through animal movement studies, news animations, land portraits, and currently, Logomotion, an improvisational form based on the resonance between movement and the spoken word. She performs and teaches worldwide.
WESLEYAN UNIVERSITY PRESS Paperback • 9780937645055 • April 2021 • £10.95 152 pages
An ldeokinetic Basis for Movement Education By John Rolland
A comprehensive study of anatomical imagery based on the Todd-Clark body alignment work developed by John Rolland. John Rolland (1950–1993) was a significant figure in the development of Release and Alignment Technique, as a teacher, dancer, and performer. Carefully organised as a learning manual, this book comprises a complete description of the skeletal system. The basic goal of the work is the improvement of one's physical balance through a creative learning process that integrates mental and physical capacities.
WESLEYAN UNIVERSITY PRESS Paperback • 9780965166508 • April 2021 • £14.95 100 pages
Caught Falling
The Confluence of Contact Improvisation, Nancy Stark Smith, and Other Moving Ideas By David Koteen and Nancy Stark Smith
Nancy Stark Smith's life as seen through the kaleidoscope of her 36-year involvement with Contact Improvisation. The book includes Q&As between the authors tracing the history of the dance form; photos of dancing and living; life stories; anecdotes from friends, colleagues, and family; and a description of Stark Smith's Underscore — a framework for practicing and researching dance improvisation that Stark Smith has been developing since the early 1990s.
WESLEYAN UNIVERSITY PRESS Paperback • 9780937645093 • April 2021 • £24.50 128 pages
A Body in Fukushima
By Eiko Otake and William Johnston
A photographic account of an extended solo performance in irradiated Fukushima between 2014 and 2019. On five separate journeys, Japanese-born performer and dancer Eiko Otake and historian and photographer William Johnston visited multiple locations across Fukushima, creating 200 transformative colour photographs that document the irradiated landscape, accentuated by Eiko's poses depicting both the sorrow and dignity of the land. The book also includes essays and commentary reflecting on art, disaster, and grief.
