Dancing Bodies, Living Histories: New Writings About Dance and Culture

Susan Free teaches movement in the drama program at the University of
Toronto.

Fifteen years ago, dance writers did not participate in serious critical
or theoretical discourse. While the rest of the arts—especially the
visual arts and film—were generating scholarly work influenced by
contemporary Marxist, post-

structuralist, and feminist theories, the art of dance seemed too
blithely anti-intellectual to participate.

Since that time, dance scholarship has developed tremendously in
sophistication and diversity. Dancing Bodies, Living Histories sits
squarely in the midst of current theoretical discourse, with articles
considering power relations, ethnicity, gender, and sexual preference as
they are played out in social and theatrical dance expression.

This is very new work; the authors of the articles first presented
versions of their works at a conference held at the University of
Calgary in 1999. They are clearly passionate in their mission to
transform dance writing from coffee-table book status into a serious and
unique form of arts scholarship.