Dance on Screen: Genres and Media from Hollywood to Experimental Art

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

Dance on Screen is a comprehensive introduction to the rich diversity of screen dance genres. It provides a contextual overview of dance in the screen media and analyzes a selection of case studies from the popular dance imagery of music video and Hollywood, through to experimental art dance. The focus then turns to video dance, dance originally choreographed for the camera. Video dance can be seen as a hybrid in which the theoretical and aesthetic boundaries of dance and television are traversed and disrupted. This new paperback edition includes a new Preface by the author covering key developments since the hardback edition was published in 2001.

Table of contents provided by Syndetics

• Part 1 Dance on Screen: A Contextual Framework
• Visual Culture in the Late Twentieth Century
• Histories of Dance on Screen
• Screen Dance and Critical Perspectives
• A Focus on Screen Dance Practitioners
• That Live Body and the Screen Body: A Technical Comparison
• Images of Dance in the Screen Media
• Hollywood Dance Films: Popular Representations of Dance
• Television Advertising and Dancing Bodies
• Dance and Pop Music Video: A Musicology of the Image
• The Translation of Theatre Dance to Screen
• Early Dance for the Camera
• Part 3 Video Dance: Televisualizing the Dancing Body
• An Introduction to Video Dance
• Manipulating the Dancing Body on Screen
• Choreographic Content in Video Dance
• The Dance of the Camera and the Cut
• Part 4 Postmodern Dance Strategies on Television
• Dance, Television and Postmodernism
• Breaking the Realist Code
• Fragmented Narratives and Episodic Structures
• The Performing Body
• Seizing the Spectator's Eye
• Part 5 Hybrid Sites and Fluid Bodies
• Video Dance and Hybridity
• Video Dance, Television Advertising and Music Video
• The Consumer Body and the Promotional Network
• Discourses of Technology: The Technophobic and Technophilic
• The Mechanical Body
• The Digital Body
• The Fluid Body: Transgression and Disruption
• Part 1 Dance on Screen: A Contextual Framework
• Visual Culture in the Late Twentieth Century
• Histories of Dance on Screen
• Screen Dance and Critical Perspectives
• A Focus on Screen Dance Practitioners
• That Live Body and the Screen Body: A Technical Comparison
• Images of Dance in the Screen Media
• Hollywood Dance Films: Popular Representations of Dance
• Television Advertising and Dancing Bodies
• Dance and Pop Music Video: A Musicology of the Image
• The Translation of Theatre Dance to Screen
• Early Dance for the Camera
• Part 3 Video Dance: Televisualizing the Dancing Body
• An Introduction to Video Dance
• Manipulating the Dancing Body on Screen
• Choreographic Content in Video Dance
• The Dance of the Camera and the Cut
• Part 4 Postmodern Dance Strategies on Television
• Dance, Television and Postmodernism
• Breaking the Realist Code
• Fragmented Narratives and Episodic Structures
• The Performing Body
• Seizing the Spectator's Eye
• Part 5 Hybrid Sites and Fluid Bodies
• Video Dance and Hybridity
• Video Dance, Television Advertising and Music Video
• The Consumer Body and the Promotional Network
• Discourses of Technology: The Technophobic and Technophilic
• The Mechanical Body
• The Digital Body
• The Fluid Body: Transgression and Disruption

Reviews provided by Syndetics

CHOICE Review

In fewer than 200 pages, Dobbs (dance studies, Univ. of Surrey, UK) provides a fascinating overview of the developments in screen media throughout the 20th century. She organizes her concise discussion in five chapters, each with clearly defined subheadings. For example, chapter 4, "Postmodern Dance Strategies on Television," includes five sections that direct the reader to areas of special interest: "Dance, Television and Postmodernism," "Breaking the Realist Code," "Fragmented Narratives and Episodic Structures," "The Performing Body," and "Seizing the Spectator's Eye." The writing is marvelously descriptive throughout--e.g., in an animated discussion of a mayonnaise advertisement--and scholarly discourse provides important perspective on the diversity of dance forms on screen. Unfortunately, not all the artists whose work is referred to in the text are indexed (e.g., missing are Trisha Brown and Pina Bausch) and only nine plates provide visual information to illuminate the volume, which is unexpected in view of the book's relatively high price tag. Still, Dodds has clearly achieved her goal of appealing "not only to the dance community, but also to any scholars, students and practitioners with an interest in media studies, visual culture, film and television, digital technologies, the performing arts and the body as a locus of social meaning." Upper-division undergraduates through professionals. C. W. Sherman emerita, College of William and Mary