Dance, Space and Subjectivity

This book contains readings of American, British and European postmodern dances informed by feminist, postcolonialist, queer and poststructuralist theories. It explores the roles dance and space play in constructing subjectivity. By focusing on site-specific dance, the mutual construction of bodies and spaces, body-space interfaces and 'in-between spaces', the dances and dance films are read 'against the grain' to reveal their potential for troubling conventional notions of subjectivity associated with a white, Western, heterosexual able-bodied, male norm.

This book, now available in paperback, contains readings of international postmodern dances, exploring the roles dance and space play in constructing subjectivity and reading dances 'against the grain' to reveal their potential for troubling conventional notions of subjectivity associated with a white, Western, heterosexual, able-bodied, male norm.

List of Illustrations Acknowledgements Introduction PART I: CONSTRUCTIONS OF SPACE AND SUBJECTIVITY Travel Metaphors in Dance: Gendered Constructions of Travel, Spaces and Subjects Transforming City Spaces and Subjects Coastal Constructions in Lea Anderson's Out on the Windy Beach PART II: DANCING IN THE 'IN-BETWEEN SPACES' Desire Spatialized Differently in Dances that can be Read as Lesbian Hybridity and Nomadic Subjectivity in Shobana Jeyasingh's Duets with Automobiles Crossing the (Black) Atlantic: Spatial and Temporal Displacements in Meredith Monk's Ellis Island and Jonzi Di's Aeroplane Man PART III: INSIDE/OUTSIDE BODIES AND SPACES Fleshy Corporealities in Trisha Brown's If You Couldn't See Me , Lea Anderson's Joan and Yolande Snaith's Blind Faith Carnivalesque Subversions in Liz Aggiss's Grotesque Dancer , Mark Morris's Dogtown and Emilyn Claid's Across Your Heart Architectural Spaces in the Choreography of William Forsythe and De Keersmaeker's Rosas Danst Rosas Appendix Endnotes Bibliography Index

VALERIE A. BRIGINSHAW, formerly Professor of Dance Studies at the University of Chichester, UK, includes among her publications co-authorship of Dance Analysis (1987) and Writing Dancing Together (2009).