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Digging the Africanist Presence in American Performance Dance and Other Contexts
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Book Code: GM9684
ISBN: 0-313-29684-7
ISBN-13: 978-0-313-29684-0
224 pages
Greenwood Press
Publication: 5/30/1996
List Price: $115.00 (UK Sterling Price: £65.00)
Availability: Out of stock
Media Type: Hardcover
Also Available: Paperback
Trim Size: 6 1/8 x 9 1/4
Subjects:
Series Title: Contributions in Afro-American and African Studies
Series Number: 179
Reviews:
  • [This book] takes on the interesting subject of how the African American culture has made a difference to art in America--what this difference is and how it is manifest. Gottschild's subject is the saturation of America with the African....Gottschild focuses on dance but includes the minstrel stage, jazz, vaudeville, Gangsta Rap, the 19th-century 'Hottentot Venus' (the pejoratively named African woman who was brought to England and displayed as a freak), performance criticism, and Native American powwow. A freewheeling writer, Gottschild often segues into a general discussion of racism and its impact on the performing arts in pointing out the locations of African influence in American performance....[a] welcome addition to a burgeoning literature on African American performance. Recommended for all academic collections.

    Choice
  • Brenda Dixon Gottschild's brilliant Digging the Africanist Presence in American Literature walks a line between anecdotal revelation and researched historical postulation as it traces cultural trends in dance and performance....Gottschild packs loads of inventive theorizing into this slim offering....[A] major accomplishment.
    —DCA News
  • [E]xcellent work....[H]elps us understand the role of "stealin' steps" in the process of perpetuating the traditions of African American vernacular and choreographed dance and how stealing steps has obscured the importance of African American dance for all of American culture. Like all original and creative works,...Gottschild increase[s] our knowledge and provide[s] leads for other scholars to follow.
    —American Quarterly
  • Endorsement From
    Sterling Stuckey, Presidential Chair
    Professor of History and Religious Studies
    University of California, Riverside:
    Brenda Dixon Gottschild makes a powerful case for an African presence in modern American ballet and in dance generally, and...brings the black aesthetic, in theoretical terms, ever nearer one's reach. [This text is] a dance of the intellect.
  • Endorsement From
    Lawrence W. Levine, Margaret Byrne Professor of History, Emeritus
    University of California, Berkeley:
    Written with dynamism, passion, and perception on a subject of central importance to all of us, this powerful book makes us ponder issues we took for granted. It deserves a broad readership.
  • Endorsement From
    Yvonne Daniel, Associate Professor of Dance Anthropology
    Smith College and the Five College Dance Consortium:
    Dr. Dixon Gottschild's voice is convincing because of her eclectic documentation and it is touching as well because of the human experiences the reader is drawn into within the related responses of her students, her colleagues, herself, and her antagonists. She is always clear about specific objectives, leaving tempting tangents, yet incorporating the thinking of scholars and learned others in multiple disciplines--definitely in a creole mode that is rich, colorful, and not easily discounted.
Description: This ground-breaking work brings dance into current discussions of the African presence in American culture. Dixon Gottschild argues that the Africanist aesthetic has been "invisibilized" by the pervasive force of racism. This book provides evidence to correct and balance the record, investigating the Africanist presence as a conditioning factor in shaping American performance, onstage and in everyday life. She examines the Africanist presence in American dance forms particularly in George Balanchine's Americanized style of ballet, (post)modern dance, and blackface minstrelsy. Hip hop culture and rap are related to contemporary performance, showing how a disenfranchised culture affects the culture in power.
Table of Contents:
  • Acknowledgments
  • Introduction
  • Up from Under: The Africanist Presence
  • First Premises of an Africanist Aesthetic
  • Don't Take Away My Picasso: Cultural Borrowing and the Afro-Euro-American Triangle
  • Barefoot and Hot, Sneakered and Cool: Africanist Subtexts in Modern and Postmodern Dance
  • Stripping the Emperor: George Balanchine and the Americanization of Ballet
  • Past Imperfect: Performance, Power, and Politics on the Minstrel Stage
  • Dance and Theater in a Multicultural Context: Who Stole the Soul, Who Takes the "Rap," or Free To Be You and Me?
  • Illustrations
  • References
  • Index
LC Card Number: 95-20558
LCC Class: PN1590
Dewey Class: 791
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