The book explores the revolutionary impact of modern dance on European culture in the early twentieth century. Edward Ross Dickinson uncovers modern dance's place in the emerging 'mass' culture of the modern metropolis and reveals the connections between dance, politics, culture, religion, the arts, psychology, entertainment, and selfhood.

You went to your first Contact Improvisation (C.I.) class, or a friend invited you to the weekly jam, and you’re captivated. Or perhaps, you’ve been dancing and investigating for years. What’s next? What discoveries await you in your dance? In 1972, Steve Paxton convened a group of athletes and dancers to research the principles of Contact Improvisation. Since then the form has matured into a worldwide, collaborative experiment with no central control. Everyone who enters adds their findings and permutations to this inherently unfinished dance form. Dancing Deeper Still is a sourcebook of essays on Contact Improvisation, a philosophical treatise, and a handbook. This compilation of 30 years of writings is meant to accompany and support your investigation as you discover new pathways and dynamics in your dancing. It includes chapters on: Contact Improvisation in performance Boundaries and sexuality Political activism Dancing while aging Expanded teaching research notes Advanced skills Whether you are the improviser who savors the slow rivers of sensation...or who delights in spontaneous acrobatics...or any of the bountiful realms in between, this book was written for you. Your discoveries enrich the community-held body of knowledge in our ever-evolving form. I invite you to dance deeper still. Martin Keogh dances, teaches, and researches Contact Improvisation. His love for the dance has taken him to 31 countries across six continents. Keogh was named a Fulbright Senior Specialist for his contribution to the development of the form. Martin spent time in monasteries in Japan and Korea and was the director of the Empty Gate Zen Center in Berkeley, CA before he discovered the world of dance. He is the author of: As Much Time as it Takes and the anthology: Hope Beneath Our Feet: Restoring Our Place in the Natural World. He lives with his family by the Salish Sea in British Columbia. martinkeogh.com

Dancing in the English style explores the development, experience, and cultural representation of popular dance in Britain from the end of the First World War to the early 1950s. It describes the rise of modern ballroom dancing as Britain's predominant popular style, as well as the opening of hundreds of affordable dancing schools and purpose-built dance halls. It focuses in particular on the relationship between the dance profession and dance hall industry and the consumers who formed the dancing public. Together these groups negotiated the creation of a 'national' dancing style, which constructed, circulated, and commodified ideas about national identity. At the same time, the book emphasizes the global, exploring the impact of international cultural products on national identity construction, the complexities of Americanisation, and Britain's place in a transnational system of production and consumption that forged the dances of the Jazz Age.

Dance is more than an aesthetic of life – dance embodies life. This is evident from the social history of jive, the marketing of trans-national ballet, ritual healing dances in Italy or folk dances performed for tourists in Mexico, Panama and Canada. Dance often captures those essential dimensions of social life that cannot be easily put into words. What are the flows and movements of dance carried by migrants and tourists? How is dance used to shape nationalist ideology? What are the connections between dance and ethnicity, gender, health, globalization and nationalism, capitalism and post-colonialism? Through innovative and wide-ranging case studies, the contributors explore the central role dance plays in culture as leisure commodity, cultural heritage, cultural aesthetic or cathartic social movement.

For the Tumbuka people of Malawi, traditional medical practices are saturated with music. Steven M. Friedson explores a health care system populated by dancing prophets, singing patients, and drummed spirits.

From the New York Times–bestselling author of the Kurt Wallander novels: An “absorbing” and “chilling” historical mystery “dripping with evil atmosphere” (The Times, London). December 12, 1945. The Third Reich lies in ruins as a British warplane lands in Bückeburg, Germany. A man carrying a small black bag quickly disembarks and travels to Hamelin, where he disappears behind the prison gates. Early the next day, England’s most experienced hangman executes twelve war criminals. Fifty-four years later, retired policeman Herbert Molin is found brutally slaughtered on his remote farm in Härjedalen, Sweden. The police discover strange tracks in the blood on the floor . . . as if someone had been practicing the tango. Stefan Lindman is a young police officer who has just been diagnosed with cancer of the tongue. When he reads about the murder of his former colleague, he decides to travel north and find out what happened. Soon he is enmeshed in a puzzling investigation with no witnesses and no discernible motives. Terrified of the illness that could take his life, Lindman becomes more and more reckless as he uncovers the links between Molin’s death, World War II, and an underground neo-Nazi network. Mankell’s impeccably researched historical thriller is “a worthy successor to the Wallander whodunits” (The Sunday Telegraph). “[Mankell] never fails to find a deep vein of humanity within the perpetually furrowed brows of his troubled cops.” —Booklist

Throughout history and in contemporary times, people worldwide have danced to cope with the stresses of life. But how has dance helped people resist, reduce, and escape stress? What is it about dance that makes it a healing art? What insights can we gain from learning about others' use of dance across cultures and eras? Dancing for Health addresses these questions and explains the cognitive, emotional and physical dimensions of dance in a spectrum of stress management approaches. Designed for anyone interested in health and healing, Dancing for Health offers lessons learned from the experiences of people of different cultures and historical periods, as well as current knowledge, on how to resist, reduce, and dance away stress in the disquieting times of the 21st century. Anthropologists and psychologists will benefit from the unique theoretical and ethnographic analysis of how dance affects communities and individuals, while dancers and therapists will take away practical lessons on improving their and their patients' quality of life.