This book traces history of salsa dance over three locations (New York, Los Angeles, and South Florida). It provides a fully integrated approach to dance and music history and addresses the way salsa functions as a commodity.

This study chronicles histories of salsa dance in the United States, starting from its incarnation as mambo in the late 1940s, through the creation of salsa as a musical genre in the 1970s, into the formation of a global salsa dance industry in the 1990s and 2000s. Equally informative for those interested in the dance's changing aesthetics and its relationship to evolving music styles and those concerned with how sociopolitical issues related to race, class, ethnicity, nationality, and gender played into this history, the text considers dance as both an object and an agent of change.

One woman embarked on a dance journey around the world, finding out how each dance tells a story of its country and learning how beautiful life can be when you take the lead. If you could do anything you wanted, what would it be? Aliénor Salmon was working as a happiness researcher in Bangkok when a friend asked her the question that turned life as she knew it on its heels. A novice dancer but experienced social researcher, the Franco-British Aliénor headed west from Bangkok to dance her way through Latin America. As she learns eighteen dances, each native to the countries she visits, she engages with esoteric customs, traditions, and cultures. Through conversations and arduous studio hours, she learns that every step, pivot, and shake thrums with an undeniable spirit of place. And that in a world where we are over-connected but increasingly disconnected from one another, dance offers an authentically human experience. One that allows her to develop tolerance, kindness, truth, and love by holding the hands of a stranger and gazing into their eyes for the time of a song. With her fearless and candid approach, Aliénor will inspire you to take the reins of your own life—and have some fun along the way. In this dance-travelogue, you’ll learn the history and steps of dances like salsa, samba, and tango, enjoy a resplendent meditation on happiness and wanderlust, and receive a life-affirming answer to the question: How do I take the first step?

"Published with the assistance of the Getty Foundation"--Title page

When rock and roll was transforming American culture in the 1950s and '60s, East Harlem pulsed with the sounds of mambo and merengue. Instead of Elvis and the Beatles, Marta Moreno Vega grew up worshiping Celia Cruz, Mario Bauza, and Arsenio Rodriguez. Their music could be heard on every radio in El Barrio and from the main stage at the legendary Palladium, where every weekend working-class kids dressed in their sharpest suits and highest heels and became mambo kings and queens. Spanish Harlem was a vibrant and dynamic world, but it was also a place of constant change, where the traditions of Puerto Rican parents clashed with their children's American ideals. A precocious little girl with wildly curly hair, Marta was the baby of the family and the favorite of her elderly abuela, who lived in the apartment down the hall. Abuela Luisa was the spiritual center of the family, an espiritista who smoked cigars and honored the Afro-Caribbean deities who had always protected their family. But it was Marta's brother, Chachito, who taught her the latest dance steps and called her from the pay phone at the Palladium at night so she could listen, huddled beneath the bedcovers, to the seductive rhythms of Tito Puente and his orchestra. In this luminous and lively memoir, Marta Moreno Vega calls forth the spirit of Puerto Rican New York and the music, mysticism, and traditions of a remarkable and quintessentially American childhood.

The Palgrave Handbook of Race and the Arts in Education is the first edited volume to examine how race operates in and through the arts in education. Until now, no single source has brought together such an expansive and interdisciplinary collection in exploration of the ways in which music, visual art, theater, dance, and popular culture intertwine with racist ideologies and race-making. Drawing on Critical Race Theory, contributing authors bring an international perspective to questions of racism and anti-racist interventions in the arts in education. The book’s introduction provides a guiding framework for understanding the arts as white property in schools, museums, and informal education spaces. Each section is organized thematically around historical, discursive, empirical, and personal dimensions of the arts in education. This handbook is essential reading for students, educators, artists, and researchers across the fields of visual and performing arts education, educational foundations, multicultural education, and curriculum and instruction.

'Opera After the Zero Hour' argues that newly composed opera in West Germany after World War II was a site for the renegotiation of musical traditions during an era in which tradition had become politically fraught.