Susan Leigh Foster Knihy

A ground-breaking collection of essays that bring dance into the cultural studies mainstream, exploring the many ways we use our bodies as substantial, vital constituents of cultural reality.

What Pina Bausch was to the German dance scene, Deborah Hay is for the American one. Both are counted among the most influential representatives of postmodern dance. As a founding member of the New York-based Judson Dance Theater, a collective of dancers, composers, and visual artists, her approach was to use amateur dancers to create a formal vocabulary of everyday movements, generating new patterns of perception for audience and performer alike. Her choreographic praxis, along with the constant stream of publications about her methods form one of the pillars of the understanding of contemporary dance. The choreographer and renowned dance historian Susan Leigh Foster selected previously unpublished materials from the Deborah Hay Archive, such as dance instructions, drawings, photographs, and correspondence; complemented by Hay’s own commentary as well as scientific classifications, this book is a multifaceted overview of her dance oeuvre from the 1960s to the present day. DEBORAH HAY (*1941) worked with Merce Cunningham and toured the world with the Cunningham Dance Company in 1964. She has written four books describing her own experimental method for her practice of dance and choreography. In 2015 she was awarded the Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres. FESTIVAL Tanz im August (Dance in August), Berlin August 9–31, 2019 DEBORAH HAY (*1941) worked with Merce Cunningham and toured the world with the Cunningham Dance Company in 1964. She has written four books describing her own experimental method for her practice of dance and choreography. In 2015 she was awarded the Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres.

Outlines four models for representation in dance which are illustrated through an analysis of the works of contemporary choreographers and through historical examples beginning with court ballets of the Renaissance.

The first critical history of French ballet that illuminates relations of politics, spectacle, gender, and narrative.

Challenging the notion of a direct connection between a dancer and their audience, this work explores how sociocultural mores shape perceptions of movement and empathy. It presents a reconceptualization of the relationship between performer and observer, offering significant implications for the field of performance studies. Through this lens, the book invites readers to reconsider how empathy is choreographed and experienced in the context of evolving cultural dynamics.