I explore the complex interplay between dancer identity and dancer-clinician communication in the context of illness or injury, drawing on qualitative interviews with former professional dancers whose careers were prematurely ended. I highlight how systemic power imbalances in the dance ethos foster habitual deference. Many dancers feel misunderstood and unheard by clinicians unfamiliar with their unique needs. The narrative approach reveals the profound biographical disruption caused by career loss, compounded by inadequacies in conventional approaches to medical consultation. The study underscores the importance of empathetic, bilateral communication, and advocates for reform in the dance profession and clinical education, proposing that dancers be empowered with better knowledge of their bodies and that clinicians cultivate greater understanding of dance-specific issues. Ultimately, the article calls for a reimagining of Dance Medicine as a collaborative, prestigious field capable of addressing the nuanced challenges faced by this specialised population.
In 1958, the Beijing Dance School mounted a full-length production of Swan Lake. Despite Chinese pride in this milestone, the work is all but ignored in histories of Chinese dance, limiting its broader recognition. Drawing on primary sources, memoirs, interviews and ballet histories, this article frames Swan Lake as a dance achievement adhering to a political timetable. It analyzes the government's role in bringing the ballet to life and reconstructs the production process. Finally, it seeks to contribute to a decentred history of the ballet that acknowledges its ubiquity
Maximilien Gardel's ballet Mirsa (1779) takes place on an unidentified French colonial island in the Americas. This popular ballet was restaged and reworked across Europe, as well as in the French provinces (including in port cities), the French Antilles, and eventually the United States. This article documents the movement of three dancers who played key roles in its transmission: Alexandre Placide, Jean-Baptiste Francisqui, and Suzanne Th & eacute;odore Taillandet (Douvillier), within the French colonial empire and in the diaspora. Ultimately, it takes Mirsa as a case study to examine how representations of race and nationality were adapted to the racial and political dynamics of the new setting of the United States.
The article examines how Black artists from the Global South reconfigure Western canonical works through artistic practice. Focusing on Dada Masilo's The Sacrifice (2021), her reinterpretation of The Rite of Spring, it explores how the piece challenges canonical hierarchies by centering Southern African cosmologies. Drawing on postcolonial theory, African philosophy and performance studies, the article argues that Masilo's choreography operates as a practice of self-writing, constituting African subjects ontologically rather than merely responding to colonial frameworks. The analysis identifies three philosophical principles - communalism, ritual and ancestrality - that shape the work's structure, generating a performative third space where contemporary African identities emerge beyond Western onto-epistemological constraints.
This article examines the pedagogical value of Contact Improvisation (CI) as a means of cultivating embodied learning in children in primary education. Within many contemporary schooling systems, where a persistent divide remains between intellect and emotion, there is an urgent need for pedagogies that recognise the body as a primary site of lived experience - essential for understanding the world and engaging with others. Drawing on progressive education, phenomenology, and cognitive science, this study highlights the impact of CI on children's somatic, social-emotional, and cognitive development. The findings contribute to current discussions in dance education, supporting the view that embodied knowledge enhances children's holistic development in democratic and socially responsive learning environments.
This is the second of a two-part article looking at the dance holdings in the Victoria and Albert Museum (VGA). While the first part was a general survey, this part focuses upon the important holdings on various companies described under the loose category of 'Ballets Russes' or 'Ballet Russe'. Material on Diaghilev's Ballets Russes1911-1929 is particularly strong but there are also rich collections on the Colonel de Basil and Ren & eacute; Blum/Denham companies and on Anna Pavlova and her company. In addition, there are many less-highly-profiled companies, some of which survived for only short periods of time. With the opening of the VGA East Storehouse which makes the material more accessible, this article introduces researchers to what exists and reminds them of the varied locations in which they will be found. Catalogue numbers are included in the text to assist researchers. For more general readers, images of many of the objects may be found by typing the catalogue numbers into Explore the Collections VGA.
This article surveys the life and career of the dancer-actress Evered Laguerre (1702-1739), a leading dancer on the early eighteenth-century London stage. Trained by John Thurmond Junior, she spent much of her career at the Lincoln's Inn Fields and Covent Garden theatres managed by John Rich. The article analyses the roles she danced in Rich's pantomimes and investigates her repertoire of entr'acte dances. It also looks at her partnerships with the leading male dancers in Rich's company. Mrs Laguerre danced alongside Marie and Francis Sall & eacute; when they appeared in London and the article considers the working relationships they may have had.
This article examines the challenges and possibilities of teaching dance history in Western Europe through a pedagogical approach that both teaches and unteaches the canon. Drawing on my experiences as a dance history lecturer, I explore how such engagement with the canon enables students to develop essential skills in performance analysis. Through discussion of historiographical critiques, contemporary performances, and pedagogical strategies, I argue that wrestling with the canon is necessary not only for historical awareness but also for fostering a more inclusive, critical, and methodologically expansive approach to dance studies. Ultimately, (un)teaching the canon serves as a tool for reimagining the field and shaping future dance scholars and artists.
This article explores the significance of theatre dance material found in various collections of British 20th century personal and private papers. It details discoveries made in these collections and how this sheds new light on British theatre dance of the first half of the twentieth century. closes with a case study on the dancer Maud Allan to demonstrate how archival data from nondance archives can reshape our understanding of dance history and provide valuable insights for advancing dance studies research.
In December 2023, the art collective NUL hosted in Milan a queer Electronic Dance Music event which included the sema ritual performance of a Mevlevi dervish ensemble from Turkey. Approaching this specific event through autoethnography and performance analysis, this essay demonstrates how over the last decades Sufi practices traversed geographical and social boundaries. By describing how the sema penetrated pop music, contemporary opera, and queer nightlife subcultures in Italy, this study expands current scholarly understandings of the contemporary circulation of Sufism and its neo-orientalist entanglements in global performance and the nightlife industries.
This essay examines Margaret Morris's development as an innovative choreographer from 1910 to her 1917 piece Angkorr. Using archival material, it traces her involvement with networks of modernist painters, writers, and musicians, particularly through the Margaret Morris Club in Chelsea during the 1914-18 war. It examines the lack of support for modern dance in Britain and for the more avant-garde art of the Chelsea network, which caused modern dance and progressive visual art in Britain to go into decline after 1918. It argues, however, that in 1917, Morris was the most innovative choreographer in Britain.
This is the first of a two-part article looking at the dance holdings in the Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A). The V&A is Britain’s leading repository for theatre collections, of which dance is a significant element. The second part will focus specifically on the V&A’s world-renowned Ballets Russes material which is the most heavily used part of the dance collection. This article both adds information on the history of the collections and discusses acquisitions, since the last overall accounts of the Victoria and Albert Museum’s holdings were included in this ‘Archives of the Dance’ series over thirty years ago. It looks at the changing fortunes of the museum and its development. The focus is on the ever-growing range of its collections, which will once again become available to the public in 2025. Catalogue records for much of the material in the collection may be seen online in ‘Explore the Collections’ and the forthcoming ‘Search the Archives’ available on the V&A’s website. Object numbers and archive references are included in the article to assist researchers.
