_Body Impossible_ theorizes the concept of virtuosity in contemporary
dance and performance through a study of the career of dancer Desmond
Richardson. A virtuoso for the ages, Richardson is renowned for
delivering commanding performances over decades in contexts ranging
from the stages of the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater and Ballett
Frankfurt to featured appearances with Michael Jackson and Prince,
along with his work as co-founder of Complexions Contemporary Ballet,
inaugurating a virtuosic queer black aesthetic with choreographer
Dwight Rhoden. Focusing on Richardson's creative insistence on
improvisatory fun and excellence throughout the decades approaching
the millennium (shaped by Reaganism, the Culture Wars, the AIDS
epidemic, the New Jim Crow, and MTV), this book brings dance into
conversation with paradigms of blackness, queerness, masculinity, and
class in order to generate a socioculturally attentive understanding
of virtuosity. Virtuosity obscures the border between popular and
concert performance, and Richardson's versatility epitomizes the
demands on the contemporary virtuosic dance artist. Author Ariel
Osterweis suggests that discourses of virtuosity are linked to
connotations of excess, and that an examination of the formal and
socio-cultural aspects of virtuosic performance reveals
under-recognized heterogeneity in which we detect ?vernacular?
influences on ?high art.? In doing so, _Body Impossible _accounts for
the constitutive relationship between disciplined perceptions of
virtuosity's excess and the disciplining of the racialized body in
national and transnational contexts.
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Produktdetaljer
ISBN
9780190645847
Publisert
2024
Utgave
1. utgave
Utgiver
Vendor
Oxford University Press
Språk
Product language
Engelsk
Format
Product format
Digital bok
Forfatter