Kinetic Cultures: Modernism and Embodiment on the Belle Epoque Stage

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Univ of California Press, Dec 5, 2023 - History - 216 pages
Belle époque Paris adored dance. Whether at the music hall or in more refined theaters, audiences flocked to see the spectacles offered to them by the likes of Isadora Duncan, Diaghilev’s flashy company, and an embarrassment of Salomés. After languishing in the shadow of opera for much of the nineteenth century, ballet found itself part of this lively kinetic constellation. In Kinetic Cultures, Rachana Vajjhala argues that far from being mere delectation, ballet was implicated in the larger republican project of national rehabilitation through a rehabilitation of its citizens. By tracing the various gestural complexes of the period—bodybuilding routines, appropriate physical comportment for women, choreographic vocabularies, and more—Vajjhala presents a new way of understanding histories of dance and music, one that she locates in gesture and movement.
 

Contents

circulations
11
Telling Time
32
identities
55
registers
115
Appendix
155
Bibliography
175
Index
185
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About the author (2023)

Rachana Vajjhala is Assistant Professor of Musicology at Boston University.

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