I have been fortunate to work with children and youth extensively in my life: from volunteering extra lessons with orphans at Mount Mellary Primary in Zimbabwe, teaching graphic design and literature with the Breakthrough Collaborative in Florida, or English as a Second Language (ESL) through art with Summerbridge in Hong Kong, building orphanages in Cambodia and Sri Lanka, to arts camps … [Read more…]
Book Review – Sweating Saris: Indian Dance as Transnational Labor by Priya Srinivasan Priya Srinivasan. Sweating Saris: Indian Dance as Transnational Labor. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2011. 238pp. $29.95 (paperback) ISBN 9781439904299. Srinivasan performs a materialist reading of bharatnatyam as a world dance practice. The labor of the dancing body manifests as the sweating sari. Sweating Saris centers labor and … [Read more…]
Book Review – Ballroom, Boogie, Shimmy Sham, Shake: A Social and Popular Dance Reader edited by Julie Malnig Malnig, Julie, ed. Ballroom, boogie, shimmy sham, shake: a social and popular dance reader. University of Illinois Press, 2009. 392 pages, $75 (hdcvr), $25 (pbk) Malnig’s anthology defines a space for scholarly research into the cultural significance of popular dance … [Read more…]
With glistening bodies, thrusting jabs into space above and ahead, with undulations and precise isolations of body parts, their young bodies inscribe a knowing and a meaning that only them and their peers can grasp. As an audience member, perhaps you will observe recurrences of facial micro-expressions on the dancers; expressions of peacefulness and other-worldliness. … [Read more…]