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Dancing Jewish: Jewish Identity in American Modern and Postmodern Dance

Online ISBN:
9780199375851
Print ISBN:
9780199791767
Publisher:
Oxford University Press
Book

Dancing Jewish: Jewish Identity in American Modern and Postmodern Dance

Rebecca Rossen
Rebecca Rossen

Assistant Professor, Department of Theater and Dance

University of Texas at Austin
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Published online:
19 June 2014
Published in print:
3 June 2014
Online ISBN:
9780199375851
Print ISBN:
9780199791767
Publisher:
Oxford University Press

Abstract

While Jews are commonly referred to as the “people of the book,” American Jewish choreographers have consistently turned to dance as a means to articulate personal and collective identities; tangle with stereotypes; advance social and political agendas; and imagine new possibilities for themselves as individuals, artists, and Jews. Dancing Jewish delineates this rich history, demonstrating that Jewish choreographers have not only been vital contributors to American modern and postmodern dance, but they have also played a critical and unacknowledged role in the history of Jews in the United States. By examining the role that dance has played in the struggle between Jewish identification and integration into American life, the book moves across disciplinary boundaries to show how cultural identity, nationality, ethnicity, and gender are formed and performed through the body and its motions. A choreographer as well as a historian, Rebecca Rossen offers evocative analyses of dances while asserting the importance of embodied methodologies to academic research. Featuring over fifty images, a companion website, and key works from 1930 to 2005 by a wide range of artists—including David Dorfman, Dan Froot, David Gordon, Hadassah, Margaret Jenkins, Pauline Koner, Dvora Lapson, Liz Lerman, Victoria Marks, Sophie Maslow, Anna Sokolow, and Benjamin Zemach—Dancing Jewish offers a comprehensive framework for interpreting performance and establishes dance as a crucial site in which American Jews have grappled with cultural belonging, personal and collective histories, and the values that bind and pull them apart.

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