Dancing Culture Religion
By (author) Sam Gill Series edited by Richard Carp, Rebecca Sachs Norris
Not available to order
Publication date:
03 August 2012Length of book:
250 pagesPublisher
Lexington BooksISBN-13: 9780739174746
In this provocative study of dancing, Sam Gill examines the interpretive styles of a variety of cultural dance traditions in discourse with the philosophic traditions of Schiller, Merleau-Ponty, Barbaras, Derrida, Leroi-Gourhan, and Baudrillard. As a scholar of religion, Gill provides special consideration to the importance of this emerging appreciation of dancing as a perspective inclusive of body and experience. Each chapter delves into the many factions of dancing: moving, gesturing, self-othering, playing, seducing, and masking. Gill also draws on the analysis of contemporary dance films and musicals, his experience as a dancer and dance teacher, his extensive research on dance traditions, and his interest in neurobiology and phenomenology to develop the core of this rich exploration of “dancing,” the structurality of all dances.
Sam Gill leads us in a playful and provocative dance, weaving gracefully between the oft-estranged partners of Western “mind” and “body” to draw out tantalizing, seductive glimpses of person moving, engaging—dancing—with the world. Dancing Culture Religion is a work long overdue that promises to move discussion in our field in new and exciting directions.