Promotions - Choice's Outstanding Academic Titles 2023 -

This expansion of Hill's study of the Brotherhood in Rhythm updates the fascinating biographical information and the chronology of the original edition (CH, Nov'00, 38-1488), and also delves deeper into the Nicholas Brothers's (Fayard,1914-2006, and Harold, 1921-2000) history and artistic milieu, constant confrontations with systematic racism, and musicality, and the genius of their act and contributions to dance. The methodologies Hill (Hampshire College) uses in this edition bring the Nicholas Brothers into sharper focus. There are additional archival source materials and interviews with the Nicholas Brothers, their family, friends, and audiences. Those with limited dance background will find that the book is accessible and offers plentiful photographs throughout, showing the duo during their most acrobatic tap dancing acts and also working with musical figures such as Count Basie. This book complements other resources on tap dance, e.g., Hill's Tap Dancing America: A Cultural History (CH, Jun'10, 47-5557, illustrated edition 2014) and Brian Seibert's What the Eye Hears: A History of Tap Dancing (CH, Dec'16, 54-1641). An invaluable resource for those interested in tap dance from the Harlem Renaissance and swing era to bebop.Summing Up: Highly recommended. Lower-division undergraduates through faculty; professionals; general readers.

In this book, her second, Shea Murphy (Univ. of California, Riverside) extends a trajectory she began in her first book, The People Have Never Stopped Dancing: Native American Modern Dance Histories (CH, Jun'08, 45-5492). She deepens discussions regarding Indigenous knowledge grounded in relationality and the ways such understandings permeate current Indigenous dance practices. Sharing examples from some 20 years of research--including conversations with Indigenous dancers and communities in Aoteroa, Australia, and North America--Shea Murphy presents important perspectives. She asserts the importance of the voices of Indigenous dance artists within the larger field of dance studies. Writing as a non-Indigenous scholar, she documents, in dialogue with her Indigenous colleagues, practices that re-center their creative projects in opposition to past colonialist norms. The author draws on and incorporates arguments from other decolonizing writing in dance theory, anthropology, and philosophy. She investigates ways indigenous environments and creations manifest in California, Minnesota, New York, and Ontario, as well as Aoteroa. The widely varied contexts demonstrate the vibrancy of current respectful, relational, Indigenous choreographies. Inclusion of writing by and interviews with Indigenous collaborators further supports the author's approach. Useful notes and an extensive bibliography ground and augment the text. Helpful photos are included. Valuable for scholars of dance, Indigenous studies, and anthropology.Summing Up: Highly recommended. Graduate students, researchers, faculty.

Leiter (emer., Brooklyn College) is well known as one of the foremost scholars of Kabuki. In the present volume, he offers a fascinating glimpse of the cross-cultural moment when Japan opened to the West after the Meiji Restoration (1868) and "foreigners" encountered Kabuki for the first time. Including some 40 first-person accounts dating from 1859 to 1912, the anthology comprises six chronological sections and provides a kaleidoscopic view of Kabuki through non-Japanese eyes. The individual pieces are fascinating, but the value of the anthology is greater than the sum of its parts because of the variety and depth of the individual essays and Leiter's erudition and strong, clearly written commentary. The book is equally intriguing for the range of its authors/observers: Americans, Europeans, Australians. Who were they? Why were they in Japan? What do their impressions of Kabuki reveal about them? This brilliant book will be an invaluable resource for scholars of Japanese theater and for those interested in history, intercultural encounters, and changing cultural perceptions.Summing Up: Essential. Lower-division undergraduates through faculty and professionals; general readers.

Koplowitz's On Site is a fantastic book for seasoned veterans, novice collaborators, and all those in between. Call the book an encyclopedic how-to textbook; call it a thoughtful methodological study; call it a thorough guidebook; call it a template. It qualifies as any or all of those. Organized in seven parts, the 19 chapters are marked by Koplowitz's candid, clear prose, which communicates the confidence and the humility one would expect from an artist with more than three decades of experience on which to draw. One of Koplowitz's more impactful ruminations comes in chapter 14, "Creating for Physically Integrated Casts and Accessibility," in which Koplowitz recounts the personal journey he took in creating Occupy (2017) alongside AXIS Dance Company. One of the chapter's closing thoughts is that public site work "is about many things, including accessibility, and what better way to communicate that concept than with a cast that reflects all parts of [the] community and society" (p. 223). The $40 price point of the paperback makes the volume easily available to contemporary students and working performers alike, which is a great thing to see with such a vital resource. This excellent volume will be an invaluable tool for those interested in the vast stage, film, and site repertoire Koplowitz has amassed during his career.Summing Up: Essential. Lower-division undergraduates through faculty; professionals.

Langman is a professional freelance theater designer, and in this book he provides a fascinating, insightful look at theatrical design. He investigates all aspects of theatrical design, including its purpose, the various elements of production, and the extensive mechanics involved, and he elaborates on what being a designer takes. Throughout the book's nine chapters, Langman encourages designers to not simply go through the motions of designing for theater but to go beyond the mechanics of the work. Writing in an easy storytelling style, the author includes his personal experiences and descriptive examples of his amazing theatrical designs. He provides a thoughtful ten-page postscript and after that a section highlighting key points discussed throughout the book, aiding readers in referencing specific principles and definitions central to the book as a whole. An excellent read for anyone aspiring to be or currently working as a theatrical designer.Summing Up: Highly recommended. Lower-division undergraduates through faculty and professionals.

The multidisciplinary field of hip-hop studies emerged in the early 2000s with the publication of several foundational works detailing hip-hop culture, for example That's the Joint!: The Hip Hop Studies Reader, ed. by Murray Forman and Mark Anthony Neal (2004), and Jeff Chang's Can't Stop, Won't Stop: A History of the Hip-Hop Generation (2005). Yet hip-hop dance remains largely absent from the available literature. To address this absence, Fogarty and Johnson compiled the first collection of academic writings on the developing field of hip-hop dance studies. Contributions are from practitioners and scholars and are organized into thematic sections devoted to legacies and traditions, methodologies, identities, spaces, and health. Combinations of participant observation, ethnography, and oral history are used throughout the book to explore the history of various hip-hop dance styles (e.g., breaking), approaches and techniques in the art form, and gendered stereotypes and racialized perceptions in this space. Serving as an introduction to hip-hop dance studies, this handbook provides fresh voices and perspectives on dance and its role in hip-hop culture.Summing Up: Highly recommended. Lower-division undergraduates through faculty and practitioners.

Why Dance Matters is published in Yale University Press's remarkable "Why X Matters" series, which covers books on an extraordinary range of topics. Among the titles released to date are Mark Tushnet's Why the Constitution Matters (CH, Nov'10, 48-1753), Eric Rauchway's Why the New Deal Matters (CH, Dec'21, 59-1157), Paul Freedman's Why Food Matters (CH, May'22, 59-2737), and Nicholas Delbanco's Why Writing Matters (CH, Nov'20, 58-0649). Aloff is an editor, a journalist, an essayist, and a dance critic, and in her contribution to the series she analyzes the significance and relevance of dance through the lenses of storytelling and her personal experience. Dance is Aloff's passion, and she presents an enthusiastic cerebral perspective on the value and significance of performance dance and dance as a cultural event. She describes and praises the work of people who choose to teach dance, often under difficult conditions and with little pay or recognition. She also honors the dedication of the non-dancing individuals who make dance possible. This book will inspire students interested in dance as well as those who teach and support it.Summing Up: Essential. Lower- and upper-division undergraduates, graduate students, professionals, and general readers.