Journal articles on the topic 'Polka (Dance) – History – Europe'

Aim. This paper analyses the inherent paradoxes of Jewish-Polish relations. It portrays the main beliefs that construct the contradicting narratives of the Holocaust, trying to weigh which of them is closer to the historic truth. It seeks for an answer to the question whether the Polish people were brothers-in-fate, victimized like the Jews by the Nazis, or if they were rather a hostile ethnic group. Concept. First, the notion of Poland as a haven for Jews throughout history is conveyed. This historical review shows that the Polish people as a nation have always been most tolerant towards the Jews and that anti-Semitism has existed only on the margins of society. Next, the opposite account is brought, relying on literature that shows that one thousand years of Jewish residence in Poland were also a thousand years of constant friction, with continuous hatred towards the Jews. Consequently, different accounts of World War II are presented – one shows how the Polish people were the victims, and the others deal with Poles as by-standers and as perpetrators. Results and conclusion. Inconsistency remains the strongest consistency of the relations between Jews and Poles. With the unresolved puzzle of whether the Polish people were victims, bystanders or perpetrators, this paper concludes with some comments on Israeli domestic political and educational attitudes towards Poland, that eventually influence collective concepts. Cognitive value. The fact that the issue of the Israeli-Polish relationship has not been deeply inquired, seems to attest to the reluctance of both sides to deal with what seems to form an open wound. At the same time, the revival of Jewish culture in Poland shows that, today more than ever, the Polish people are reaching out to Israelis, and are willing to deal with history at an unprecedented level. As Israelis who wish to promote universal values, a significant encounter with the Polish people may constitute a door to acceptance and understanding of others. Such acceptance can only stem from mutual discourse and physical proximity between the two peoples.

These excerpts from critical reviewscovering French dance tours in Vienna, Salzburg, and Innsbruck reflect the scale and variety of French cultural engagement and its growing public visibility in Austria. Out of the four Allied powers, it was France, and not the Soviet Union with its “ballet capital,” that made most use of dance and ballet fornation-brandingpurposes, both in sabots and on pointe. France's dance diplomacy exported all genres of dance to Austria in order to portray the politically and militarily weakened nation as arayonnantcultural leader of Europe, whose diversity, supremacy, and grandeur were not undone by 1871 and 1940.

Since the mid-1990s European dancers and audiences have played a significant role in the revival of interest in Yvonne Rainer's dance work. Two key examples of this are the restaging of Rainer's Continuous Project-Altered Daily (CP-AD) in 1996 by the French group Quatuor Albrecht Knust and the more recent creation and trial of the Labanotation score of Trio A in London. In her reminiscences printed above, Pat Catterson suggests that Trio A' s “relaxed natural quality, equality of parts, its tame simplicity, and durational patience may be out of synch with today's Zeitgeist.” During Charles Atlas's documentary, Rainer Variations, Rainer herself suggests today's audiences would no longer be prepared to sit through the long slow works she made during the Judson period. If this is currently the case with audiences in the United States, it is not so on the other side of the Atlantic. European audiences for innovative dance and live art seem prepared to take the time to experience and appreciate slow, demanding, experimental work.European choreographers and dance artists who have been interested in Trio A often have a keen and sophisticated, if idiosyncratic, interest in dance history. Artists I have spoken to suggest this interest helps them build on what has already been done and makes them aware of a broader range of creative possibilities. Some say they find it useful to discover dance artists in the past who were working in ways that are similar to their own practices. For example, Xavier Le Roy, who took part in the 1996 restaging of Rainer's CP-AD, performed the “chair pillow” section from it during his 1999 performative lecture Product of Circumstances. His discovery of ordinary, task-based, and pedestrian movement in Rainer's work affirmed his own research into similar kinds of movement.

How does one dance Shakespeare? This question underpins this collection of six articles, which explore how choreographers have invested space and the playtext’s interstices to transpose them into ballet pieces – whether contemporary ballet, classical or neo-classical ballet, or works that fall under the umbrella term of contemporary dance. The authors delineate how the emotions translate into silent danced movement and highlight the physical, somatic element in music – beyond spoken language. Through the triple prism of dance, music and a reflection on silence, this special issue invites us to reconsider questions of embodiment, performance and eloquence in Shakespeare’s plays.

Abstract In this article, the concept of «black dance» is used as a critical tool to explore the lifelong dance achievements of the black dancer, choreographer and pedagogue Claude Marchant (1919–2004) in relation to history making. Marchant’s history in the US and to some extent in Europe from the 1930s to the 1960s is mapped and analysed, with the aim of better understanding his work in Sweden, and more specifically in Gothenburg. While Marchant is mentioned in previous dance historiographies, there are no in-depth explorations of his life and work. This exploration, therefore, complements both Swedish and international dance research, with an example that problematises history production in relation to black artists such as Marchant. It is argued that a participatory «dance-where-we-dig» method is a useful tool for instigating locally situated historiographical processes of change, and can relate artists such as Marchant to broader, transnational contexts.

AbstractIn the Renaissance there were close similarities between the static choreography of the formal gardens of the nobility and the moving choreographies performed by the members of the court. The principles of order and proportion, the expression of splendour, the geometrical forms, were all fundamental principles of both Renaissance court dance and the formal garden. The patterns in both these art-forms were meant to be viewed from above. This close similarity in design principles between the horticultural and kinetic arts existed right through the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries and continued into the seventeenth century.

The article discusses the study of the teachings of François Delsarte, in which an attempt is made to understand the stages of the origin and development of modern dance in different countries. This teaching spread to two countries: the USA, Germany, then it penetrated into Russia and became the basis for the creation of rhythmic and plastic dance studies. All the ideas embodied in the study of the François Delsarte system served as a good basis for the development of a new dance direction at the end of the 19th century. Today, this new dance direction is known to all of us as modern dance. Each country, having its own customs, worldviews and history, interpreted it in different ways: in the USA it was called modern dance, in Germany - expressive dance, and in Russia - rhythmoplastic dance. These phrases had different purposes: several generations of modern dancers in the USA used their ideas and developed the terminology of modern dance in English. Germany had its own interpretation, but since it was not a widely used international language, the terms did not come into use. Today, in Germany and elsewhere in Europe, these terms are also used in English.

This article explores how the body and dance play a central role in the transnationalization of Candomblé among Afro-descendant people and increasingly for white Europeans by creating a platform for negotiating a transatlantic black heritage. It examines how an Afro-Brazilian artist and Candomblé priest in Berlin disseminate religious practices and worldviews through the transnational Afro-Brazilian dance and music scene, such as during the annual presence of Afoxé – also known as ‘Candomblé performed on the streets’ – during the Carnival of Cultures in Berlin. It is an example of how an Afro-Brazilian religion has become a central element in re-creating an idea of “Africa” in Europe that is part of a longer history of the circulation of black artists and practitioners of Candomblé between West Africa, Europe and Latin America, and the resulting creation of transnational artistic-religious networks.

Interwar French dance and the critical discourses responding to it have until recently been an underdeveloped research area in Anglo-American dance studies. Despite common patterns during the first half of the twentieth century that may be observed between the dance capitals of Berlin, Paris, and New York, some noteworthy differences set the French dance world apart from that of Germany or North America. Whereas in Germany and the United States modern dance asserted itself incontrovertibly in the persons of two key figures—Mary Wigman and Martha Graham, respectively—no such iconic nativist modernist dancer or choreographer emerged in France. Ilyana Karthas's When Ballet Became French indicates the predominance of ballet in France, and this would seem an inevitable consequence of the failure of modern dance to take hold there through at least one dominant figure. Franz-Anton Cramer's In aller Freiheit adopts a more multidimensional view of interwar French dance culture by examining discourse that moves outside the confines of ballet. A variety of dance forms were encouraged in the milieu of the Archives Internationales de la Danse—an archive, publishing venture, and presenting organization—that Rolf de Maré founded in Paris in 1931. This far-reaching and open-minded initiative was unfortunately cut short by the German occupation (1940–1944). As Cramer points out: “The history of modern dance in Europe is imprinted with the caesura of totalitarianism” (13). Although we are somewhat familiar with the story of modern dance in Germany, we know very little about it in France.

Arts have consistently been part of life as well as healing throughout the history of humankind. Today, expressive therapies have an increasingly recognized role in mental health, rehabilitation and medicine. The expressive therapies are defined as the use of art, music, dance/movement drama, poetry/creative writing, play and sand play within the context of psychotherapy, counseling, rehabilitation or health care.Through the centuries, the healing nature of these expressive therapies has been primarily reported in anecdotes that describe a way of restoring wholeness to a person struggling with either mind or body illness. The Egyptians are reported to have encouraged people with mental illness to engage in artistic activity (Fleshman & Fryrear, 1981); the Greeks used drama and music for its reparative properties (Gladding, 1992); and the story of King Saul in the Bible describes music’s calming attributes. Later, in Europe during the Renaissance, English physician and writer Robert Burton theorized that imagination played a role in health and well-being, while Italian philosopher de feltre proposed that dance and Play was central to children’s healthy growth and development (Coughlin, 1990).

Based on the archival material from the Legacy of Sisters Jankovic, which is stored in the National Library of Serbia, this article critically examines Ljubica and Danica Jankovic?s relation to today?s world-renowned dance notation, kinetography Laban. The analyzed archival material includes the transcript of the first edition of Laban?s notation called Schrifttanz in German, as well as several unpublished manuscripts by Ljubica Jankovic. Even though the Jankovic sisters were familiar with kinetography Laban, they (especially Ljubica) were its great opponents. Instead of learning and using kinetography Laban, they developed their own dance notation system in early 1930s and used it until Ljubica?s death in 1974. In this article, the relationship of the Jankovic sisters? dance notation to Rudolf Laban?s kinetography is considered in the context of the wider processes of development of ethnochoreology, traditional dance notations, as well as the history of kinetography Laban in Europe in the first half and mid-20th century.

The European Commission has invested much symbolic capital in sport's potential contribution to European identity, recently stating ‘that sport has a role in forging identity and bringing people together’. Yet such claims must be strongly qualified. Whilst sport is conspicuously present in Europe as an everyday activity, it is elusively variegated in its social and cultural forms and impacts, and historically informed scholarship points to a more sophisticated approach to the understanding of the subject. At the same time, national histories – conceived largely within national frameworks – hold sway in the field of sports history. There is little truly comparative work and this lack allows the European Commission to put out its statements unchallenged. This article proposes a number of ways in which European sports history might be conceived comparatively. It outlines four different models of European sport (British, German, Soviet, Scandinavian), whilst highlighting the problems inherent in such modelling; argues for greater historical depth (e.g. the importance of Italy in the early modern period); warns against the dangers of presentism (e.g. highlighting the proximity of dance and gymnastics in earlier periods); challenges the hegemony of British sport; and champions the cause of a serious consideration of Eastern Europe.

Lloyd Newson has worked in Europe for some twenty-three years with DV8 Physical Theatre, creating powerful socio-political pieces which address sexuality and interpersonal relationships. These works are generally created with performers through workshop processes and collaboratively with composers. London's experimental dance and theatre scenes in the 1980s and early 1990s provided a challenging context for Lloyd Newson's early creative endeavours. Here, Janet Lansdale takes one work, Strange Fish, as the locus of her discussion on narrative positions in relation to dominant forms of modern dance and issues of sexuality, homophobia, and politics within physical theatre. She conceptualizes and contextualizes ‘voices’ as ‘authorial’ and ‘ancestral’, and traces their manifestation in readings of the work. Complementary and sometimes competing voices from author, text, reader, and cultural history are articulated through a range of intertextual perspectives. This is the second in a series of articles on this work. Janet Lansdale is Distinguished Professor in Dance Studies at the University of Surrey, where she was Head of Department, and later Head of the School of Performing Arts. She is the author and editor of four books on dance theory, history, and analysis, the most recent being Dancing Texts: Intertextuality in Interpretation (1999).

Old Spanish Days Fiesta, an annual five-day event held in Santa Barbara, California, since 1924, “… provides an education to residents and visitors about the history, customs, and traditions of the American Indian, Spanish, Mexican, and early American settlers that comprise the rich cultural heritage of Santa Barbara” (http://www.sbfiesta.org). Dance plays a central role, with flamenco in the spotlight as the prime corporeal practice, constructing Spanishness through romanticized and revisionist historiography, and validating European colonization, migration, and diaspora. Although Mexican ballet folklórico is also featured, given the socio-political context in relation to people of Mexican heritage (recent and long-term) in Santa Barbara, I argue that deliberately privileging flamenco as the principal dance perpetuates problematic divisions, validating Europe and simultaneously undermining a Mexican presence.

This paper will look at dance practices of Romanian and Serbian villagers along the Danube Gorge which historically functioned as a natural and political boundary. Opportunities for dancing in all villages in the Gorge are still very common and frequented especially during the summer time. Based on my field research, carried out since 2011, the paper examines the contemporary dance practice of this region. My methodological orientation will be based on the ethnochoreological investigation of diverse repertoires, but also diverse dance structures as "predictable" dance texts designated during previous times as Romanian or Serbian, which are interpolated by the villagers. The notion of geographical place considered in the sense of a distinct "culture area", which, according to Bruno Nettl is grounded in the history of ethnomusicology, but also ethnochoreology, will be challenged by applying Martin Stokes' concept of (geographical) place as a social construction which involves notions of difference and social boundary. The following question will be raised: In what way does contemporary village dancing in the Danube Gorge correspond to the idea of establishing Romanian society as a part of the New Europe? In what way does the current (re)positioning of this historically and geographically distinct territory influence its contemporary dance practice? How is the concept of the ethnic dance (Romanian and Serbian) recognized both by insiders (villagers) and outsiders (the State institutions and scholars) and does this correspond to the new social and political context of contemporary Romanian society?

By using those sources traditionally referred to, as well as introducing a number of new ones, the article seeks to shed light on weapon dances within the Nordic countries, placing them in a European context, the intention being to strengthen<br />the basis for further research into this area within the field of Nordic dance studies and history. Until now, the shortage of material has made it difficult for scholars to place potential Nordic weapon dances within the context of comparable<br />traditions known elsewhere in Europe. The purpose of this article is to attempt to fill this gap to some degree by presenting relevant material of a different kind.<br />In order to demonstrate that weapon dances belong to a deep-rooted tradition of dances and games in Northern Europe, some ancient pictorial sources are exhibited<br />and explained. Furthermore, Icelandic sources that shed new light on the coherence of medieval weapon dances are revealed. The Icelandic material, in other words sources which indicate that people in Iceland knew or knew of<br />weapon dances, are of two different kinds: they indicate first of all that Icelanders used to take part in a dance called hringbrot, a dance which appears to be very similar to descriptions of weapon dances of other nations. Secondly, it seems that<br />they created and preserved in their manuscripts drawings that indicate that they knew about weapon dances as early as in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.<br />The additional material presented here, which is substantial, is now being analyzed and has a valuable contribution to make to the debate concerning Nordic weapon dances. By putting the Icelandic material in connection with more traditional sources from Northern Europe, and in the broader context of Mid and<br />Western Europe, we should be able to increase our understanding of the context and development of weapon dances.

This article is devoted to the history of the origin and rise to the peak of popularity of the operetta genre in the Austro-Hungarian monarchy. This paper demonstrates that, in contrast to French or English operettas with their pronounced political and satirical orientation, the uncomplicated and frivolous librettos of the operettas staged in Vienna and Budapest were demonstrably apolitical. The plots of four operettas — The Bat and The Gypsy Baron (Johann Strauss), The Merry Widow (Franz Lehar), and The Riviera Girl (Germ. Csárdásfürstin, Imre Kálmán) — and the press responses they produced are considered. These works created the illusion of ease of overcoming social boundaries, included a cascade of sparkling, memorable melodies borrowed from different peoples of the multi-ethnic monarchy, and combined waltz, csárdás, polka, mazurka, and gypsy tunes on the stage, relegating differences to the background and making the audience forget about interethnic contradictions. Sweet love stories with happy endings helped audiences to forget that Europe was burning during the First World War. The operetta genre became part of mass culture, and even if its artistic level and value varied greatly from work to work, it proposed a new common cultural metalanguage and did not cut off the path to high musical culture for the masses, but rather straightened it.

According to jazz scholar Howard Rye, when considering public representations of African-American music and those who made it at the turn of the last century, ‘the average jazz aficionado, and not a few others, conjures up images of white folks in black face capering about’. We could extend this to include white minstrels singing so-called ‘coon songs’, which feature reprehensible racist lyrics set to syncopated rhythms. Traditional representations assign the blacks no role in the public performance of these scurrilous ‘identities’, which essentially banished them from the literature as participating in careers in the performing arts. As a result of the problems with the representation of blacks in texted music from the turn of the century, historians have tended to write vocal performance out of the pre-history of jazz, in favour of the purely instrumental ragtime. However, recent research reveals that African-American vocal entertainers did take agency over representations of themselves and over their careers, in a space unencumbered by the problematic history of race relationships in the USA. That space was Europe: beginning in the 1870s, and in increasing numbers until the ‘Great War’, troupes of African-American singers, dancers and comedians travelled to Europe, where they entertained large audiences to great acclaim and gained valuable experience as entrepreneurs, emerging as an important market force in the variety-theatre circuit. Above all, they performed the cakewalk, the late-nineteenth-century dance whose syncopated rhythms and simple form accompanied unnatural, exaggerated dance steps. By introducing Europe to the cakewalk, they prepared audiences for the jazz craze that would sweep through the continent after the war and enabled Europeans to experience the syncopated rhythms and irregular movements whether as dancers or as spectators.

The interest for traditional dance research in Serbia is noted since the second part of the 19th century in various ethnographical sources. However, organized and scientifically grounded study was begun by the sisters Danica and Ljubica Janković marked by publishing of the first of totally eight volumes of the "Folk Dances" [Narodne igre] in 1934. All eight books of this edition published periodically until 1964 were highly acknowledged by the broader scientific communities in Europe and the USA. Dance research was continued by the following generation of researchers: Milica Ilijin, Olivera Mladenović, Slobodan Zečević, and Olivera Vasić. The next significant step toward developing dance research began in 1990 when the subject of ethnochoreology was added to the program of basic ethnomusicological studies at the Faculty of Music in Belgrade and shortly afterward in 1996 in the Academy of Arts in Novi Sad. Academic ethnochoreological education in both institutions was established by Olivera Vasić. The epistemological background of all traditional dance research in Serbia was anchored mostly in ethnography focused on the description of rural traditions and partly in traditional dance history. Its broader folkloristic framework has, more or less, strong national orientation. However, it could be said that, thanks to the lifelong professional commitment of the researchers, and a relatively unified methodology of their research, ethnochoreology maintained continuity as a scientific discipline since its early beginnings. The next significant milestone in the development of the discipline happened when traditional dance research was included in the PhD doctoral research projects within ethnomusicological studies at the Faculty of Music in Belgrade. Those projects, some of which are still in the ongoing process, are interdisciplinary and interlink ethnochoreology with ethnomusicology and related disciplines. This paper reexamines and reevaluates the eighty years long tradition of dance research in Serbia and positions its ontological, epistemological and methodological trajectories in the broader context of its relation to other social sciences/humanities in the contemporary era of interdisciplinarity and postdiciplinarity.

This essay traces the theorization of interwar animation through period analogies with painting and dance, paying special attention to the valorization of concepts such as dematerialization and embodiment, which metaphors of visual music and physical kinesthesis were used to promote. Beginning in 1919, and exemplified by her feature-length film Die Abenteuer des Prinzen Achmed (1926), Lotte Reiniger directed numerous silhouette films animated in an ornate style that embraced decorative materiality. This aesthetic set her in uneasy relation to the avant-garde, whose strenuous attempts to distance abstraction from ornament took the form of absolute film, and were screened together at the Absolute film Matinee of 1925. However, their claims for aesthetic integrity were staked on territory these artists largely had in common. By adopting a feminist approach that examines networks of collaboration, publication, and artistic production in Weimar Berlin, this essay reveals Reiniger as an early proponent of haptic cinema in interwar Europe and one of animation's earliest and most perceptive theorists.

The author refers to the Renaissance era – mainly to the Italian region, which is associated with the development of theatrical dance. In Europe, it appeared a little later and French courtyards, mostly became a source of exquisite stylization and baroque beauty of this kind of art. It is noted that such rulers of Italian city-states as L. Medici, M. Sforza, the Este and Gonzaga dynasties began to pay more and more attention to magnificent spectacles. Using approaches and methods of system analysis, the article analyzes the main features of the development of dance from the Renaissance to the Baroque of the XVII century.then to the XVIII century and ballet Romanticism of the XIX century. The problems of transformation of dance vocabulary into the plot fantastic structure of performances and choreographic compositions are considered. As a result, having brought the existing transformations of the fantastic plot in the ballet into a single whole, it is indicated that in this transformation of the plots the connection of the times from ancient mythology to the fantastic refraction of the romantic narrative is revealed. Special attention is paid to the main types of theatrical dances at the court, which contributed to the development of stage choreography. The article also analyzes the main issues of the development of ballet in the period, mainly from the late Renaissance to the XIX century, in particular, the history of the opening of the First Ballet School in Paris, which influenced the composition of the technique of classical dance and the aesthetics of the formation of movements. It is noted that the increase in the level of classical dance technique enriched the artistic potential of ballet and largely expanded its thematic and genre range. As a result of the work, the author draws conclusions about the significant influence of the Renaissance era on the transformation of fantastic plots in the ballet theater of the subsequent time.

The article deals with the life and career path of Serge Lifar, a Ukrainian world-class dancer, choreographer, theorist of choreography, historian and reformer of the 20thcentury ballet, Honorary President of the UNESCO International Dance Council. Serge Lifar was a prolific artist, choreographer and director of the Paris Opéra Ballet, one of the most preeminent ballet companies in Western Europe. Attention is drawn to the fact that pedagogical activity constituted a significant part of Lifar’s work. In 1947, he founded the French Academy of Dance, from 1955 he taught his-tory and theory of dance at Sorbonne University, having developed his own system of ballet dancers’ training and authored more than 20 works on ballet. In the same year, he was recognized as the best dancer and choreographer in France and was awarded the ‘Golden Shoe’. In 1957, he became the founder and rector of the Paris University of Dance. The author emphasizes that Lifar’s creative heritage is huge. He choreographed more than 200 ballets and wrote 25 books on dance theory. Serge Lifar trained 11 ballet stars. Serge Lifar’s style, which he called choreographic neoromanticism, determined the ways of development of the European ballet art of the second half of the 20th century. At the age of 65, Lifar showed his talent as a visual artist. His heritage includes more than a hundred original paintings and drawings, the main plot of which is ballet, dance, and movement. In 1972–1975, exhibitions of his works were held in Cannes, Paris, Monte Carlo and Venice. His yet another passion was books. It all began with Serhii Diahiliev’s personal archive, which included a collection of theatrical paintings, scenery and a library. Lifar bought it from the French government for a one year’s salary at the Grand Opera. In the USSR, Lifar’s name was concealed. Only in 1961, did he and his wife visit it for the first time as the Soviet authorities did not allow him to stage any ballet in the USSR. He always felt he was Ukrainian and ardently promoted the history and culture of his people. In honour of the outstanding countryman, the Serge Lifar International Ballet Competition and the festival ‘Serge Lifar de La dance’ have been held since 1994 and 1995, accordingly. Keywords: cultural diplomacy, art of artistic vision of choreography, Serge Lifar International Ballet Competition.

In Argentina, aboriginal music and dance—as part of what UNESCO has called “intangible cultural heritage“—has been overlooked for a long time. During the construction of Argentina as a nation, especially in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, European-derived societies and cultures were the privileged models in our country. In that period, the national government sponsored the wave of European immigration and, at the same time, the military persecution of aboriginal peoples and their forced assimilation to “Western Christian civilization.” One of the consequences of this history, mostly in the cultural imagination of the urban middle classes, was the pervasive thought that “Argentinians are descendants of the ships”—a popular saying referring to the ships that brought “our grandparents from Europe,” mainly from Spain and Italy.

Margaret Preston, a member of a prominent family from Lexington, Kentucky, attended Bryn Mawr College from 1904 to 1906, initially against her will. Letters between Margaret and her parents while she was away at school reveal a homesick young woman, at first uninterested in scholarship. She complained that the other girls were “ugly and look disagreeable” and that she had bags under her eyes because “Bryn Mawr is a warranted beauty-destroyer.” In her second year, however, as Margaret began to develop academically, she focused less on returning home, beauty, and boys and more on her classes. She ignored her mother's requests for her to leave Bryn Mawr early for Christmas vacation in order to attend a dance, because she would lose credit if she missed class. Although she had earlier told her mother that she would have preferred that her aunt fund a trip to Europe rather than her education at Bryn Mawr, she now suggested that if she stayed four years to complete her degree, she might have a chance to graduate with honors. Apparently, her aunt did not choose to extend her financial support because Margaret stayed only two years. However, she returned home to Lexington a more bold and self-confident woman.

The existence and nature of the seventeenth- and eighteenth-century ballets produced at Jesuit colleges in Catholic Europe, most often in France and German-speaking lands, is better known now, in the United States and in France, than it was several decades ago. Researchers have come to understand much more about the ballets, their motivation and widespread production, and their professionalism. The Jesuit college ballets are a rich nexus of art, theology, philosophy, and culture. Looking again at what we already know reveals questions that need to be addressed in future research. The most fruitful future research is likely to come from scholars committed to interdisciplinary work, including some physical understanding of dance as an art form. As with any phenomenon involving the meeting of an art form and theology, historians of the art form and historians of the theology tend to know and be interested in very different things. And their colleagues, historians of culture, may be interested in yet something else. As scholars approach a variety of possible future Jesuit college ballet projects, this interdisciplinary challenge can illumine more completely the commitments and intentions of the ballets’ Jesuit producers, as well as the ballets’ influence on their surrounding cultures, and the cultures’ shaping of the ballets.

One of the most remarkable features of the past twenty years of scholarship on the Southeast Asian performing arts has been the sparking off of ideas between Southeast Asian-born scholars, whether trained in Southeast Asian universities or overseas, and Western scholars of the Southeast arts who live in North America, Australia, Europe, Japan and elsewhere. In colonial Indonesia (until 1945) and Malaysia (until 1957), research agendas of Dutch and British scholars respectively had complied with the social, economic and political priorities of the colonial powers and associated local court-centred artistic interests, though not always consciously. In Thailand, which was the only country in the region not to be colonized by a European power, Thai scholars had been actively researching their own court performing arts in the late colonial era but were nevertheless influenced by the colonial ethos of the region. In the past twenty years or so, the developing dialogue and contradictions between Southeast Asian and foreign scholars, each with their own partly distinctive assumptions and methodologies based on the priorities of their respective traditions and governments, have resulted in a healthy divergence, convergence, and cross-fertilization of ideas.

The Australian avant-garde raises all the contradictions of avant-garde studies in the present time. Antipodal vanguards in the 20th and 21st centuries would grapple with various aspects of Australian national history, being in various ways and times between East and West, the aligned and non-aligned, the political and geopolitical in poetics. The word “Australia,” from the Latin auster, contains meanings for “East.” Most importantly, the Antipodal vanguard exposes the contradictions of Australia’s imperial-colonial past and the struggle to overcome it. In this essay, I begin with the example of a “Dada” poem that comes from an Aboriginal rain dance, as well as the emergence of Dada poetics from the 1950s to the 1970s. Throughout I keep complexities of history and time at the forefront: what is the worth of a “marginal” national literary history of the avant-garde? What does the avant-garde mean outside Europe or the Euro-US? What can Australian Dadaism tell us about the future of avant-garde studies? Does the avant-garde always lead to nostalgia, or “Austalgia,” a hearkening after the past, as much as a striving toward the future?

The article is devoted to one of the forms of creative synthesis of types of art, which is being actualized in the modern space-time of musical and stage compositions, including through its own historical and genetic code. Singing in ballet appears in the context of art of the early 20th century as a common aesthetic phenomenon. However, music criticism and academic science have not yet provided the explanation of its mechanisms (image-aesthetic, psychological, form-creating, communicative), its overriding tasks in the concepts of modern musical theatre. The experience of problem statement in the field of interpretology provides the relevance of the topic of the article and determines the novelty of the obtained results. The purpose of the article is to reveal the preconditions and content of the functional unity of the art of singing and dance against the background of artistic trends of the early 20th century (starting with “Pulcinella” by I. Stravinsky). The creative tandem of dance and singing has its roots in ancient Greek culture, on which the creators of the French tradition of ballets du court (J.-B. Llully focused. In the realm of «mixed genres» of baroque music, the «golden age» of homo musicus began. The latest history of singing in ballet begins with I. Stravinsky, his «Pulchinelli». The obtained results of the research of the problem “What is singing in ballet — a tribute to history or an invention of modern culture”? First, the presence of the “genetic code” of this phenomenon in the art of Western Europe of the Modern times; secondly, the regularity of the tendency to synthesize singing in the art of ballet as a manifestation of neoclassicism, closely related to the historicism of compositional thinking of I. Stravinsky. The conclusions outline the preconditions and content of the functional unity of singing and dance in the format of artistic trends of the early 20th century: 1) the historical and cultural code of French art (singing — dramatic play — dance); 2) personal self-reflection of I. Stravinsky (his relations on the basis of creative cooperation in the early 20th century later formed a wide range of communication for artists: O. Rodin, A. Modigliani, K. Monet, P. Picasso, V. Kandinsky); 3) imitation of pre-classical, pre-baroque, and ancient folk traditions. In general, the revival of the function of singing in ballet of the 20th century took place on the basis of musical historicism and serves as a mental sign of the birth of neoclassicism.

Bangkok, Singapore, Paris, Vienna, Berlin, St Petersburg – some thirty performers of the Boosra Mahin Siamese Theatrical Troupe toured the world in 1900. Daily newspapers enthusiastically reported on the unprecedented shows of the performers ‘from the land of the white elephant’. After they disappeared from the map of theatre history, in 2010 Thai choreographer Pichet Klunchun ‘revives’ the troupe in his performance Nijinsky Siam. He follows their October 1900 St Petersburg show – the very performance attended by choreographer Mikhail Fokine and costume designer Léon Bakst, who later worked closely with Vaslav Nijinsky. In 1910, Nijinsky's La danse siamoise/Siamese Dance premiered at the Marinsky Theatre, St Petersburg. This article follows the routes of the Boosra Mahin Troupe on the basis of selected primary sources and from a global-historical perspective. In tracing the Boosra Mahin Troupe and their tours, the article not only maps their manifold routings and reroutings, but also advocates for the need for a global theatre historiography that puts past cultural entanglements and connected performance histories centre stage.

perhaps the first digital sample to become well known within popular music was actually a piece of western art music, the fragment of stravinsky's firebird captured within the fairlight computer musical instrument, the first digital ‘sampler’, as ‘orch5’. this loud orchestral attack was made famous by bronx dj afrika bambaataa, who incorporated the sound into his seminal 1982 dance track, ‘planet rock’. analysis of kraftwerk's ‘trans europe express’, also sampled for ‘planet rock’, provides an interpretive context for bambaataa's use of orch5, as well as the hundreds of songs that deliberately sought to copy its sound. kraftwerk's concerns about the decadence of european culture and art music were not fully shared by users of orch5 in new york city; its sound first became part of an ongoing afro-futurist musical project, and by 1985 was fully naturalised within the hip-hop world, no more ‘classical’ than the sound of scratching vinyl. to trace the early popular history of orch5's distinctive effect, so crucial for early hip-hop, electro, and detroit techno, is to begin to tell the post-canonic story of western art music.

India’s Soft Power which is part of Smart Diplomacy or cultural diplomacy in India. India’s soft power diplomacy can be traced back to the time when Swami Vivekananda visited Chicago Parliament of Religion and spoke about Hinduism and India, which attracted many Indians and Foreigners who visited India and learnt about the Indian culture and the Sanskrit, his book on Raja Yoga influenced Western countries to practice Yoga who came to India and visited asharams, India’s main soft powers include spiritualism, yoga, Ayurveda, the world is shifting towards organic method of treatment which has its trace in India. There is culture exchange of arts, music, dance. Indian Diaspora and Young youth are the weapons for the spread of Indian culture across the globe, People are interested in Indian culture and epics of Ramayana and Mahabharat and studying on Kautliya. India literature and craft have received international recognition, countries abroad have included Sanskrit as part of their educational curriculum. India has also emerged has an export of herbs medicine to many foreign countries like Middle East, Europe, Africa etc. and this soft power of India will help in creating a massive influence across the world but before that Indian should have ample knowledge about their own history and culture and languages.

The ways in which the end of life of an animal is understood and undertaken depend on the category of the animal and its position in relation to humans. In this paper, we explore how transformations in human–animal relationality, including practices and cultural conceptions about animals become apparent in the norms and practices regarding the killing of animals. We focus here on rats and cats, species whose position in society has always been liminal, especially between the category of pet and that of pest but also between wild and domesticated. Rats and cats have co-existed with each other and with humans since a very long time and the three species have co-evolved in a constant dance of mutual interests and conflicts. The shared history of this multispecies network reflects in many ways how humans have related to animals in different historical and spatial contexts and how these relations have transformed. By discussing the entanglement of rats, cats and humans in the close connection between caring and killing we wish to highlight the ways in which human–animal relations are manifested in the North of Europe during the 20th century. The specific context of the study is Sweden and Finland, countries that share similar history and cultural characteristics. In our analysis we draw from various data collected in both countries, including written narratives from an nationwide writing collection and historic documents such as the journals of animal welfare societies and documents concerning the extermination of rats.

Although more has been written on the commedia dell'arte than on any other type of theatre, many fundamental questions remain unanswered, and opinions concerning its origins, early history, and definition are surprisingly divergent. It is evident that the term ‘commedia dell'arte’ would become virtually meaningless if it were stretched to include, without qualification, all manifestations of theatrical entertainment which feature characters representing, or deriving from, its stock types; or the full range of theatrical practises offered by the very versatile early comici d'arte, although all are of concern to commedia studies. The commedia dell'arte itself may be broadly defined as a type of professional dramatic performance associated with distinctive stock characters, that arose in mid-sixteenth-century Italy, whose evolving cultural derivatives have spread throughout Europe. Its stock types drew on a wide variety of sources, including mystery and mummers’ plays, carnival masks, street theatre and court entertainment; popular farces and erudite comedy; and have transcended the theatre to play key roles in music, dance, art and literature. The extreme complexity of its continuing interchanges with other cultural phenomena makes precise definition of the commedia dell'arte elusive, and the term itself also resists easy definition because it was coined only in mid-eighteenth-century Paris, two centuries after the type of theatre with which it is associated first came into being.

Abstract The article depicts the intense and at times unpredictable fable transfer in eighteenth-century Europe by tracing the source text of one of the most acclaimed works in Swedish fable history, Anna Maria Lenngren’s “Björndansen” [The dance of the bear]. This verse fable, published in Stockholms Posten in 1799 and bringing questions of literary quality and literary criticism into focus, was classified by the poet herself as “Original.” Twentieth-century scholars have identified a prose fable, “Björnen, Apan och Swinet” [The bear, the ape, and the swine], printed in the same daily paper in 1784 and translated from Spanish, as her probable source text. Eagerness to safeguard the poetical autonomy of Lenngren seems, though, to have restrained scholars from trying to find the Spanish original of the prose translation or to detect its author. Following the trails of French and German renderings of the Spanish fable about the dancing bear, the article demonstrates that “Björndansen” is a skilful Swedish recasting of “El Oso, la Mona y el Cerdo” [The bear, the ape, and the swine], one of the 67 verse fables in Tomás de Iriarte’s innovative Fábulas literarias (1782), a collection presenting a neoclassical poetics in the form of fable. Placing “Björndansen” within this larger international fable historical context, the article also manages, by means of comparative analysis, to throw new light on the literary devices of the Swedish masterpiece.

This contribution aims for a “corporeal reconstitution” (Irigaray) of Sophie Taeuber’s (1889-1943) dance performances at the Cabaret Voltaire and the Galerie Dada in 1916/17. This means that the movements from the static images informing the history of Dada art need to be re-imagined. It implies a rendering perceptible of Taeuber’s trained dancer’s body, its particular movements, and the quality of these movements. Through testimonies of contemporaries, it becomes clear that Taeuber not only dances in a costume or behind a mask but with the mask, the costume and sound poems. The reconstitution of the moving body with the mask thus points at a foregrounding of the masquerade to which she is convicted as a woman. Her mimetic strategy (Irigaray) or playful repetition of the masquerade entails a “radically new mode of relating” (Obler 2009, 223) between human and non-human materiality. Taeuber is not only moving in between puppet and puppeteer, movement and stasis, abstraction and expressivity, performer and mask, presence and absence, but also in between feminine and masculine. The hybrid movements in her mimetic strategy disrupt the binary nature of the oppositional pairs. In dancing the perpetual movement in between dualities, through a patchwork of genres and materials (her drawings, embroideries and tapestries are also driven by kinetic forces), Taeuber not only playfully rebels against patriarchal discourse, but also against the dehumanizing effects of World War One violently raging through Europe.

In 1916 the Russian impresario Sergei Diaghilev (1872–1929) took the Ballets Russes out of war-torn Europe for a tour across the North American continent. The tour was scheduled to run from January to April 1916, with short seasons in New York at the beginning and the end. As it turned out, the company returned for a second tour that ran from late September to January 1917, during which time, however, Diaghilev's former lover and principal star dancer, Vaslav Nijinsky (1889–1950), replaced him as director.In this article I discuss the cultural differences at the heart of the Ballets Russes' failure to conquer America in 1916–1917, and why that failure had to be edited out of history. Specifically, I look at three aspects of the publicity and critical reception: elitism, patriotism, and modernism. The publicists of the company both misunderstood and underestimated their audience, but in dance research, their prejudices have been taken for granted. The “eye-witness accounts” of Diaghilev's employees and the histories of the company written in the first half of the twentieth century have largely gone unquestioned since, but contemporary primary sources of the North American tours tell a different story. By contrasting the first tour with the second, which received less publicity and better reviews, I emphasize the practical experience of touring in the New World and how differently American critics evaluated the achievements of the two Russian directors of the company—Diaghilev (for the first tour) and Nijinsky (for the second).

Ekphrasis is a sub-genre of poetry addressing existent or imaginary works of art. Though now a term in poetics, its cultural roots go back to classical rhetoric, which shows that the two have always been in an osmotic relationship. In a wider context, ekphrasis is also the natural outcome of the traditionally strong bond in Western art between poetry and the visual arts, which Aristotle regarded as imitative arts because both make use of mimetic representation. This close link found its fullest expression in Horace’s famous simile Ut pictura poesis. Different periods of Western art history had different ekphrastic agendas, ranging from Homer’s description of the making of the shield of Achilles in the Iliad to Auden’s ‘Musée des Beaux Arts’ on some pictures by Pieter Brueghel the Elder. Auden may have set the fashion, but as it happened this 16th-century Flemish painter became the favourite muse of a great many other 20th-century poets, in both Europe and the USA. As an illustration of this genre, I present a reading of William Carlos Williams’ s ekphrastic poem ‘The Dance’, which was inspired by Brueghel’s picture ‘The Kermess’. In my analysis I combine the tools of stylistics with those of cognitive poetics, which has embraced the cognitive linguistic theory that any act of language use can potentially be related to some underpinning mental faculty, for example, experience, memory, perception, imagination, and emotion. Along these lines, I try to show how my analysis and reading of the poem’s rhetorical elements, or perceived effects, might be traced to certain underlying cognitive structures such as mentally stored real-world experience, memories and images, genre knowledge, the human delight in repetitive formal patterns, the embodied experience of movement, spatial perception, figure-ground alignments in visual and other sensory perceptions, etc.

Statement of the problem. Nowadays, there has been a high demand for historically informed performance, including in the educational process. However, a young performer often faces not only technical problems, but also a lack of understanding of the performance style. So, the relevance of the topic of the article is caused by urgent needs of modern concert and stage practice related to historically oriented performance as well as by the task of modern music education to introduce the Baroque styles into the educational process of vocal performers. The article offers the experience of musicological reception of the early aria genre using the example of the French “air de cour” as the personification of European Baroque aesthetics. The genre, which is little known to both Ukrainian and Chinese vocalists, is considered from the standpoint of a cognitive approach, which involves a combination of practical singing technology with the understanding of the aesthetic guidelines of the baroque vocal style as an original phenomenon. One of the manifestations of it is the “sung dance” (singing in ballet) as the embodiment of artistic synthesis rooted in the musical and theatrical practice of France during the time of Louis XIV with its luxurious court performances, a bright component of which were “airs de cour”. To reveal the chosen topic it was necessary to study scientific literature in such areas as the issues of performing early vocal music (Boiarenko, 2015), the history and modernity of vocal art (Shuliar, 2014; Hnyd, 1997; Landru-Chand&#232;s, 2017); peculiarities of the air de cour genre, which are highlighted with varying degrees of detailing in different perspectives in the works of European and American scholars: 1) in publications on the synthetic opera and ballet genres in the time and at the court of Louis XIV, in particular ballet-de-cour (Needham, 1997; Christout, 1998; Verchaly, 1957; Harris-Warwick, 1992; Cowart, 2008); 2) special studies (Durosoir, 1991; Khattabi, 2013; Brooks, 2001); 3) monographs on Baroque music (Bukofzer, 1947); 4) reference articles by authoritative musicologists (Baron, 2001, the editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica and others). A study that would focus on the aesthetic principles of the modern vocal interpretation of air de cour as a sample of the early aria genre has not been found. Research results. Air de cour, the origins of which are connected with the secular urban song (voix-de-ville) in arrangements for voice and lute and lute transcriptions of polyphonic vocal works of the Renaissance, was popular in France, and later, in Europe at the end of the 16th and 17th centuries. As part of the popular synthetic theatrical spectacle – ballet-de-cour, which combined dance, music, poetry, visual and acting arts and flourished at the court of Louis XIV as an active means of sacralizing the king’s person, “air de cour” even in its name (which gradually replaced “voix-de-villes”) alludes to the social transformations of the French Baroque era with its courtly preferences. With the transition to an aristocratic environment, the link of the genre with its folk roots (squareness, metricity, melodic unpretentiousness) weakens, giving way to the refined declamation style of musique mesur&#233;e; the strophic repetitions of the melody with a new text are decorated by the singers with unique ornamentation (broderies), which is significantly different from the Italian. The poetic word and music complement the art of dance since air de cour has also adapted to ballet numbers, providing great opportunities for various forms of interaction between singing and dancing and interpretation on the basis of versioning – the variable technique of combinations, which were constantly updated. Vocal numbers in ballets were used to create various musical imagery characteristics. When choosing singers, the author of the music had to rely on such criteria as the range and timbre of the voice. As leaders, the creators of airs de cour used high voices. This is explained by the secular direction of the genre, its gradual separation from the polyphonic traditions of the past era: the highest voice in the polyphony, superius, is clearly distinguished as the leading one in order to convey the meaning of the poetic declamation, to clearly hear the words, turning the polyphonic texture into a predominantly chordal one with the soprano as the leading voice. Hence, the modern performing reproduction of air de cour, as well as the early aria in general, requires a certain orientation in the characteristics of the expressive possibilities of this particular singing voice; for this purpose, the article provides a corresponding classification of sopranos. So, despite the small vocal range and the external simplicity of the air de cour form, the vocalist faces difficult tasks, from deep penetration into the content of the poetic text and reproduction of the free declamatory performance style to virtuoso mastery of the technique of ornamental singing and a special “instrumental” singing manner inherited from Renaissance polyphonic “equality” of vocal and instrumental voices. Conclusions. What are the aesthetic principles of vocal music of the European Baroque period that a vocalist should take into account when performing it? First of all, it is an organic synthesis of music, poetry and choreography. The connection of singing with dance plasticity is inherent in many early vocal works. Hence the requirement not only to pay attention to the culture ofrecitation, pronunciation of a poetic text, understanding of key words-images, which precedes any performance interpretation of a vocal work, but also to study the aesthetic influences of various arts inherent in this or that work of Baroque culture. Air de cour differs from the German church or Italian opera aria as other national manifestations of the psychotype of a European person precisely in its dance and movement plasticity. Therefore, the genre of the early aria requires the modern interpreter to understand the socio-historical and aesthetic conditions of its origin and existence and to rely on the systemic unity (polymodality) of vocal stylistics. The prospect of research. There are plenty of types of vocal and dance plasticity in early arias; among them, rhythmic formulas and dance patterns of sicilianas, pavanes, and tarantellas prevail; movement rhythm (passacaglia). And they received further rapid development in the romantic opera of the 19th century. This material constitutes a separate “niche” and is an artistic phenomenon that is practically unstudied in terms of historical and stylistic integrity, continuity in various national cultures, and relevance for modern music and theatre art.

Popular music is one of the cultural phenomena that has been most shared among the peoples inhabiting the territory of the former Yugoslavia; indeed, considering the persistence of a common popular music culture there even after the break up of the Yugoslav federation in 1991, there is perhaps little in cultural life that unites them more. It was in the 1950s that a Yugoslav popular music culture emerged through the development of local festivals, radio programs and a recording industry, at a time when popular music was also referred to as “dance,” “entertainment” or “light” music, and when jazz, pop and, by the end of the decade, rock and roll were the styles of it that were being listened to in Yugoslavia and around the world. However, the development of a Yugoslav popular music culture at this time was rooted not only in international cultural trends but was also shaped by the domestic and foreign policies that were pursued by the ruling Communist Party of Yugoslavia (CPY), which was renamed the League of Communists of Yugoslavia (LCY) in 1952. Through its cultural, economic and foreign policies, the party sought to define Yugoslavia's position in Cold War international relations, develop a sense of Yugoslav identity among its multinational citizenry, and reconstruct and modernize a country that had suffered some of the greatest losses in Europe in the Second World War—and which had, just before it, been one of the Continent's least developed states, not only economically but also in terms of cultural infrastructure. In the cultural sphere, investments were needed immediately after the war to redress the facts that Yugoslavia had high rates of illiteracy and low rates of radio ownership by European standards, that cultural activities beyond folklore remained the purview of a small urban elite, and that it lacked musical artists, schools and instruments—with great disparities in all of these measures existing between its more developed northern areas (Slovenia, Croatia and northern Serbia) and the poorer south (Bosnia-Herzegovina, Macedonia, Montenegro and southern Serbia). For example, with regards to radio ownership, in 1946 the number of individuals per radio ranged from 40 in Slovenia, 48 in Croatia and 91 in Serbia to 137 in Macedonia, 288 in Bosnia-Herzegovina and 702 in Montenegro, with the average for all of Yugoslavia being 78.

The article analyses the life and activity of Estonian ethnomusicologist and folklorist Herbert Tampere (1909-1975), as well as the research history of Estonian folk songs until 1945, also paying attention to the influence of the Estonian Folklore Archives and its head Oskar Loorits. The historical background to Tampere’s activity is the establishment of independent statehood in Estonia (1919) after Estonians had existed as an ethic minority group subjected to the ruling classes of other nationalities for hundreds of years. The scientific and cultural background is constituted by the development of European folkloristics and ethnomusicology and the increasing prestige of folk music and non-western music in Europe, which contributed to the rise of the cultural self-awareness of Estonians as a nation with oral lore different from Indo-European culture. The approach is framed with the metaphor of life and death, which in Herderian way of thinking corresponded to the growth and fading of a nation and its creation. In the 1930s, Tampere brought into the discourse of the Estonian folk song, seemingly in opposition with the gradual fading of the living lore and complaining thereabout, a turn in writing about it, unexpectedly confirming that the folk song was alive. The older folk song started to disappear from public use in the 19th century, when people lost interest in its performance and the newer European folk music style spread more widely. At the same time, they tried to overcome the national inferiority complex that had developed due to existence as a lower class, as well as the oral culture considered as a sign of backwardness, creating on the basis of folklore a new national-language and valuable European literary culture. To accomplish this, the old, evolutionally lower traditional culture had to be abandoned. Writings about the dying folk song helped to encourage people to collect folklore and create distance with the past. In the 20th century, with the development of Estonian national self-awareness and literary culture and the rise of the nation’s self-esteem, and on the other hand the recession of Eurocentric and evolutionist way of thinking in the world of science, a new interest appeared in the structure and performance of the folk song, and it started to be increasingly appreciated and considered as living. Such changes in rhetoric indicate how reality is reflected subjectively, according to standpoints and circumstances. Considering the fact that in the 19th-century social evolution theory folklore and literary culture were attributed to different development stages of a nation, the nation with low self-esteem, striving for literary culture in the 19th century, could be satisfied with the dead folk song, yet in the 20th century, in the light of new culture concepts, it could be declared alive again. In summary it can be said that the following factors helped Tampere achieve a novel approach to folk songs in his research. 1. Tampere came from a talented and educated rural home, in which music and literature were appreciated and in whose neighbourhood different music styles were practised. His interests and skills were shaped by good education at schools with remarkable music teachers and an early contact with folklore collection at the Estonian Students’ Society. 2. Good philological education from the University of Tartu and work at the Estonian Folklore Archives, becoming familiar with folklore collections as well as other young folklorists and linguists, especially cooperation with Oskar Loorits, Karl Leichter, and Paul Ariste, added knowledge of newer research trends, such as ethnology and experimental phonetics. Maybe, paradoxically, the absence of higher music education, which would have directed the young man towards other music ideals, was positive in this respect. 3. The knowledge acquired of the methods and way of thinking in comparative music science provided a theoretical basis for understanding, valuing, and studying non-western music. Professional work was also supported by the development of sound recording and -analysis. 4. The immediate contact with living folk music already in his childhood and later on, when collecting folklore, elaboration of folk songs in the archives and compiling voluminous publications made this manner of expression more familiar. Tampere must have enjoyed the performance of at least some of the regilaul songs as he mentioned nice impressions and the need to delve deeper; also he recorded, studied, and introduced these songs to the public. 5. The heyday of national sciences and national ideals in the Republic of Estonia valued engagement in folklore as the basis of cultural identity. The first folk music reproductions appeared, such as folk dance movement and runic verse recitals at schools, which was why the issues of performance started to be noticed and studied. Oskar Loorits supervised the study and publication of the most Estonian-like (in his own opinion) folklore – folk songs – and it was probably also his influence that made Tampere study the problem of scansion, to systematize and study folk songs, and compile publications.

By the turn of the nineteenth century ballroom dancing had become a popular social pastime in Europe, North-America and South Africa. The years leading up to the First World War saw a number of South African social dancers, like their Western counterparts, striving to perfect the steps of these imported, ballroom dance routines. Dancers danced partly out of a sheer passion for movement but, more importantly, to maintain and increase their social status within society. Various international and later local dancing organisations were formed to organise and control these dancing events. The creation of these formal bodies unavoidably forced ballroom dancing into a competitive phase that transformed it from a mere social past time to a highly competitive sporting activity.This article will focus on how the founding of prominent international ballroom dance organizations influenced the creation of the South African Dance Teachers Association (S.A.D.T.A.) and how both the British and South African organizations developed competitive ballroom dancing during the 1920s and 1930s. It will also consider the infrastructures required by these official organizations, the shortcomings as well as the determining impact that this had on South Africa’s ballroom dance history. As a result of a number of prerequisites, competitive ballroom dancing is not a sport for the masses, and its formalization in the first half of the twentieth century saw an increased segregation in the dancing halls based on race and class. However, the passion that the 1920 ballroom dancers had for competing laid a firm foundation for the development of dance as a sport in South Africa.

Beginning in the late 1920s, the central driving force responsible for the preparation of specialists for work in the Northern, Siberian, and Far Eastern regions of the Russian Federation has been the Herzen State Pedagogical University of Russia, St. Petersburg (Herzen University), primarily led by the Institute of the Peoples of the North. Here, linguists are trained in twenty-three languages of Northern indigenous minorities. Notably, several languages of these minority groups—such as Nganasan, Dolgan, Itelmen, Enets, Ul’ta—are taught only here. The university also provides training in the field of traditional cultures of indigenous peoples (methods of traditional applied arts and crafts of the peoples of the North; dance and musical folklore; museology, etc.). However, not all experts in Northern studies are aware of the educational programs and scientific schools within the Department of Theory and History of Culture at Herzen University, under which the committee for the defense of doctoral and candidate dissertations has been working jointly with the Institute of the Peoples of the North for thirty years. The chairman of the council, doctor of arts, Professor L. M. Mosolova is the founder of the department and the head of the scientific school for the study of the culture of the regions of Russia, the countries of Northern Europe, and Eurasia. A significant amount of research completed by students—from undergraduate to postgraduate levels—is dedicated to the history and current issues of the various regions of Russia, including Siberia, the Far East, and Northern Europe.

Clauss, Martin / Christoph Nübel (Hrsg.), Militärisches Entscheiden. Voraussetzungen, Prozesse und Repräsentationen einer sozialen Praxis von der Antike bis zum 20. Jahrhundert (Krieg und Konflikt, 9), Frankfurt a. M. / New York 2020, Campus, 496 S. / Abb., € 52,00. (Jörg Rogge, Mainz) Scheller, Benjamin (Hrsg.), Kulturen des Risikos im Mittelalter und in der Frühen Neuzeit (Schriften des Historischen Kollegs. Kolloquien, 99), Berlin / Boston 2019, de Gruyter Oldenbourg, IX u. 278 S. / Abb., € 69,95. (Christian Wenzel, Marburg) Eisenbichler, Konrad (Hrsg.)‚ A Companion to Medieval and Early Modern Confraternities (Brill’s Companions to the Christian Tradition, 83), Leiden / Boston 2019, Brill, XVI u. 475 S. / Abb., € 215,00. (Nikolas Funke, Münster) Das, Nandini / Tim Youngs (Hrsg.), The Cambridge History of Travel Writing, Cambridge [u. a.] 2019, Cambridge University Press, XVIII u. 639 S. / Abb., £ 135,00. (Michael Maurer, Jena) Baumann, Anette / Sabine Schmolinsky / Evelien Timpener (Hrsg.), Raum und Recht. Visualisierung von Rechtsansprüchen in der Vormoderne (Bibliothek Altes Reich, 29), Berlin / Boston 2020, de Gruyter Oldenbourg, VIII u. 183 S. / Abb., € 59,95. (Falk Bretschneider, Paris) Carpegna Falconieri, Tommaso di, The Militant Middle Ages. Contemporary Politics between New Barbarians and Modern Crusaders, übers. v. Andrew M. Hiltzik (National Cultivation of Culture, 20), Leiden / Boston 2020, Brill, XI u. 281 S., € 138,00. (Martin Clauss, Chemnitz) Kitapçı Bayrı, Buket, Warriors, Martyrs, and Dervishes. Moving Frontiers, Shifting Identities in the Land of Rome (13th-15th Centuries) (The Medieval Mediterranean, 119), Leiden / Boston 2020, Brill, X u. 259 S. / Karten, € 99,00. (Mihailo Popović, Wien) Cristea, Ovidiu / Liviu Pilat (Hrsg.), From Pax Mongolica to Pax Ottomanica. War, Religion and Trade in the Northwestern Black Sea Region (14th-16th Centuries) (East Central and Eastern Europe in the Middle Ages, 450 – 1450, 58), Leiden / Boston 2020, Brill, VI u. 321 S., € 105,00. (Markus Koller, Bochum) Jones, Linda G. / Adrienne Dupont-Hamy (Hrsg.), Christian, Jewish, and Muslim Preaching in the Mediterranean and Europe. Identities and Interfaith Encounters (Sermo, 15), Turnhout 2019, Brepols, VI u. 337 S. / Abb., € 90,00. (Sina Rauschenbach, Potsdam) Catlos, Brian A., al-Andalus. Geschichte des islamischen Spanien, München 2019, Beck, 491 S. / Abb., € 29,95. (Matthias Maser, Erlangen) Glick, Thomas F. / Antonio Malpica / Félix Retamero / Josep Torró (Hrsg.), From Al-Andalus to the Americans (13th–17th Centuries). Destruction and Construction of Societies (The Medieval and Early Modern Iberian World, 65), Leiden / Boston 2018, Brill, XIII u. 471 S. / Abb., € 127,00. (Ludolf Pelizaeus, Amiens) Hamilton, Tracy Chapman / Mariah Proctor-Tiffany (Hrsg.), Moving Women Moving Objects (400 – 1500) (Maps, Spaces, Cultures, 2), Leiden / Boston 2019, Brill, XXIX und 346 S. / Abb., € 149,00. (Sabine Klapp, Kaiserslautern) Makowski, Elizabeth, Apostate Nuns in the Later Middle Ages (Studies in the History of Medieval Religion, 49), Woodbridge 2019, The Boydell Press, XIV u. 227 S., £ 60,00. (Christine Kleinjung, Münster) Dickason, Kathryn, Ringleaders of Redemption. How Medieval Dance Became Sacred (Oxford Studies in Historical Theology), New York 2021, Oxford University Press, XV u. 369 S. / Abb., £ 64,00. (Gregor Rohmann, Frankfurt a. M.) Clauss, Martin / Gesine Mierke / Antonia Krüger (Hrsg.), Lautsphären des Mittelalters. Akustische Perspektiven zwischen Lärm und Stille (Beihefte zum Archiv für Kulturgeschichte, 89), Wien / Köln / Weimar 2020, Böhlau, 340 S. / Abb., € 65,00. (Karl Kügle, Oxford / Utrecht) Geßner, Kerstin, Die Vermessung des Kosmos. Zur geometrischen Konstruktion von urbanem Raum im europäischen Mittelalter, Wien / Köln / Weimar 2020, Böhlau, 341 S. / Abb., € 45,00. (Felix Rösch, Göttingen) Hirbodian, Sigrid / Andreas Schmauder / Petra Steymans-Kurz (Hrsg.), Materielle Kultur und Sozialprestige im Spätmittelalter. Führungsgruppen in Städten des deutschsprachigen Südwestens (Schriften zur südwestdeutschen Landeskunde, 82), Ostfildern 2019, Thorbecke, IX u. 148 S. / Abb., € 25,00. (Gerald Schwedler, Kiel) Liening, Simon, Das Gesandtschaftswesen der Stadt Straßburg zu Beginn des 15. Jahrhunderts (Mittelalter-Forschung, 63), Ostfildern 2019, Thorbecke, 245 S., € 34,00. (Klara Hübner, Brno) Serif, Ina, Geschichte aus der Stadt. Überlieferung und Aneignungsformen der deutschen Chronik Jakob Twingers von Königshofen (Kulturtopographie des alemannischen Raums, 11), Berlin / Boston 2020, de Gruyter, X u. 297 S. / Abb., € 99,95. (Carla Meyer-Schlenkrich, Köln) Urkundenregesten zur Tätigkeit des deutschen Königs- und Hofgerichts bis 1451, Bd. 17: Die Zeit Ruprechts 1407 – 1410, hrsg. v. Bernhard Diestelkamp, bearb. v. Ute Rödel (Quellen und Forschungen zur höchsten Gerichsbarkeit im Alten Reich. Sonderreihe), Wien / Köln / Weimar 2018, Böhlau, XCIX u. 531 S., € 90,00. (Jörg Schwarz, Innsbruck) Van Dussen, Michael / Pavel Soukup (Hrsg.), A Companion to the Hussites (Brill’s Companions to the Christian Tradition, 90), Leiden / Boston 2020, Brill, XI u. 453 S., € 199,00. (Christina Traxler, Wien) Kaar, Alexandra, Wirtschaft, Krieg und Seelenheil. Papst Martin V., Kaiser Sigismund und das Handelsverbot gegen die Hussiten in Böhmen (Forschungen zur Kaiser- und Papstgeschichte des Mittelalters. Beihefte zu J. F. Böhmer, Regesta Imperii, 46), Wien / Köln / Weimar 2020, Böhlau, 387 S. / Abb., € 55,00. (Gerhard Fouquet, Kiel) Regesten Kaiser Friedrichs III. (1440 – 1493) nach Archiven und Bibliotheken geordnet, hrsg. v. Paul-Joachim Heinig / Christian Lackner / Alois Niederstätter, Heft 34: Die Urkunden und Briefe des Österreichischen Staatsarchivs in Wien, Abt. Haus-‍, Hof- und Staatsarchiv: Allgemeine Urkundenreihe, Familienurkunden und Abschriftensammlungen (1476 – 1479), bearb. v. Kornelia Holzner-Tobisch nach Vorarbeiten v. Anne-Katrin Kunde, Wien / Köln / Weimar 2020, Böhlau, 315 S., € 50,00. (Jörg Schwarz, Innsbruck) Regesten Kaiser Friedrichs III. (1440 – 1493) nach Archiven und Bibliotheken geordnet, hrsg. v. Paul-Joachim Heinig / Christian Lackner / Alois Niederstätter, Heft 35: Die Urkunden und Briefe des Österreichischen Staatsarchivs in Wien, Abt. Haus-‍, Hof- und Staatsarchiv: Allgemeine Urkundenreihe, Familienurkunden und Abschriftensammlungen (1480 – 1482), bearb. v. Petra Heinicker / Anne-Katrin Kunde, Wien / Köln / Weimar 2019, Böhlau, 197 S., € 40,00. (Jörg Schwarz, Innsbruck) Christ, Georg / Franz-Julius Morche (Hrsg.), Cultures of Empire. Rethinking Venetian Rule, 1400 – 1700. Essays in Honour of Benjamin Arbel (The Medieval Mediterranean, 122), Leiden / Boston 2020, Brill, XXXI u. 484 S. / Abb., € 149,00. (Uwe Israel, Dresden) Lemire, Beverly, Global Trade and the Transformation of Consumer Cultures. The Material World Remade, c. 1500 – 1820 (New Approaches to Economic and Social History), Cambridge 2018, Cambridge University Press, XVIII u. 352 S. / Abb., £ 22,99. (Stefan Hanß, Manchester) Siebenhüner, Kim / John Jordan / Gabi Schopf (Hrsg.), Cotton in Context. Manufacturing, Marketing, and Consuming Textiles in the German-Speaking World (1500 – 1900) (Ding, Materialität, Geschichte, 4), Wien / Köln / Weimar 2019, Böhlau, 424 S. / Abb., € 90,00. (Stefan Hanß, Manchester) Dalrymple-Smith, Angus, Commercial Transitions and Abolition in West Africa 1630 – 1860 (Studies in Global Slavery, 9), Leiden / Boston 2020, Brill, XI u. 278 S. / Abb., € 121,00. (Magnus Ressel, Frankfurt a. M.) Ruhe, Ernstpeter, „Aus Barbareÿen erlösett“. Die deutschsprachigen Gefangenenberichte aus dem Maghreb (XVI.–XIX. Jh.) und ihre Rezeption (Studien zur Literatur und Geschichte des Maghreb, 11), Würzburg 2020, Königshausen &amp; Neumann, 288 S. / € 39,80. (Stefan Hanß, Manchester) Godfrey, Andrew M. / Cornelis H. van Rhee (Hrsg.), Central Courts in Early Modern Europe and the Americas (Comparative Studies in Continental and Anglo-American Legal History, 34), Berlin 2020, Duncker &amp; Humblot, 542 S., € 99,90. (Tobias Schenk, Wien) Enenkel, Karl A. E. / Jan L. de Jong (Hrsg.), „Artes Apodemicae“ and Early Modern Travel Culture, 1550 – 1700 (Intersections, 64), Leiden / Boston 2019, Brill, XIX u. 339 S. / Abb., € 124,00. (Michael Maurer, Jena) Detering, Nicolas / Clementina Marsico / Isabella Walser-Bürgler (Hrsg.), Contesting Europe. Comparative Perspectives on Early Modern Discourses on Europe, 1400 – 1800 (Intersections, 67), Leiden / Boston 2020, Brill, XVIII u. 386 S. / Abb., € 115,00. (Theo Jung, Freiburg i. Br.) Giannini, Giulia / Mordechai Feingold (Hrsg.), The Institutionalization of Science in Early Modern Europe (Scientific and Learned Cultures and Their Institutions, 27), Leiden / Boston 2020, Brill, XII u. 301 S., € 115,00. (Sebastian Kühn, Berlin) Wilkinson, Alexander S. / Graeme J. Kemp (Hrsg.), Negotiating Conflict and Controversy in the Early Modern Book World (Library of the Written Word, 73; The Handpress World, 56), Leiden / Boston 2019, Brill, XIII u. 287 S. / Abb., € 126,00. (Johannes Frimmel, München) Dinges, Martin / Pierre Pfütsch (Hrsg.), Männlichkeiten in der Frühmoderne. Körper, Gesundheit und Krankheit (1500 – 1850) (Medizin, Gesellschaft und Geschichte, Beiheft 76), Stuttgart 2020, Steiner, 536 S. / Abb., € 76,00. (Christina Vanja, Kassel) Widder, Roman, Pöbel, Poet und Publikum. Figuren arbeitender Armut in der Frühen Neuzeit, Konstanz 2020, Konstanz University Press, 481 S., € 39,90. (Anke Sczesny, Augsburg) Bushkovitch, Paul, Succession to the Throne in Early Modern Russia. The Transfer of Power 1450 – 1725, New York 2021, Cambridge University Press, XV u. 397 S., £ 90,00. (Martina Winkler, Kiel) Ordubadi, Diana / Dittmar Dahlmann (Hrsg.), Die ‚Alleinherrschaft‘ der russischen Zaren in der ‚Zeit der Wirren‘ in transkultureller Perspektive (Macht und Herrschaft, 10), Göttingen 2021, V&amp;R unipress / Bonn University Press, 377 S. / Abb, € 50,00. (Martina Winkler, Kiel) Hochedlinger, Michael / Petr Maťa / Thomas Winkelbauer (Hrsg.), Verwaltungsgeschichte der Habsburgermonarchie in der Frühen Neuzeit. Hof und Dynastie, Kaiser und Reich, Zentralverwaltungen, Kriegswesen und landesfürstliches Finanzwesen, 2 Teilbde. (Mitteilungen des Instituts für Österreichische Geschichtsforschung, Ergänzungsband 62), Wien 2019, Böhlau, 1308 S., € 150,00. (William D. Godsey, Wien) Kustatscher, Erika, Die Innsbrucker Linie der Thurn und Taxis – Die Post in Tirol und den Vorlanden (1490 – 1769) (Schlern-Schriften, 371), Innsbruck 2018, Universitätsverlag Wagner, 489 S. / Abb., € 39,90. (Wolfgang Behringer, Saarbrücken) Kurelić, Robert, Daily Life on the Istrian Frontier. Living on a Borderland in the Sixteenth Century (Studies in the History of Daily Life [800 – 1600], 7), Turnhout 2019, Brepols, 230 S. / Karten, € 75,00. (Stephan Steiner, Wien) Neumann, Franziska, Die Ordnung des Berges. Formalisierung und Systemvertrauen in der sächsischen Bergverwaltung (1470 – 1600) (Norm und Struktur, 52), Wien / Köln / Weimar 2021, Böhlau, 411 S., € 70,00. (Tobias Schenk, Wien) Mattox, Mickey L. / Richard J. Serina / Jonathan Mumme (Hrsg.), Luther at Leipzig. Martin Luther, the Leipzig Debate, and the Sixteenth-Century Reformations (Studies in Medieval and Reformation Traditions, 218), Leiden / Boston 2019, Brill, XIV u. 348 S., € 129,00. (Thomas Fuchs, Leipzig) Brewer, Brian C. / David M. Whitford (Hrsg.), Calvin and the Early Reformation (Studies in Medieval and Reformation Traditions, 219), Leiden / Boston 2020, Brill, XIV u. 231 S., € 99,00. (Volker Reinhardt, Fribourg) Nicholls, Sophie, Political Thought in the French Wars of Religion (Ideas in Context), Cambridge [u. a.] 2021, Cambridge University Press, XIII u. 269 S., £ 75,00. (Ronald G. Asch, Freiburg i. Br.) Vadi, Valentina, War and Peace. Alberico Gentili and the Early Modern Law of Nations (Legal History Library, 37; Studies in the History of International Law, 14), Leiden / Boston 2020, Brill Nijhoff, XXVI u. 566 S. / Abb., € 160,00. (Miloš Vec, Wien) Schmidt, Ariadne, Prosecuting Women. A Comparative Perspective on Crime and Gender before the Dutch Criminal Courts, c. 1600 – 1810 (Crime and City in History, 4), Leiden / Boston 2020, Brill, X u. 285 S. / graph. Darst., € 105,00. (Wiebke Voigt, Dresden) Moore, John K., Mulatto, Outlaw – Pilgrim – Priest. The Legal Case of José Soller, Accused of Impersonating a Pastor and Other Crimes in Seventeenth-Century Spain (The Medieval and Early Modern Iberian World, 75), Leiden / Boston 2020, Brill, XVIII u. 359 S. / Abb., € 127,00. (Alexandra Kohlhöfer, Münster) Junghänel, André, Kirchenverwaltung und Landesherrschaft. Kirchenordnendes Handeln in der Landgrafschaft Hessen-Kassel im 17. Jahrhundert (Schriften zur politischen Kommunikation, 26), Göttingen 2021, V&amp;R unipress, 721 S. / Abb., € 90,00. (Lennart Gard, Berlin) Elsner, Ines, Das Huldigungssilber der Welfen des Neuen Hauses Braunschweig-Lüneburg (1520 – 1706). Geschenkkultur und symbolische Interaktion zwischen Fürst und Untertanen, Regensburg 2019, Schnell &amp; Steiner, 256 S. / Abb., € 59,00. (Torsten Fried, Schwerin / Greifswald) Pečar, Andreas / Andreas Erb (Hrsg.), Der Dreißigjährige Krieg und die mitteldeutschen Reichsfürsten. Politische Handlungsstrategien und Überlebensmuster (Quellen und Forschungen zur Geschichte Sachsen-Anhalts, 20), Halle a. d. S. 2020, Mitteldeutscher Verlag, 202 S. / Abb., € 38,00. (Fabian Schulze, Elchingen / Augsburg) Capdeville, Valérie / Alain Kerhervé (Hrsg.), British Sociability in the Long Eighteenth Century. Challenging the Anglo-French Connection (Studies in the Eighteenth Century), Woodbridge 2019, The Boydell Press, XV u. 304 S., £ 65,00. (Michael Schaich, London) McIntosh, Carey, Semantics and Cultural Change in the British Enlightenment. New Words and Old (Brill’s Studies in Intellectual History, 315), Leiden / Boston 2020, Brill, VI u. 222 S., € 95,00. (Christina Piper, Kiel) Bulinsky, Dunja, Nahbeziehungen eines europäischen Gelehrten. Johann Jakob Scheuchzer (1672 – 1733) und sein soziales Umfeld, Zürich 2020, Chronos, 191 S. / Abb., € 48,00. (Lisa Dannenberg-Markel, Aachen) Furrer, Norbert, Der arme Mann von Brüttelen. Lebenswelten eines Berner Söldners und Landarbeiters im 18. Jahrhundert, Zürich 2020, Chronos, 229 S. / Abb., € 38,00. (Tim Nyenhuis, Düsseldorf) Finnegan, Rachel, English Explorers in the East (1738 – 1745). The Travels of Thomas Shaw, Charles Perry and Richard Pococke, Leiden / Boston 2019, Brill, XIII u. 331 S. / Abb., € 99,00. (Michael Maurer, Jena) Décultot, Elisabeth / Jana Kittelmann / Andrea Thiele / Ingo Uhlig (Hrsg.), Weltensammeln. Johann Reinhold Forster und Georg Forster (Das achtzehnte Jahrhundert. Supplementa, 27), Göttingen 2020, Wallstein, 280 S. / Abb., € 29,90. (Michael Maurer, Jena) Evers, Jan-Hendrick, Sitte, Sünde, Seligkeit. Zum Umgang hallischer Pastoren mit Ehe, Sexualität und Sittlichkeitsdelikten in Pennsylvania, 1742 – 1800 (Hallesche Forschungen, 57), Halle a. d. S. 2020, Verlag der Franckeschen Stiftungen; Harrassowitz in Kommission, XII u. 455 S. / graph. Darst., € 69,00. (Norbert Finzsch, Köln) Schmidt, Dennis, Bedrohliche Aufklärung – Umkämpfte Reformen. Innerösterreich im josephinischen Jahrzehnt 1780 – 1790, Münster 2020, Aschendorff, XV u. 621 S. / graph. Darst., € 58,00. (Simon Karstens, Trier) Bregler, Thomas, Die oberdeutschen Reichsstädte auf dem Rastatter Friedenskongress (1797 – 1799) (Studien zur bayerischen Verfassungs- und Sozialgeschichte, 33), München 2020, Kommission für bayerische Landesgeschichte, X u. 562 S. / Abb., € 49,00. (Dorothée Goetze, Sundsvall) Esser, Franz D., Der Wandel der Rheinischen Agrarverfassung. 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One of the greatest joys in watching Foxtel is to see all the crazy people who run talk shows. Judgement, ridicule and generalisations slip from their tongues like overcooked lamb off a bone. From Oprah to Rikki, from Jerry to Mother Love, the posterior of pop culture claims a world-wide audience. Recently, a new talk diva was added to the pay television stable. Dr Laura Schlessinger, the Mother of Morals, prowls the soundstage. attacking 'selfish acts' such as divorce, de facto relationships and voting Democrat. On April 11, 2001, a show aired in Australia that added a new demon to the decadence of the age. Dr Laura had been told that a disgusting video clip, called 'Rock DJ', had been televised at 2:30pm on MTV. Children could have been watching. The footage that so troubled our doyenne of daytime featured the British performer Robbie Williams not only stripping in front of disinterested women, but then removing skin, muscle and tissue in a desperate attempt to claim their gaze. This was too much for Dr Laura. She was horrified: her strident tone became piercing. She screeched, "this is si-ee-ck." . My paper is drawn to this sick masculinity, not to judge - but to laugh and theorise. Robbie Williams, the deity of levity, holds a pivotal role in theorising the contemporary 'crisis' of manhood. To paraphrase Austin Powers, Williams returned the ger to singer. But Williams also triumphed in a captivatingly original way. He is one of the few members of a boy band who created a successful solo career without regurgitating the middle of the road mantras of boys, girls, love, loss and whining about it. Williams' journey through post-war popular music, encompassing influences from both Sinatra and Sonique, forms a functional collage, rather than patchwork, of masculinity. He has been prepared to not only age in public, but to discuss the crevices and cracks in the facade. He strips, smokes, plays football, wears interesting underwear and drinks too much. My short paper trails behind this combustible masculinity, focussing on his sorties with both masculine modalities and the rock discourse. My words attack the gap between text and readership, beat and ear, music and men. The aim is to reveal how this 'sick masculinity' problematises the conservative rendering of men's crisis. Come follow me I'm an honorary Sean Connery, born '74 There's only one of me … Press be asking do I care for sodomy I don't know, yeah, probably I've been looking for serial monogamy Not some bird that looks like Billy Connolly But for now I'm down for ornithology Grab your binoculars, come follow me. 'Kids,' Robbie Williams Robbie Williams is a man for our age. Between dating supermodels and Geri 'Lost Spice' Halliwell [1], he has time to "love … his mum and a pint," (Ansen 85) but also subvert the Oasis cock(rock)tail by frocking up for a television appearance. Williams is important to theories of masculine representation. As a masculinity to think with, he creates popular culture with a history. In an era where Madonna practices yoga and wears cowboy boots, it is no surprise that by June 2000, Robbie Williams was voted the world's sexist man [2]. A few months later, in the October edition of Vogue, he posed in a British flag bikini. It is reassuring in an era where a 12 year old boy states that "You aren't a man until you shoot at something," (Issac in Mendel 19) that positive male role models exist who are prepared to both wear a frock and strip on national television. Reading Robbie Williams is like dipping into the most convincing but draining of intellectual texts. He is masculinity in motion, conveying foreignness, transgression and corruption, bartering in the polymorphous economies of sex, colonialism, race, gender and nation. His career has spanned the boy bands, try-hard rock, video star and hybrid pop performer. There are obvious resonances between the changes to Williams and alterations in masculinity. In 1988, Suzanne Moore described (the artist still known as) Prince as "the pimp of postmodernism." (165-166) Over a decade later, the simulacra has a new tour guide. Williams revels in the potency of representation. He rarely sings about love or romance, as was his sonic fodder in Take That. Instead, his performance is fixated on becoming a better man, glancing an analytical eye over other modes of masculinity. Notions of masculine crisis and sickness have punctuated this era. Men's studies is a boom area of cultural studies, dislodging the assumed structures of popular culture [3]. William Pollack's Real Boys has created a culture of changing expectations for men. The greater question arising from his concerns is why these problems, traumas and difficulties are emerging in our present. Pollack's argument is that boys and young men invest energy and time "disguising their deepest and most vulnerable feelings." (15) This masking is difficult to discern within dance and popular music. Through lyrics and dancing, videos and choreography, masculinity is revealed as convoluted, complex and fragmented. While rock music is legitimised by dominant ideologies, marginalised groups frequently use disempowered genres - like country, dance and rap genres - to present oppositional messages. These competing representations expose seamless interpretations of competent masculinity. Particular skills are necessary to rip the metaphoric pacifier out of the masculine mouth of popular culture. Patriarchal pop revels in the paradoxes of everyday life. Frequently these are nostalgic visions, which Kimmel described as a "retreat to a bygone era." (87) It is the recognition of a shared, simpler past that provides reinforcement to heteronormativity. Williams, as a gaffer tape masculinity, pulls apart the gaps and crevices in representation. Theorists must open the interpretative space encircling popular culture, disrupting normalising criteria. Multiple nodes of assessment allow a ranking of competent masculinity. From sport to business, drinking to sex, masculinity is transformed into a wired site of ranking, judgement and determination. Popular music swims in the spectacle of maleness. From David Lee Roth's skied splits to Eminem's beanie, young men are interpellated as subjects in patriarchy. Robbie Williams is a history lesson in post war masculinity. This nostalgia is conservative in nature. The ironic pastiche within his music videos features motor racing, heavy metal and Bond films. 'Rock DJ', the 'sick text' that vexed Doctor Laura, is Williams' most elaborate video. Set in a rollerdrome with female skaters encircling a central podium, the object of fascination and fetish is a male stripper. This strip is different though, as it disrupts the power held by men in phallocentralism. After being confronted by Williams' naked body, the observing women are both bored and disappointed at the lack-lustre deployment of masculine genitalia. After this display, Williams appears embarrassed, confused and humiliated. As Buchbinder realised, "No actual penis could every really measure up to the imagined sexual potency and social or magical power of the phallus." (49) To render this banal experience of male nudity ridiculous, Williams then proceeds to remove skin and muscle. He finally becomes an object of attraction for the female DJ only in skeletal form. By 'going all the way,' the strip confirms the predictability of masculinity and the ordinariness of the male body. For literate listeners though, a higher level of connotation is revealed. The song itself is based on Barry White's melody for 'It's ecstasy (when you lay down next to me).' Such intertextuality accesses the meta-racist excesses of a licentious black male sexuality. A white boy dancer must deliver an impotent, but ironic, rendering of White's (love unlimited) orchestration of potent sexuality. Williams' iconography and soundtrack is refreshing, emerging from an era of "men who cling … tightly to their illusions." (Faludi 14) When the ideological drapery is cut away, the male body is a major disappointment. Masculinity is an anxious performance. Fascinatingly, this deconstructive video has been demeaned through its labelling as pornography [4]. Oddly, a man who is prepared to - literally - shave the skin of masculinity is rendered offensive. Men's studies, like feminism, has been defrocking masculinity for some time. Robinson for example, expressed little sympathy for "whiny men jumping on the victimisation bandwagon or playing cowboys and Indians at warrior weekends and beating drums in sweat lodges." (6) By grating men's identity back to the body, the link between surface and depth - or identity and self - is forged. 'Rock DJ' attacks the new subjectivities of the male body by not only generating self-surveillance, but humour through the removal of clothes, skin and muscle. He continues this play with the symbols of masculine performance throughout the album Sing when you're winning. Featuring soccer photographs of players, coaches and fans, closer inspection of the images reveal that Robbie Williams is actually every character, in every role. His live show also enfolds diverse performances. Singing a version of 'My Way,' with cigarette in tow, he remixes Frank Sinatra into a replaying and recutting of masculine fabric. He follows one dominating masculinity with another: the Bond-inspired 'Millennium.' Some say that we are players Some say that we are pawns But we've been making money Since the day we were born Robbie Williams is comfortably located in a long history of post-Sinatra popular music. He mocks the rock ethos by combining guitars and drums with a gleaming brass section, hailing the lounge act of Dean Martin, while also using rap and dance samples. Although carrying fifty year's of crooner baggage, the spicy scent of homosexuality has also danced around Robbie Williams' career. Much of this ideology can be traced back to the Take That years. As Gary Barlow and Jason Orange commented at the time, Jason: So the rumour is we're all gay now are we? Gary: Am I gay? I am? Why? Oh good. Just as long as we know. Howard: Does anyone think I'm gay? Jason: No, you're the only one people think is straight. Howard: Why aren't I gay? What's wrong with me? Jason: It's because you're such a fine figure of macho manhood.(Kadis 17) For those not literate in the Take That discourse, it should come as no surprise that Howard was the TT equivalent of The Beatle's Ringo Starr or Duran Duran's Andy Taylor. Every boy band requires the ugly, shy member to make the others appear taller and more attractive. The inference of this dialogue is that the other members of the group are simply too handsome to be heterosexual. This ambiguous sexuality has followed Williams into his solo career, becoming fodder for those lads too unappealing to be homosexual: Oasis. Born to be mild I seem to spend my life Just waiting for the chorus 'Cause the verse is never nearly Good enough Robbie Williams "Singing for the lonely." Robbie Williams accesses a bigger, brighter and bolder future than Britpop. While the Gallagher brothers emulate and worship the icons of 1960s British music - from the Beatles' haircuts to the Stones' psychedelia - Williams' songs, videos and persona are chattering in a broader cultural field. From Noel Cowardesque allusions to the ordinariness of pub culture, Williams is much more than a pretty-boy singer. He has become an icon of English masculinity, enclosing all the complexity that these two terms convey. Williams' solo success from 1999-2001 occurred at the time of much parochial concern that British acts were not performing well in the American charts. It is bemusing to read Billboard over this period. The obvious quality of Britney Spears is seen to dwarf the mediocrity of British performers. The calibre of Fatboy Slim, carrying a smiley backpack stuffed with reflexive dance culture, is neither admitted nor discussed. It is becoming increasing strange to monitor the excessive fame of Williams in Britain, Europe, Asia and the Pacific when compared to his patchy career in the United States. Even some American magazines are trying to grasp the disparity. The swaggering king of Britpop sold a relatively measly 600,000 copies of his U.S. debut album, The ego has landed … Maybe Americans didn't appreciate his songs about being famous. (Ask Dr. Hip 72) In the first few years of the 2000s, it has been difficult to discuss a unified Anglo-American musical formation. Divergent discursive frameworks have emerged through this British evasion. There is no longer an agreed centre to the musical model. Throughout 1990s Britain, blackness jutted out of dance floor mixes, from reggae to dub, jazz and jungle. Plied with the coldness of techno was an almost too hot hip hop. Yet both were alternate trajectories to Cool Britannia. London once more became swinging, or as Vanity Fair declared, "the nerve centre of pop's most cohesive scene since the Pacific Northwest grunge explosion of 1991." (Kamp 102) Through Britpop, the clock turned back to the 1960s, a simpler time before race became 'a problem' for the nation. An affiliation was made between a New Labour, formed by the 1997 British election, and the rebirth of a Swinging London [5]. This style-driven empire supposedly - again - made London the centre of the world. Britpop was itself a misnaming. It was a strong sense of Englishness that permeated the lyrics, iconography and accent. Englishness requires a Britishness to invoke a sense of bigness and greatness. The contradictions and excesses of Blur, Oasis and Pulp resonate in the gap between centre and periphery, imperial core and colonised other. Slicing through the arrogance and anger of the Gallaghers is a yearning for colonial simplicity, when the pink portions of the map were the stable subjects of geography lessons, rather than the volatile embodiment of postcolonial theory. Simon Gikandi argues that "the central moments of English cultural identity were driven by doubts and disputes about the perimeters of the values that defined Englishness." (x) The reason that Britpop could not 'make it big' in the United States is because it was recycling an exhausted colonial dreaming. Two old Englands were duelling for ascendancy: the Oasis-inflected Manchester working class fought Blur-inspired London art school chic. This insular understanding of difference had serious social and cultural consequences. The only possible representation of white, British youth was a tabloidisation of Oasis's behaviour through swearing, drug excess and violence. Simon Reynolds realised that by returning to the three minute pop tune that the milkman can whistle, reinvoking parochial England with no black people, Britpop has turned its back defiantly on the future. (members.aol.com/blissout/Britpop.html) Fortunately, another future had already happened. The beats per minute were pulsating with an urgent affirmation of change, hybridity and difference. Hip hop and techno mapped a careful cartography of race. While rock was colonialisation by other means, hip hop enacted a decolonial imperative. Electronic dance music provided a unique rendering of identity throughout the 1990s. It was a mode of musical communication that moved across national and linguistic boundaries, far beyond Britpop or Stateside rock music. While the Anglo American military alliance was matched and shadowed by postwar popular culture, Brit-pop signalled the end of this hegemonic formation. From this point, English pop and American rock would not sail as smoothly over the Atlantic. While 1995 was the year of Wonderwall, by 1996 the Britpop bubble corroded the faces of the Gallagher brothers. Oasis was unable to complete the American tour. Yet other cultural forces were already active. 1996 was also the year of Trainspotting, with "Born Slippy" being the soundtrack for a blissful journey under the radar. This was a cultural force that no longer required America as a reference point [6]. Robbie Williams was able to integrate the histories of Britpop and dance culture, instigating a complex dialogue between the two. Still, concern peppered music and entertainment journals that British performers were not accessing 'America.' As Sharon Swart stated Britpop acts, on the other hand, are finding it less easy to crack the U.S. market. The Spice Girls may have made some early headway, but fellow purveyors of pop, such as Robbie Williams, can't seem to get satisfaction from American fans. (35 British performers had numerous cultural forces working against them. Flat global sales, the strength of the sterling and the slow response to the new technological opportunities of DVD, all caused problems. While Britpop "cleaned house," (Boehm 89) it was uncertain which cultural formation would replace this colonising force. Because of the complex dialogues between the rock discourse and dance culture, time and space were unable to align into a unified market. American critics simply could not grasp Robbie Williams' history, motives or iconography. It's Robbie's world, we just buy tickets for it. Unless, of course you're American and you don't know jack about soccer. That's the first mistake Williams makes - if indeed one of his goals is to break big in the U.S. (and I can't believe someone so ambitious would settle for less.) … Americans, it seems, are most fascinated by British pop when it presents a mirror image of American pop. (Woods 98 There is little sense that an entirely different musical economy now circulates, where making it big in the United States is not the singular marker of credibility. Williams' demonstrates commitment to the international market, focussing on MTV Asia, MTV online, New Zealand and Australian audiences [7]. The Gallagher brothers spent much of the 1990s trying to be John Lennon. While Noel, at times, knocked at the door of rock legends through "Wonderwall," he snubbed Williams' penchant for pop glory, describing him as a "fat dancer." (Gallagher in Orecklin 101) Dancing should not be decried so summarily. It conveys subtle nodes of bodily knowledge about men, women, sex and desire. While men are validated for bodily movement through sport, women's dancing remains a performance of voyeuristic attention. Such a divide is highly repressive of men who dance, with gayness infiltrating the metaphoric masculine dancefloor [8]. Too often the binary of male and female is enmeshed into the divide of rock and dance. Actually, these categories slide elegantly over each other. The male pop singers are located in a significant semiotic space. Robbie Williams carries these contradictions and controversy. NO! Robbie didn't go on NME's cover in a 'desperate' attempt to seduce nine-year old knickerwetters … YES! He used to be teenybopper fodder. SO WHAT?! So did the Beatles the Stones, the Who, the Kinks, etc blah blah pseudohistoricalrockbollocks. NO! Making music that gurlz like is NOT a crime! (Wells 62) There remains an uncertainty in his performance of masculinity and at times, a deliberate ambivalence. He grafts subversiveness into a specific lineage of English pop music. The aim for critics of popular music is to find a way to create a rhythm of resistance, rather than melody of credible meanings. In summoning an archaeology of the archive, we begin to write a popular music history. Suzanne Moore asked why men should "be interested in a sexual politics based on the frightfully old-fashioned ideas of truth, identity and history?" (175) The reason is now obvious. Femininity is no longer alone on the simulacra. It is impossible to separate real men from the representations of masculinity that dress the corporeal form. Popular music is pivotal, not for collapsing the representation into the real, but for making the space between these states livable, and pleasurable. Like all semiotic sicknesses, the damaged, beaten and bandaged masculinity of contemporary music swaddles a healing pedagogic formation. Robbie Williams enables the writing of a critical history of post Anglo-American music [9]. Popular music captures such stories of place and identity. Significantly though, it also opens out spaces of knowing. There is an investment in rhythm that transgresses national histories of music. While Williams has produced albums, singles, video and endless newspaper copy, his most important revelations are volatile and ephemeral in their impact. He increases the popular cultural vocabulary of masculinity. [1] The fame of both Williams and Halliwell was at such a level that it was reported in the generally conservative, pages of Marketing. The piece was titled "Will Geri's fling lose its fizz?" Marketing, August 2000: 17. [2] For poll results, please refer to "Winners and Losers," Time International, Vol. 155, Issue 23, June 12, 2000, 9 [3] For a discussion of this growth in academic discourse on masculinity, please refer to Paul Smith's "Introduction," in P. Smith (ed.), Boys: Masculinity in contemporary culture. Colorado: Westview Press, 1996. [4] Steve Futterman described Rock DJ as the "least alluring porn video on MTV," in "The best and worst: honour roll," Entertainment Weekly 574-575 (December 22-December 29 2000): 146. [5] Michael Bracewell stated that "pop provides an unofficial cartography of its host culture, charting the national mood, marking the crossroads between the major social trends and the tunnels of the zeitgeist," in "Britpop's coming home, it's coming home." New Statesman .(February 21 1997): 36. [6] It is important to make my point clear. The 'America' that I am summoning here is a popular cultural formation, which possesses little connection with the territory, institution or defence initiatives of the United States. Simon Frith made this distinction clear, when he stated that "the question becomes whether 'America' can continue to be the mythical locale of popular culture as it has been through most of this century. As I've suggested, there are reasons now to suppose that 'America' itself, as a pop cultural myth, no longer bears much resemblance to the USA as a real place even in the myth." This statement was made in "Anglo-America and its discontents," Cultural Studies 5 1991: 268. [7] To observe the scale of attention paid to the Asian and Pacific markets, please refer to http://robbiewilliams.com/july13scroll.html, http://robbiewilliams.com/july19scroll.html and http://robbiewilliams.com/july24scroll.html, accessed on March 3, 2001 [8] At its most naïve, J. Michael Bailey and Michael Oberschneider asked, "Why are gay men so motivated to dance? One hypothesis is that gay men dance in order to be feminine. In other words, gay men dance because women do. An alternative hypothesis is that gay men and women share a common factor in their emotional make-up that makes dancing especially enjoyable," from "Sexual orientation in professional dance," Archives of Sexual Behaviour. 26.4 (August 1997). Such an interpretation is particularly ludicrous when considering the pre-rock and roll masculine dancing rituals in the jive, Charleston and jitterbug. Once more, the history of rock music is obscuring the history of dance both before the mid 1950s and after acid house. [9] Women, gay men and black communities through much of the twentieth century have used these popular spaces. For example, Lynne Segal, in Slow Motion. London: Virago, 1990, stated that "through dancing, athletic and erotic performance, but most powerfully through music, Black men could express something about the body and its physicality, about emotions and their cosmic reach, rarely found in white culture - least of all in white male culture,": 191 References Ansen, D., Giles, J., Kroll, J., Gates, D. and Schoemer, K. "What's a handsome lad to do?" Newsweek 133.19 (May 10, 1999): 85. "Ask Dr. Hip." U.S. News and World Report 129.16 (October 23, 2000): 72. Bailey, J. Michael., and Oberschneider, Michael. 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