Dance was her Religion

Dance was her Religion

Author: Janet Lynn Roseman. Ph.D.

Publisher: SCB Distributors

Published: 2015-05-18

Total Pages: 204

ISBN-13: 1942493118

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Three dancers who changed the face of Modern Dance and liberated dancers from ballet’s rigidity to glorify the human body as a scared vessel: Isadora Duncan, 1877-1927, Ruth St. Denis, 1879-1968, and Martha Graham, 1894-1991. From youth, each recognized an organic urge for ecstatic human expression. This book explores their pioneering approaches to spiritual choreography and reveals unkown aspects of their lives and work: * each insisted upon her vision of dance as prayer * each was a mystic * each had a profound, personal devotion to the Virgin Mary * each choreographed work in her honor * each portrayed the Madonna in dance * each felt herself to be a priestess of dance * each worked to establish a school, where dance was the basis for an enlightened life The book contains quotes about and interviews with these women, including rare materials, restoring the understanding of dance as religious expression and placing these women in their rightful places among spiritual philosophers.


Book Synopsis Dance was her Religion by : Janet Lynn Roseman. Ph.D.

Download or read book Dance was her Religion written by Janet Lynn Roseman. Ph.D. and published by SCB Distributors. This book was released on 2015-05-18 with total page 204 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Three dancers who changed the face of Modern Dance and liberated dancers from ballet’s rigidity to glorify the human body as a scared vessel: Isadora Duncan, 1877-1927, Ruth St. Denis, 1879-1968, and Martha Graham, 1894-1991. From youth, each recognized an organic urge for ecstatic human expression. This book explores their pioneering approaches to spiritual choreography and reveals unkown aspects of their lives and work: * each insisted upon her vision of dance as prayer * each was a mystic * each had a profound, personal devotion to the Virgin Mary * each choreographed work in her honor * each portrayed the Madonna in dance * each felt herself to be a priestess of dance * each worked to establish a school, where dance was the basis for an enlightened life The book contains quotes about and interviews with these women, including rare materials, restoring the understanding of dance as religious expression and placing these women in their rightful places among spiritual philosophers.


Dance as Third Space

Dance as Third Space

Author: Heike Walz

Publisher: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht

Published: 2021-12-06

Total Pages: 421

ISBN-13: 3647568546

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Dance plays an important role in many religious traditions, in rites of passage, processions, healing rituals or festivals. But it is also controversial, especially in Christianity. Colonial European Christian discourses tend to separate dance from religion(s) and spirituality. This volume explores dance as "Third Space", following Homi Bhabha's postcolonial metaphor. The "Inter-Dance approach" combines interdisciplinary theoretical considerations with case studies. International experts examine dance controversies and discourses from the early church to World Christianity, as well as in Hasidic Judaism, Greek mysteries, Islamic Sufism, West African Togolese religions, and Afro-Brazilian Umbanda. Christian dance theologies are unfolded and the boundary-crossing potential of dance in interreligious and intercultural encounters is explored. The volume breaks new ground in how dance as ephemeral performative art, embodied thought and gendered discourse can transform studies of religion.


Book Synopsis Dance as Third Space by : Heike Walz

Download or read book Dance as Third Space written by Heike Walz and published by Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht. This book was released on 2021-12-06 with total page 421 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Dance plays an important role in many religious traditions, in rites of passage, processions, healing rituals or festivals. But it is also controversial, especially in Christianity. Colonial European Christian discourses tend to separate dance from religion(s) and spirituality. This volume explores dance as "Third Space", following Homi Bhabha's postcolonial metaphor. The "Inter-Dance approach" combines interdisciplinary theoretical considerations with case studies. International experts examine dance controversies and discourses from the early church to World Christianity, as well as in Hasidic Judaism, Greek mysteries, Islamic Sufism, West African Togolese religions, and Afro-Brazilian Umbanda. Christian dance theologies are unfolded and the boundary-crossing potential of dance in interreligious and intercultural encounters is explored. The volume breaks new ground in how dance as ephemeral performative art, embodied thought and gendered discourse can transform studies of religion.


A History of Theory and Method in the Study of Religion and Dance

A History of Theory and Method in the Study of Religion and Dance

Author: Kimerer L. LaMothe

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2018-10-22

Total Pages: 122

ISBN-13: 9004390006

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LaMothe paves the way for new theories and methods in the study of religion and dance by critiquing and displacing a conceptual dichotomy between “religion” and “dance” forged in the colonial era that justified western Christian hostility towards dance traditions across six continents over six centuries.


Book Synopsis A History of Theory and Method in the Study of Religion and Dance by : Kimerer L. LaMothe

Download or read book A History of Theory and Method in the Study of Religion and Dance written by Kimerer L. LaMothe and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2018-10-22 with total page 122 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: LaMothe paves the way for new theories and methods in the study of religion and dance by critiquing and displacing a conceptual dichotomy between “religion” and “dance” forged in the colonial era that justified western Christian hostility towards dance traditions across six continents over six centuries.


Ringleaders of Redemption

Ringleaders of Redemption

Author: Kathryn Dickason

Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA

Published: 2021-01-15

Total Pages: 395

ISBN-13: 0197527272

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In popular thought, Christianity is often figured as being opposed to dance. Conventional scholarship traces this controversy back to the Middle Ages. Throughout the medieval era, the Latin Church denounced and prohibited dancing in religious and secular realms, often aligning it with demonic intervention, lust, pride, and sacrilege. Historical sources, however, suggest that medieval dance was a complex and ambivalent phenomenon. During the High and Late Middle Ages, Western theologians, liturgists, and mystics not only tolerated dance; they transformed it into a dynamic component of religious thought and practice. This book investigates how dance became a legitimate form of devotion in Christian culture. Sacred dance functioned to gloss scripture, frame spiritual experience, and imagine the afterlife. Invoking numerous manuscript and visual sources (biblical commentaries, sermons, saints' lives, ecclesiastical statutes, mystical treatises, vernacular literature, and iconography), this book highlights how medieval dance helped shape religious identity and social stratification. Moreover, this book shows the political dimension of dance, which worked in the service of Christendom, conversion, and social cohesion. In Ringleaders of Redemption, Kathryn Dickason reveals a long tradition of sacred dance in Christianity, one that the professionalization and secularization of Renaissance dance obscured, and one that the Reformation silenced and suppressed.


Book Synopsis Ringleaders of Redemption by : Kathryn Dickason

Download or read book Ringleaders of Redemption written by Kathryn Dickason and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2021-01-15 with total page 395 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In popular thought, Christianity is often figured as being opposed to dance. Conventional scholarship traces this controversy back to the Middle Ages. Throughout the medieval era, the Latin Church denounced and prohibited dancing in religious and secular realms, often aligning it with demonic intervention, lust, pride, and sacrilege. Historical sources, however, suggest that medieval dance was a complex and ambivalent phenomenon. During the High and Late Middle Ages, Western theologians, liturgists, and mystics not only tolerated dance; they transformed it into a dynamic component of religious thought and practice. This book investigates how dance became a legitimate form of devotion in Christian culture. Sacred dance functioned to gloss scripture, frame spiritual experience, and imagine the afterlife. Invoking numerous manuscript and visual sources (biblical commentaries, sermons, saints' lives, ecclesiastical statutes, mystical treatises, vernacular literature, and iconography), this book highlights how medieval dance helped shape religious identity and social stratification. Moreover, this book shows the political dimension of dance, which worked in the service of Christendom, conversion, and social cohesion. In Ringleaders of Redemption, Kathryn Dickason reveals a long tradition of sacred dance in Christianity, one that the professionalization and secularization of Renaissance dance obscured, and one that the Reformation silenced and suppressed.


We Have a Religion

We Have a Religion

Author: Tisa Joy Wenger

Publisher: Univ of North Carolina Press

Published: 2009

Total Pages: 357

ISBN-13: 0807832626

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For Native Americans, religious freedom has been an elusive goal. From nineteenth-century bans on indigenous ceremonial practices to twenty-first-century legal battles over sacred lands, peyote use, and hunting practices, the U.S. government has often act


Book Synopsis We Have a Religion by : Tisa Joy Wenger

Download or read book We Have a Religion written by Tisa Joy Wenger and published by Univ of North Carolina Press. This book was released on 2009 with total page 357 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For Native Americans, religious freedom has been an elusive goal. From nineteenth-century bans on indigenous ceremonial practices to twenty-first-century legal battles over sacred lands, peyote use, and hunting practices, the U.S. government has often act


Dancing Wisdom

Dancing Wisdom

Author: Yvonne Daniel

Publisher: University of Illinois Press

Published: 2005

Total Pages: 352

ISBN-13: 9780252072079

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Landmark interdisciplinary study of religious systems through their dance performances


Book Synopsis Dancing Wisdom by : Yvonne Daniel

Download or read book Dancing Wisdom written by Yvonne Daniel and published by University of Illinois Press. This book was released on 2005 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Landmark interdisciplinary study of religious systems through their dance performances


The Dance of the Dissident Daughter

The Dance of the Dissident Daughter

Author: Sue Monk Kidd

Publisher: HarperOne

Published: 2002-08-20

Total Pages: 238

ISBN-13: 9780060645892

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The acclaimed spiritual memoir from the author of The Secret Life of Bees I was amazed to find that I had no idea how to unfold my spiritual life in a feminine way. I was surprised and, in fact, a little terrified when I found myself in the middle of a feminist spiritual reawakening. Sue Monk was a "conventionally religious, churchgoing woman, a traditional wife and mother" with a thriving career as a Christian writer until she began to question her role as a woman in her culture, her family, and her church. From a jarring encounter with sexism in a suburban drugstore to monastery retreats and rituals in the caves of Crete, Kidd takes readers through the fear, anger, healing, and transformation of her awakening. Retaining a meaningful connection "with the deep song of Christianity," she opens the door for traditional Christian women to discover a spirituality that speaks directly to them and provides inspiring wisdom for all who struggle to embrace their full humanity.


Book Synopsis The Dance of the Dissident Daughter by : Sue Monk Kidd

Download or read book The Dance of the Dissident Daughter written by Sue Monk Kidd and published by HarperOne. This book was released on 2002-08-20 with total page 238 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The acclaimed spiritual memoir from the author of The Secret Life of Bees I was amazed to find that I had no idea how to unfold my spiritual life in a feminine way. I was surprised and, in fact, a little terrified when I found myself in the middle of a feminist spiritual reawakening. Sue Monk was a "conventionally religious, churchgoing woman, a traditional wife and mother" with a thriving career as a Christian writer until she began to question her role as a woman in her culture, her family, and her church. From a jarring encounter with sexism in a suburban drugstore to monastery retreats and rituals in the caves of Crete, Kidd takes readers through the fear, anger, healing, and transformation of her awakening. Retaining a meaningful connection "with the deep song of Christianity," she opens the door for traditional Christian women to discover a spirituality that speaks directly to them and provides inspiring wisdom for all who struggle to embrace their full humanity.


The Black Church

The Black Church

Author: Henry Louis Gates, Jr.

Publisher: Penguin

Published: 2022-01-18

Total Pages: 305

ISBN-13: 1984880357

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The instant New York Times bestseller and companion book to the PBS series. “Absolutely brilliant . . . A necessary and moving work.” —Eddie S. Glaude, Jr., author of Begin Again “Engaging. . . . In Gates’s telling, the Black church shines bright even as the nation itself moves uncertainly through the gloaming, seeking justice on earth—as it is in heaven.” —Jon Meacham, New York Times Book Review From the New York Times bestselling author of Stony the Road and The Black Box, and one of our most important voices on the African American experience, comes a powerful new history of the Black church as a foundation of Black life and a driving force in the larger freedom struggle in America. For the young Henry Louis Gates, Jr., growing up in a small, residentially segregated West Virginia town, the church was a center of gravity—an intimate place where voices rose up in song and neighbors gathered to celebrate life's blessings and offer comfort amid its trials and tribulations. In this tender and expansive reckoning with the meaning of the Black Church in America, Gates takes us on a journey spanning more than five centuries, from the intersection of Christianity and the transatlantic slave trade to today’s political landscape. At road’s end, and after Gates’s distinctive meditation on the churches of his childhood, we emerge with a new understanding of the importance of African American religion to the larger national narrative—as a center of resistance to slavery and white supremacy, as a magnet for political mobilization, as an incubator of musical and oratorical talent that would transform the culture, and as a crucible for working through the Black community’s most critical personal and social issues. In a country that has historically afforded its citizens from the African diaspora tragically few safe spaces, the Black Church has always been more than a sanctuary. This fact was never lost on white supremacists: from the earliest days of slavery, when enslaved people were allowed to worship at all, their meetinghouses were subject to surveillance and destruction. Long after slavery’s formal eradication, church burnings and bombings by anti-Black racists continued, a hallmark of the violent effort to suppress the African American struggle for equality. The past often isn’t even past—Dylann Roof committed his slaughter in the Mother Emanuel AME Church 193 years after it was first burned down by white citizens of Charleston, South Carolina, following a thwarted slave rebellion. But as Gates brilliantly shows, the Black church has never been only one thing. Its story lies at the heart of the Black political struggle, and it has produced many of the Black community’s most notable leaders. At the same time, some churches and denominations have eschewed political engagement and exemplified practices of exclusion and intolerance that have caused polarization and pain. Those tensions remain today, as a rising generation demands freedom and dignity for all within and beyond their communities, regardless of race, sex, or gender. Still, as a source of faith and refuge, spiritual sustenance and struggle against society’s darkest forces, the Black Church has been central, as this enthralling history makes vividly clear.


Book Synopsis The Black Church by : Henry Louis Gates, Jr.

Download or read book The Black Church written by Henry Louis Gates, Jr. and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2022-01-18 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The instant New York Times bestseller and companion book to the PBS series. “Absolutely brilliant . . . A necessary and moving work.” —Eddie S. Glaude, Jr., author of Begin Again “Engaging. . . . In Gates’s telling, the Black church shines bright even as the nation itself moves uncertainly through the gloaming, seeking justice on earth—as it is in heaven.” —Jon Meacham, New York Times Book Review From the New York Times bestselling author of Stony the Road and The Black Box, and one of our most important voices on the African American experience, comes a powerful new history of the Black church as a foundation of Black life and a driving force in the larger freedom struggle in America. For the young Henry Louis Gates, Jr., growing up in a small, residentially segregated West Virginia town, the church was a center of gravity—an intimate place where voices rose up in song and neighbors gathered to celebrate life's blessings and offer comfort amid its trials and tribulations. In this tender and expansive reckoning with the meaning of the Black Church in America, Gates takes us on a journey spanning more than five centuries, from the intersection of Christianity and the transatlantic slave trade to today’s political landscape. At road’s end, and after Gates’s distinctive meditation on the churches of his childhood, we emerge with a new understanding of the importance of African American religion to the larger national narrative—as a center of resistance to slavery and white supremacy, as a magnet for political mobilization, as an incubator of musical and oratorical talent that would transform the culture, and as a crucible for working through the Black community’s most critical personal and social issues. In a country that has historically afforded its citizens from the African diaspora tragically few safe spaces, the Black Church has always been more than a sanctuary. This fact was never lost on white supremacists: from the earliest days of slavery, when enslaved people were allowed to worship at all, their meetinghouses were subject to surveillance and destruction. Long after slavery’s formal eradication, church burnings and bombings by anti-Black racists continued, a hallmark of the violent effort to suppress the African American struggle for equality. The past often isn’t even past—Dylann Roof committed his slaughter in the Mother Emanuel AME Church 193 years after it was first burned down by white citizens of Charleston, South Carolina, following a thwarted slave rebellion. But as Gates brilliantly shows, the Black church has never been only one thing. Its story lies at the heart of the Black political struggle, and it has produced many of the Black community’s most notable leaders. At the same time, some churches and denominations have eschewed political engagement and exemplified practices of exclusion and intolerance that have caused polarization and pain. Those tensions remain today, as a rising generation demands freedom and dignity for all within and beyond their communities, regardless of race, sex, or gender. Still, as a source of faith and refuge, spiritual sustenance and struggle against society’s darkest forces, the Black Church has been central, as this enthralling history makes vividly clear.


Why We Dance

Why We Dance

Author: Kimerer L. LaMothe

Publisher: Columbia University Press

Published: 2015-04-07

Total Pages: 305

ISBN-13: 023153888X

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Within intellectual paradigms that privilege mind over matter, dance has long appeared as a marginal, derivative, or primitive art. Drawing support from theorists and artists who embrace matter as dynamic and agential, this book offers a visionary definition of dance that illuminates its constitutive work in the ongoing evolution of human persons. Why We Dance introduces a philosophy of bodily becoming that posits bodily movement as the source and telos of human life. Within this philosophy, dance appears as an activity that humans evolved to do as the enabling condition of their best bodily becoming. Weaving theoretical reflection with accounts of lived experience, this book positions dance as a catalyst in the development of human consciousness, compassion, ritual proclivity, and ecological adaptability. Aligning with trends in new materialism, affect theory, and feminist philosophy, as well as advances in dance and religious studies, this work reveals the vital role dance can play in reversing the trajectory of ecological self-destruction along which human civilization is racing.


Book Synopsis Why We Dance by : Kimerer L. LaMothe

Download or read book Why We Dance written by Kimerer L. LaMothe and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2015-04-07 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Within intellectual paradigms that privilege mind over matter, dance has long appeared as a marginal, derivative, or primitive art. Drawing support from theorists and artists who embrace matter as dynamic and agential, this book offers a visionary definition of dance that illuminates its constitutive work in the ongoing evolution of human persons. Why We Dance introduces a philosophy of bodily becoming that posits bodily movement as the source and telos of human life. Within this philosophy, dance appears as an activity that humans evolved to do as the enabling condition of their best bodily becoming. Weaving theoretical reflection with accounts of lived experience, this book positions dance as a catalyst in the development of human consciousness, compassion, ritual proclivity, and ecological adaptability. Aligning with trends in new materialism, affect theory, and feminist philosophy, as well as advances in dance and religious studies, this work reveals the vital role dance can play in reversing the trajectory of ecological self-destruction along which human civilization is racing.


Where the Dancer Meets Her Divine

Where the Dancer Meets Her Divine

Author: Katherine Milligan

Publisher:

Published: 2010

Total Pages: 149

ISBN-13:

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This thesis begins with a simple question: Can seemingly-secular dance be a religious experience for an individual dancer? I investigate this question through specifically examining the lives of dancers Loie Fuller and Isadora Duncan, both creators of influential new styles of dance in the late nineteenth century. I begin with a study of the religio-cultural atmosphere of modern society from which Fuller's and Duncan's dances emerged. With a sense of the religio-cultural atmosphere established, I then turn my attention to Fuller and Duncan. In order to understand how dance might be a religious experience for both, I focus my attention on those encounters that Fuller and Duncan viewed as especially important, crucial to their understandings of the relationship between the world and their selves--meaningful, religious, and/or spiritual. Finally, I turn to the idea of dance as religious experience. Here, I engage with both dance theory (José Gil's paradoxical body) and religious studies scholarship (William James' definition of religion and Catherine Bell's ritualization) in order to situate a religious experience within a dancing body. Ultimately, I conclude that dance was indeed a site of religious experience for Fuller and Duncan--an experience created through their dynamic processes of embedding and disembedding in the religious ideas and institutions of modern society.


Book Synopsis Where the Dancer Meets Her Divine by : Katherine Milligan

Download or read book Where the Dancer Meets Her Divine written by Katherine Milligan and published by . This book was released on 2010 with total page 149 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This thesis begins with a simple question: Can seemingly-secular dance be a religious experience for an individual dancer? I investigate this question through specifically examining the lives of dancers Loie Fuller and Isadora Duncan, both creators of influential new styles of dance in the late nineteenth century. I begin with a study of the religio-cultural atmosphere of modern society from which Fuller's and Duncan's dances emerged. With a sense of the religio-cultural atmosphere established, I then turn my attention to Fuller and Duncan. In order to understand how dance might be a religious experience for both, I focus my attention on those encounters that Fuller and Duncan viewed as especially important, crucial to their understandings of the relationship between the world and their selves--meaningful, religious, and/or spiritual. Finally, I turn to the idea of dance as religious experience. Here, I engage with both dance theory (José Gil's paradoxical body) and religious studies scholarship (William James' definition of religion and Catherine Bell's ritualization) in order to situate a religious experience within a dancing body. Ultimately, I conclude that dance was indeed a site of religious experience for Fuller and Duncan--an experience created through their dynamic processes of embedding and disembedding in the religious ideas and institutions of modern society.