Rachel Fensham - Böcker

How does the manufacture, design, and commodification of costume inform choreography and determine what dancers have worn on stage? How do certain types of costume influence the experience of dance and choreography for the performers, or for the audience? What political or social affects contribute to the impression that dance costumes communicate in movement aesthetics? By answering such questions, Fabrications provides new insights into the connections between twentieth-century American concert dance history, and both visual and fashion culture, while also presenting methods for appreciating how the artefacts of costume in archival collections activate important corporeal and cultural memories. In the study of material culture, Rachel Fensham draws upon the dialectical image of Walter Benjamin, the fashion system of Roland Barthes, and writings on new materialism as perspectives for interpreting costumes in dance. Focusing on costume as multiplicity, she establishes the syntax of the textile, the silhouette, and the modes of construction as a method for the identification and analysis of typical costumes. Each chapter undertakes a quasi-chronological survey of choreographic works created by leading dancers, choreographers, and designers, including Ruth St. Denis and Ted Shawn, Martha Graham, Katherine Dunham, Merce Cunningham, Trisha Brown, and Josephine Baker. Illustrated with almost two-hundred full-color photographs of costumes from dance archives and stills from leading dance works in the United States and Europe, Fabrications presents a new and innovative way to think about dance history as material culture, understood through costumes that have stories that extend beyond the stage.

How does the manufacture, design, and commodification of costume inform choreography and determine what dancers have worn on stage? How do certain types of costume influence the experience of dance and choreography for the performers, or for the audience? What political or social affects contribute to the impression that dance costumes communicate in movement aesthetics? By answering such questions, Fabrications provides new insights into the connections between twentieth-century American concert dance history, and both visual and fashion culture, while also presenting methods for appreciating how the artefacts of costume in archival collections activate important corporeal and cultural memories. In the study of material culture, Rachel Fensham draws upon the dialectical image of Walter Benjamin, the fashion system of Roland Barthes, and writings on new materialism as perspectives for interpreting costumes in dance. Focusing on costume as multiplicity, she establishes the syntax of the textile, the silhouette, and the modes of construction as a method for the identification and analysis of typical costumes. Each chapter undertakes a quasi-chronological survey of choreographic works created by leading dancers, choreographers, and designers, including Ruth St. Denis and Ted Shawn, Martha Graham, Katherine Dunham, Merce Cunningham, Trisha Brown, and Josephine Baker. Illustrated with almost two-hundred full-color photographs of costumes from dance archives and stills from leading dance works in the United States and Europe, Fabrications presents a new and innovative way to think about dance history as material culture, understood through costumes that have stories that extend beyond the stage.

The landscape of contemporary research is characterized by growing interdisciplinarity, and disciplinary boundaries are blurring faster than ever. Yet while interdisciplinary methods, and methodological innovation in general, are often presented as the ‘holy grail’ of research, there are few examples or discussions of their development and ‘behaviour’ in the field. This Routledge Handbook of Interdisciplinary Research presents a bold intervention by showcasing a diversity of stimulating approaches. Over 50 experienced researchers illustrate the challenges, but also the rewards of doing and representing interdisciplinary research through their own methodological developments. Featured projects cover a variety of scales and topics, from small art-science collaborations to the ‘big data’ of mass observations. Each section is dedicated to an aspect of data handling, from collection, classification, validation to communication to research audiences. Most importantly, Interdisciplinary Methods presents a distinctive approach through its focus on knowledge as process, defamiliarising and reworking familiar practices such as experimenting, archiving, observing, prototyping or translating.

This volume presents a timely and original study of the meaning, uses, and impact of cultural data today. Working across critical and creative strands of inquiry, the book situates cultural data in the context of contemporary social, environmental, and political challenges such as the future of the arts and climate change.Drawing on fields ranging from sociology and art history through to computer science and digital heritage, Cultural Data expands the possibilities for the study of arts and culture using computational methods at a critical moment for both national and global discussions about the future of digitisation and cultural data. Combining computer-assisted quantitative research with and qualitative and theoretical approaches, this book examines historical trends, demographic politics, and data cultures alongside experimental data visualisations that build distinctive narratives for the arts and creative industries. Through using and manipulating the open-source interoperability of arts and cultural data, the book presents new approaches, both theoretical and empirical, for telling stories about individual artistic careers, events, organisations, and networks. It also explores the unspoken, often hidden or obscured, content of cultural data: its murky histories, gaps, inconsistencies, silences, and bias.This volume will be of interest to students, scholars and practitioners in fields including cultural heritage studies, creative and performing arts, archival science, cultural policy, gender studies, art history, and cultural theory. It will also be of interest to the growing community of digital humanities laboratories and centres around the globe who operate at the intersection of humanities research, data science, and creative practice.

The landscape of contemporary research is characterized by growing interdisciplinarity, and disciplinary boundaries are blurring faster than ever. Yet while interdisciplinary methods, and methodological innovation in general, are often presented as the ‘holy grail’ of research, there are few examples or discussions of their development and ‘behaviour’ in the field. This Routledge Handbook of Interdisciplinary Research presents a bold intervention by showcasing a diversity of stimulating approaches. Over 50 experienced researchers illustrate the challenges, but also the rewards of doing and representing interdisciplinary research through their own methodological developments. Featured projects cover a variety of scales and topics, from small art-science collaborations to the ‘big data’ of mass observations. Each section is dedicated to an aspect of data handling, from collection, classification, validation to communication to research audiences. Most importantly, Interdisciplinary Methods presents a distinctive approach through its focus on knowledge as process, defamiliarising and reworking familiar practices such as experimenting, archiving, observing, prototyping or translating.

How do we define movement in performance? Who or what is being moved and how? And which movements are felt, observed, or studied, in theatre? Part of the Theory for Theatre Studies series which introduces core theoretical concepts that underpin the discipline, Movement provides the first overview of relevant critical theory for students and researchers in theatre and performance studies. Exploring areas such as vitality, plasticity, gesture, effort and rhythm, it opens up the study of theatrical production, live art, and intercultural performance to socio-political conceptions of movement as both practice and concept. It covers movement training systems and considers how they have been utilized in key works of the 20th and 21st centuries. The final section traces the convergence of movement in theatre with other media and digital technologies. A wide range of in-depth case studies helps to equip readers to explore new methodologies and approaches to movement as a performance concept. These include analysis of Satoshi Miyagi's production of Sophocles' Antigone (2017), Thomas Ostermeier's production of Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler (2008), the Berliner Ensemble’s Mother Courage (1949), The Constant Prince (1965) performed by Ryzsard Cieslak, and the National Theatre’s production of War Horse (2007). The final section considers a suite of concepts that shape postdramatic and intermedial theatre from China, Germany-Bangladesh, Australia, the United States, and United Kingdom. The volume is supported by further online resources including video material, questions, and exercises.