Funny Moves
Dance Humor Politics

Edited by Marta E. Savigliano,Hannah Schwadron

ISBN13: 9780197765777

Imprint: Oxford University Press Inc

Publisher: Oxford University Press Inc

Format: Paperback / softback

Published: 01/08/2025

Availability: Not yet available

Description
Funny Moves: Dance Humor Politics explores the intersection of dance and humor and the political stakes that bodies incur when they dare to be both aestheticized and funny. The editors posit that funny moves are dance's Other--the missteps or oversteps that don't fit a particular dance form. Funniness in dance, whether gleeful, surprising, or odd, causes disruptions which may be progressive or conservative, inciting pleasures that counterbalance the artform's often serious codes. Writing from Latin America, the Caribbean, South Asia, Europe, and the United States, the book's ten authors provide diverse observational techniques and creative vocabularies for finding, analyzing, and theorizing funny moves across dance forms, dance scenes, and dance screens. Some of the authors find hope in the laughter of their artist subjects and their audiences, and some linger in the ambiguity and confusion so created. Each essay takes on a single surprise factor or a choreographic comic rupture, relishing in the amassed effects or affects across an absurdist cinematic, staged, or quotidian sequence. What is "funny" in each case pops up as a wildcard that evokes recognizable shared experiences, sometimes pushing back against dominant or mainstream logic and its supremacist laughter.
Acknowledgments: Dance Humor in Crisis List of Contributors Introduction Marta E. Savigliano and Hannah Schwadron Section One: Funny Dancing, Formally 1. "Now is the time. Come, come!": Gender, Caste, and Erotic Humor in Bharatanatyam Anusha Kedhar 2. Burla y Bulla: Humor and Critique in Flamenco Michelle Heffner Hayes 3. Insolent Tangos Marta E. Savigliano Section Two: She Who Laughs Last Dances 4. StoryTAILS of a Wounded Sister Adanna K. Jones 5. Gendering Angry Fun: Sensual Improprieties in Shamin Ara's Urdu Action Film Esha Niyogi De Section Three: Vamping Onto White Film 6. Chaplin's Border Moves and My Own: Dance and Humor in the Tijuana-San Diego Region Minerva Tapia 7. Un/funny Business in On the Town (1949) Anthea Kraut Section Four: Dancing Funny Otherwise 8. Sincerely Funny or Funny Sincerity: Avatar: The Last Airbender and Cosplay Choreographies Yutian Wong 9. Dancing Displa(y)cements: Anticolonial Humor in Al-Hakawati's DestiNations Unknown (Berlin 2020) Hannah Schwadron 10. Transfeminine Joking on Argentina's Bailando por un Sueño Jeffrey Tobin Index
  • Cultural studies
  • Folk dancing
  • Professional & Vocational
Height:233
Width:161
Spine:16
Weight:417.00
List Price: £29.99