Final Bow for Yellowface: Dancing Between Intention and Impact

Final Bow for Yellowface: Dancing Between Intention and Impact
Author: Phil Chan
Publisher: R. R. Bowker
Total Pages: 238
Release: 2020-06-30
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 9781734732481

Who would have guessed that one short conversation with New York City Ballet Artistic Director Peter Martins would change the course of how we approach America's favorite holiday ballet, and serve as a catalyst for changing how we talk about race in America? Phil Chan, arts advocate and co-founder of Final Bow for Yellowface, chronicles his journey navigating conversations around race, representation, and inclusion arising from issues in presenting one short dance-the Chinese variation from The Nutcracker. Armed with new vocabulary, he recounts his process and pitfalls in advising Salt Lake City's Ballet West on the presentation of a lost Balanchine work from 1925, Le Chant du Rossignol.Chan encounters orientalism, cultural appropriation, and yellowface, and witnesses firsthand the continuing evolution of an Old World aristocratic dance form in a New World democratic environment. As a storyteller, Chan presents a mix of dance and Chinese American history, personal anecdotes, and best practices for any professional arts organization to use for navigating issues around race, while outlining an essential path American ballet must take in order for our beloved art form to stay alive for a growingly diverse 21st century audience.

Nutcracker Nation

Nutcracker Nation
Author: Jennifer Fisher
Publisher: Yale University Press
Total Pages: 272
Release: 2008-10-01
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 030013343X

The Nutcracker is the most popular ballet in the world, adopted and adapted by hundreds of communities across the United States and Canada every Christmas season. In this entertainingly informative book, Jennifer Fisher offers new insights into the Nutcracker phenomenon, examining it as a dance scholar and critic, a former participant, an observer of popular culture, and an interviewer of those who dance, present, and watch the beloved ballet. Fisher traces The Nutcracker’s history from its St. Petersburg premiere in 1892 through its emigration to North America in the mid-twentieth century to the many productions of recent years. She notes that after it was choreographed by another Russian immigrant to the New World, George Balanchine, the ballet began to thrive and variegate: Hawaiians added hula, Canadians added hockey, Mark Morris set it in the swinging sixties, and Donald Byrd placed it in Harlem. The dance world underestimates The Nutcracker at its peril, Fisher suggests, because the ballet is one of its most powerfully resonant traditions. After starting life as a Russian ballet based on a German tale about a little girl’s imagination, The Nutcracker has become a way for Americans to tell a story about their communal values and themselves.

The Other Side of Perfect

The Other Side of Perfect
Author: Mariko Turk
Publisher: Poppy
Total Pages: 286
Release: 2021-05-11
Genre: Young Adult Fiction
ISBN: 0316703427

For fans of Sarah Dessen and Mary H.K. Choi, this lyrical and emotionally driven novel follows Alina, a young aspiring dancer who suffers a devastating injury and must face a world without ballet—as well as the darker side of her former dream. Alina Keeler was destined to dance, but then a terrifying fall shatters her leg—and her dreams of a professional ballet career along with it. After a summer healing (translation: eating vast amounts of Cool Ranch Doritos and binging ballet videos on YouTube), she is forced to trade her pre-professional dance classes for normal high school, where she reluctantly joins the school musical. However, rehearsals offer more than she expected—namely Jude, her annoyingly attractive castmate she just might be falling for. But to move forward, Alina must make peace with her past and face the racism she experienced in the dance industry. She wonders what it means to yearn for ballet—something so beautiful, yet so broken. And as broken as she feels, can she ever open her heart to someone else? Touching, romantic, and peppered with humor, this debut novel explores the tenuousness of perfectionism, the possibilities of change, and the importance of raising your voice.

Skin Colored Pointes

Skin Colored Pointes
Author: Nyama McCarthy-Brown
Publisher: McFarland
Total Pages: 268
Release: 2024-04-23
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 1476651817

Predominantly white casting in ballet has led many to wonder, "Where are all the black swans?" This book sheds light on female dancers of color, including thirteen primary accounts from African American, Latina, and Asian women in ballet. Topics covered include dance training, casting (and color-casting), employment, discrimination, implicit bias, success, and achievement. Dancers discuss in detail the obstacles many dancers of color face during training; considerations facing some women of color when seeking employment; performance challenges related to company work; and the teachers, parents, and community members that paved a way and widened spaces for them. Through the stories and experiences of the women featured here, models of inclusive practices and allyship are shared. The book culminates with a section providing teaching tools to support inclusive learning spaces.

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
Author: Maya Angelou
Publisher: Random House
Total Pages: 289
Release: 2010-07-21
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 030747772X

Here is a book as joyous and painful, as mysterious and memorable, as childhood itself. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings captures the longing of lonely children, the brute insult of bigotry, and the wonder of words that can make the world right. Maya Angelou’s debut memoir is a modern American classic beloved worldwide. Sent by their mother to live with their devout, self-sufficient grandmother in a small Southern town, Maya and her brother, Bailey, endure the ache of abandonment and the prejudice of the local “powhitetrash.” At eight years old and back at her mother’s side in St. Louis, Maya is attacked by a man many times her age—and has to live with the consequences for a lifetime. Years later, in San Francisco, Maya learns that love for herself, the kindness of others, her own strong spirit, and the ideas of great authors (“I met and fell in love with William Shakespeare”) will allow her to be free instead of imprisoned. Poetic and powerful, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings will touch hearts and change minds for as long as people read. “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings liberates the reader into life simply because Maya Angelou confronts her own life with such a moving wonder, such a luminous dignity.”—James Baldwin From the Paperback edition.

Passionate Work

Passionate Work
Author: Ruth Horowitz
Publisher: Stanford University Press
Total Pages: 379
Release: 2024-08-27
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 1503639614

Corps de ballet literally means the "body" of the ballet company, and it refers to the group of dancers who are not principals. Another large group of dancers puts together portfolios of work, often across several dance companies. These categories of dancers typically don't have name recognition and yet comprise the majority of professional dancers today. The ways that they stitch together careers, through dedication, grit, and no small amount of skill – and the reasons they have for doing so without the promise of fame or fortune – are telling of broader trends that shape the precarious labor of professional dance, and creative careers more generally. In Passionate Work, dance hobbyist and sociologist, Ruth Horowitz captures their stories. When creative labor is studied, it is often thought of in opposition to more conventional work, and the primary metric that distinguishes them is passion. Professional creatives are not working in the traditional sense because they are following their passion. By tracing the careers of such dancers, Horowitz troubles the binary understanding of passion and work. A career in dance requires both, and approaching her subjects through this lens allows her to explore their strategies for sustaining passion through the ups and downs of a career. Horowitz explores how dancers evaluate the rewards and challenges of a notoriously underpaid, and uncertain profession. Horowitz considers major dimensions of a career in a performing art, documenting each stage in a dancer's life. Above all, she shines a light on the strategies used to achieve a sense of biographical continuity in a world often marked by discontinuity and rupture.

A History of Asian American Theatre

A History of Asian American Theatre
Author: Esther Kim Lee
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 219
Release: 2006-10-12
Genre: Drama
ISBN: 0521850517

This book surveys the history of Asian American theatre from 1965 to 2005.

Chiang Yee and His Circle

Chiang Yee and His Circle
Author: Paul Bevan
Publisher: Hong Kong University Press
Total Pages: 438
Release: 2022-04-13
Genre: History
ISBN: 9888754130

This book, Chiang Yee and His Circle: Chinese Artistic and Intellectual Life in Britain, 1930–1950, celebrates the life and work of Chiang Yee (1903–1977), a Chinese writer, poet, and painter who made his home in London, England during the 1930s and 1940s. It examines Chiang’s relationship with his circle of friends and colleagues in the English capital, and assesses the work he produced during his sojourn there. This edited volume, with contributions from eleven distinguished scholars, tells a story of a Chinese intellectual community in London that up to now has been largely overlooked. It portrays a dynamic picture of the London-based émigré life during the years that led up to the war and during the conflict that was the catalyst for many of them moving on. In addition, the book broadens our understanding of cultural interactions between China and the West in Hampstead, one of the most vibrant artistic communities in London. ‘The collected essays convey a striking portrait of a community of Chinese intellectuals in England during World War II and how it interacted with cultural elites in London and elsewhere both as artists and as anti-fascist activists. As a whole, the volume makes significant points about how people claim status as “authentic” interpreters of a cultural tradition, a process that can pit friends against each other.’ —Kristin Stapleton, The University at Buffalo, SUNY ‘In this delightful collection of essays, a team of experts in literature, history, and the arts bring to light a world of literary interconnectedness and wartime collaboration seldom explored in scholarship. The perfect resource for anyone who values the humanistic common ground between the East and the West.’ —Jenny H. Day, Skidmore College

The Black Jacobins

The Black Jacobins
Author: C.L.R. James
Publisher: Vintage
Total Pages: 465
Release: 2023-08-22
Genre: History
ISBN: 0593687337

A powerful and impassioned historical account of the largest successful revolt by enslaved people in history: the Haitian Revolution of 1791–1803 “One of the seminal texts about the history of slavery and abolition.... Provocative and empowering.” —The New York Times Book Review The Black Jacobins, by Trinidadian historian C. L. R. James, was the first major analysis of the uprising that began in the wake of the storming of the Bastille in France and became the model for liberation movements from Africa to Cuba. It is the story of the French colony of San Domingo, a place where the brutality of plantation owners toward enslaved people was horrifyingly severe. And it is the story of a charismatic and barely literate enslaved person named Toussaint L’Ouverture, who successfully led the Black people of San Domingo against successive invasions by overwhelming French, Spanish, and English forces—and in the process helped form the first independent post-colonial nation in the Caribbean. With a new introduction (2023) by Professor David Scott.

Antiracism in Ballet Teaching

Antiracism in Ballet Teaching
Author: Kate Mattingly
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 207
Release: 2023-12-11
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 1003803393

This new collection of essays and interviews assembles research on teaching methods, choreographic processes, and archival material that challenges systemic exclusions and provides practitioners with accessible steps to creating more equitable teaching environments, curricula, classes, and artistic settings. Antiracism in Ballet Teaching gives readers a wealth of options for addressing and dismantling racialized biases in ballet teaching, as well as in approaches to leadership and choreography. Chapters are organized into three sections - Identities, Pedagogies, and Futurities - that illuminate evolving approaches to choreographing and teaching ballet, shine light on artists, teachers, and dancers who are lesser known/less visible in a racialized canon, and amplify the importance of holistic practices that integrate ballet history with technique and choreography. Chapter authors include award-winning studio owners, as well as acclaimed choreographers, educators, and scholars. The collection ends with interviews featuring ballet company directors (Robert Garland and Alonzo King), world-renowned scholars (Clare Croft, Thomas F. DeFrantz, Brenda Dixon Gottschild), sought-after choreographers (Jennifer Archibald and Claudia Schreier), and beloved educators (Keesha Beckford, Tai Jimenez, and Endalyn Taylor). This is an essential resource for anyone teaching or learning to teach ballet in the Twenty First Century.