Volume 13 Issue 2
February 2012
Special Issue - Social Readings in the Act of Dance
Editorial
Dance is an art that exists in time and which leaves no tangible traces of its activity. Thus, representations of dance in the archeological sources reveal only hints of its existence. Moreover, as there is no living tradition that remains from the ancient Near East, there is no way for us to determine what the dance in antiquity looked like. We must therefore rely on our own definitions as to how to identify the dancing figures by examining the surviving static representations alone. The article aims to illustrate and analyze this methodology by focusing on the representations of dance in findings from Israel during the Iron Age (ca. 1200-600 BCE). The analysis of these representations may provide means for exploring the possible role and significance of dance in Iron Age Israel.
Footprints of Culture in Visual Representations of Movement
This paper deals with the role of cultural conventions in the process of self-generated symbolism by 4th graders. Four groups of nine- to ten-year-old girls participated in a longitudinal investigation, based on the concept of movement literacy, which aimed to examine the resources and factors contributing to the design of self-generated graphic-symbolic representations in the domain of movement and dance (Ofer, 2009). Findings suggest that choices of representation modes—the symbols selected, as well as their organization and positioning on the page—draw on a wide range of cultural conventions, in addition to local and contextual cultural expressions and creative personal interpretations. As participants were not familiar with any symbolic language in this domain, the presented examples serve to sharpen the understanding of the influence the surrounding culture has on the representation of information.
On the Symbolic and Physical Body: The Representative and Impaired Body in Israeli Folk Dancing
This article is a socio-historical and ethnographical analysis of the presentation of the Israeli body throughout the development of the Israeli folk dance movement from its inception in the 1940s until the present. Various presentations of body image are discussed, spanning a continuum from the representative to the impaired. On one end are the state folk dance ensembles, which include the performances of IDF dancing soldiers during the War of Independence, representing the ideal body image of the Sabra. On the other end are various groups of disabled participants, which include the performances of IDF disabled veterans. The theoretical discussion focuses on the differentiation between physical and symbolic body and on the self-mobilization processes of the impaired groups in order to become parts and parcels of the national collective body. I claim that the Israeli folk dance field is willing to accept the impaired as long as the latter conform to the values of this field. Thus, the physical body (having the ability to dance or even to move) gains a secondary importance, whereas the symbolic body, and the legitimacy of belonging to the Israeli culture, gains first priority.
Wearing the Mask of Dis-dance: Autoethnography of Israeli Wheelchair Folk Dancing
This article critically examines cultural labeling as a means of delegitimizing wheelchair dancing. It conducts a delicate inquiry into the politics of the body and its representation. At the heart of the article lies the tension between dance and disability, as constructed by Western culture in general and Israeli culture in particular. The root of this research lies within Disability Studies, a critical interdisciplinary field which examines disability as a social-cultural phenomenon. The research methodology of participant observation was conducted and eventually produced autoethnography. The research, written in the first person, identifies the sociological process that deprives the body of dance and puts in its place the mask of dis-dance. Furthermore, the article examines the changes that occur in the process and the negotiation over labels.
The article examines the ways practice of the dancing body construct social trust in improvisation and choreography classes among adolescent girls in Israeli high school dance programs. The article draws from Phenomenology as it seeks to examine the active physical foundations of social actions, asking: what does the body do? In other words, the article's objective is to answer the following: In what ways does the body operate? How does it construct trust? What kind of moral order does it create? How does the body formulate a feminine social setting among the dancing girls? I argue that the improvising body operates under the basic social conditions of risk and trust and therefore participates in the creation of its social environment. This assumption challenges theoretical structuralist and post-structuralist concepts, which tend to view the body as a passive entity (an object), on which culture is inscribed. Based on the premise that an action that produces trust is a fundamental action in the construction of social and moral relationships, the article demonstrates, via observations and interviews, the ways in which the dancing body becomes a leading participant in weaving a social ethics that is based on embodied reciprocity and response-ability; the means by which embodied trust turns into a central social virtue which counteracts the risks threatening the collective; and the ways gender and schooling integrate within this substantive moral body.
Dance and Body as Home: Dance Teachers’ Experience
This paper focuses on one aspect of an ethnographic research study of dance teachers in Israel. It examines the different ways in which female dance teachers speak of dance and their views on the studio and the body as home. It goes on to explore, through various prisms, how these spaces become home to them. The main argument presented is that "dance as home" is expressed by these teachers as opposition and alternative to a commercialized, hyper-rationalized, and institutionalized social reality. Female dance teachers create home in three ways: (a) a flexible forming of space and time; (b) meaning-making bodily actions; and (c) a construction of rigid boundaries and private spaces in the studio setting. Each of these courses of action also involves a reflexive effort, which reveals itself in the narratives teachers create for themselves regarding their occupation. These elements enable me to argue that the concept "dance and body as home" stretches and changes the more general, self-evident idea of home.
Intersecting Looks: Performers and Spectators in Noah Dar’s Tetris (2006)
Tetris (2006), by the choreographer Noa Dar and the visual artist Naty Shami-Ofer, utilizes a distinctive field of vision to observe the dance through holes in the upraised stage through which the audience can observe the point where the dancers' feet meet the dance surface. The audience's access to the performance space challenges the traditional ways of viewing performance, as well as its accompanying conventions. Exposing both the viewer and artist to the Other creates a dialogue through threatening looks, a situation based on the notion of force moving between its two ends: performer and spectator. Sartre's philosophy of the look provides a backdrop to the examination of how each of the parties simultaneously uses the force of the look to turn the Other into an object/victim, while illustrating the consequences that arise from situating the notion of force as the base of understanding the way we look at dance.
Epilogue to the Special Issue
Book Reviews:
On: Dance Discourse in Israel \ Henia Rottenberg and Dina Roginsky (eds.)
On: Dance As a Theatre Art: Source Readings in Dance History From 1581 to the Present \ Selma Jeanne Cohen (ed.)
Terpsichore in Sneakers: Post-Modern Dance \ Sally Banes
On: L'Âme et la Dance \ Paul Valéry
On: Narrative Research: Theory, Creation and Interpretation \ Rivka Tuval-Mashiach and Gavriela Spector-Mersel (eds.)
On: Wired Youth: The Social World of Adolescence in the Information Age \ Gustavo Mesch and Ilan Talmud
On: Being Indian, Being Israeli: Migration, Ethnicity and Gender in the Jewish Homeland \ Maina Chawla Singh
On: Look at me! \ Amia Lieblich
On: Community Genetics and Genetic Alliances: Eugenics, Carrier Testing and Network of Risk \ Aviad E. Raz
On: Visibility in Immigration: Body, Gaze, Representation \ Edna Lomsky-Feder and Tamar Rapoport (eds.)
On: Privatization and Commercialization in State Education in Israel \ Orit Ichilov (ed.)
On: Exposed to Dialogue: Encounters between Jews and Arabs in Israel \ Maya Kahanoff
On: Standing Front Stage: Resistance, Celebration and Subversion in Community-Based Theatre \ Shulamith Lev-Aladgem
On: Complementary Medicine and the Reenchantment of the World \ Yael Keshet