New Books In Dance

For today’s episode we welcome jazz organist Tony Monaco to the show. Tony is a master of the Hammond B3 and has collaborated with many other great jazz musicians, including fellow jazz organist Joey DeFrancesco, drummer Steve Smith, as well as guitarists Pat Martino and George Benson, among many others. Downbeat Magazine named Tony in the top 5 jazz organists internationally for the years 2005-2011 and his albums have been both commercially successful and critically acclaimed, with several climbing to the upper levels of Jazzweek’s annual top 100 listings. Our conversation covers much ground related to error, ego, humility and music, but also Tony’s struggles with alcoholism over the course of his career. And be sure to listen all the way to the end for a great live rendition of Tony’s composition I’ll Remember Jimmy. John Kaag is Professor and Chair of Philosophy at UMass Lowell and External Professor at the Santa Fe Institute. John W. Traphagan, Ph.D. is Professor and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Fellow in

Cinephilia has recently experienced a powerful resurgence, one enabled by new media technologies of the digital revolution. One strong continuity between today's "new cinephilia" and the classical cinephilia of the 1950s is the robust sociability which these new technologies have facilitated. Each activity of today's cinephilic practice - viewing, thinking, reading and writing about films - is marked by an unprecedented amount of social interaction facilitated by the Internet. As with their classical counterparts, the thoughts and writings of today's cinephiles are born from a vigorous and broad-ranging cinephilic conversation. Further, by dramatically lowering the economic barriers to publication, the Internet has also made possible new hybrid forms and outlets of cinephilic writing that draw freely from scholarly, journalistic and literary models.  The New Cinephilia (Caboose, 2022) both describes and theorises how and where cinephilia lives and thrives today. In this expanded second edition, author Girish

Margaret Hall's Gemignani: Life and Lessons from Broadway and Beyond (Applause Books, 2022) is the definitive book on Broadway's greatest music director. From a youth playing in jazz bands to a storied career conducting Sunday in the Park with George, Sweeney Todd, Evita, and Into the Woods, Gemignani's life story provides a behind-the-scenes look at many of the pivotal moments in musical theatre history. The book also provides a vivid sense of Gemignani as a person: a warm, avuncular, yet passionately opinionated figure whom many Broadway legends rely on to make their shows come alive. Andy Boyd is a playwright based in Brooklyn, New York. He is a graduate of the playwriting MFA at Columbia University, Harvard University, and the Arizona School for the Arts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/performing-arts

From Marion Davies's humble days in Brooklyn to her rise to fame alongside press baron William Randolph Hearst, the public life story of the film star plays like a modern fairy tale shaped by gossip columnists, fan magazines, biopics, and documentaries. Yet the real Marion Davies remained largely hidden from view, as she was wary of interviews and trusted few with her true life story. In Captain of Her Soul: The Life of Marion Davies (U California Press, 2022), Lara Gabrielle pulls back layers of myth to show a complex and fiercely independent woman, ahead of her time, who carved her own path. Through meticulous research, unprecedented access to archives around the world, and interviews with those who knew Davies, Captain of Her Soul counters the public story. This book reveals a woman who navigated disability and social stigma to rise to the top of a young Hollywood dominated by powerful men. Davies took charge of her own career, negotiating with studio heads and establishing herself as a top-tier comedienne

Discover the real-life history that inspired Game of Thrones and Shakespeare’s history plays, and learn the distinctive ways in which Shakespeare and George R.R. Martin each transform history into art Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/performing-arts

How can the arts make the world a better place? In Global Perspectives on Youth Arts Programs: How and Why the Arts Can Make a Difference (Policy Press, 2022), Frances Howard, a Senior Lecturer in Social Work, Care and Community at Nottingham Trent University, analyses the opportunities for social change and social justice offered by youth arts programmes. The book combines a detailed ethnography of a youth arts programme in the UK, along with rich and detailed comparative case studies. Drawing on a wealth of cross- and interdisciplinary theoretical frameworks, the book is both a critique and defence of the possibilities offered by engagement with the arts. The book will be essential reading across arts, humanities and social sciences, as well as for anyone with an interest in the arts. Dave O'Brien is Professor of Cultural and Creative Industries, at the University of Sheffield. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetw

Contingent Encounters: Improvisation in Music and Everyday Life (U Michigan Press, 2022) offers a sustained comparative study of improvisation as it appears between music and everyday life. Drawing on work in musicology, cultural studies, and critical improvisation studies, as well as his own performing experience, Dan DiPiero argues that comparing improvisation across domains calls into question how improvisation is typically recognized. By comparing the music of Eric Dolphy, Norwegian free improvisers, Mr. K, and the Ingrid Laubrock/Kris Davis duo with improvised activities in everyday life (such as walking, baking, working, and listening), DiPiero concludes that improvisation appears as a function of any encounter between subjects, objects, and environments. Bringing contingency into conversation with the utopian strain of critical improvisation studies, DiPiero shows how particular social investments cause improvisation to be associated with relative freedom, risk-taking, and unpredictability in both scho

In Hit Girls: Women of Punk in the USA, 1975-1983 (Feral House, 2023), Jen B. Larson takes readers throughout the United States on a punk history lesson. Dividing the country into regions, Larson documents local and regional bands and scenes, many of which have stories that were in danger of being lost. Profiling over 80 bands and artists, Hit Girls shares women's experiences as pioneers of punk. Highlighting their successes and documenting the sexism and racism within the scene, Hit Girls includes over 100 images, a comprehensive playlist of all the artists, and interviews with many of the artists including Texacala Jones, Alice Bag, Nikki Corvette, and Penelope Houston. Hit Girls is an important text in the history of popular music and punk and adds to the work of centering women in music history.  Rebekah Buchanan is a Professor of English and Director of English Education at Western Illinois University. Her research focuses on feminism, activism, and literacy practices in youth culture, specifically thro

Alexandra Chiriac's book Performing Modernism: A Jewish Avant-Garde in Bucharest (de Gruyter, 2022) examines the reach of modernism in design and performance in interwar Romania. It follows the transnational trajectories of several remarkable Jewish avant-garde artists, actors, and directors based in Bucharest, the country's capital, in the 1920s and 1930s. The first part of the book recovers the history of Bucharest's first modern design institution and investigates its links with German design and the Bauhaus. The second half focuses on several innovative collaborations in the realm of Yiddish theatre, including the time spent in Romania by the world-renowned Vilna Troupe. Based on extensive original research, the book shows how Bucharest was connected to Berlin, Riga, and Chicago, highlighting the contribution of Jewish cultural production to avant-garde movements in Europe and beyond. Roland Clark is a Reader in Modern European History at the University of Liverpool, a Senior Fellow with the Centre for An

William Shakespeare’s Hamlet contains some of the most famous words, images, and characters in all of literature. In this course, you’ll learn Hamlet’s story, explore its lead character’s mind, and hear its key speeches performed and analyzed by world-class Shakespearean actors and literary scholars. In Part 3, Professor Kewes and Professor Palfrey offer detailed close-readings of some of the play’s most significant speeches, including Hamlet’s famous soliloquies. You’ll watch critical interpretation in action as our featured scholars offer contrasting readings of a single speech; you’ll uncover the images and metaphors behind Hamlet’s words that reveal the unique bent of his imagination; and you’ll learn the precise linguistic techniques Shakespeare uses to convey a living mind in the act of thinking. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/performing-arts

For the past two decades, the arts and cultural establishment in the UK has been trying to engage a broader set of audiences in their work. Countless initiatives to make the arts more accessible to the public and to make them more relevant have been advocated for in policy and funding settlements. But the dial on who participates and how much has not shifted, despite many thousands of projects trying to address the problem. And this isn’t even the punchline. Not only do the interventions not work, nobody involved in them admits that the interventions may have been a failure. Having spent many years working in cultural policy studies and in arts practice, Leila Jancovich and David Stevenson take the arts and culture sector to task over this fiction. Their book Failures in Cultural Participation (Palgrave Macmillan, 2022) puts a mirror to the industry and invites cultural policymakers, organisations, and practitioners to confront their failures. David Stevenson speaks to Pierre d’Alancaisez about the culture se

With her book Hollywood in China: Behind the Scenes of the World's Largest Movie Market (New Press, 2022), media scholar Ying Zhu explores the 100+ year relationship between what are now the world's two largest movie markets: China and the United States.  Zhu is a Professor at Hong Kong Baptist University's Academy of Film, and the founder/chief editor of Global Storytelling: Journal of Digital and Moving Images. Hollywood in China (July 2022, The New Press) is her fourth book, and it offers a comprehensive chronology of the Hollywood-China relationship, with numerous specific case studies.  In this podcast, Anthony Kao chats with Zhu about the book, and delves into matters like reactions to "China-humiliation films" during the 1911-1949 Republican Era, Madame Mao's penchant for Hollywood classics, and what the future might hold for relations between China and Hollywood.  Some movie recommendations from Ying Zhu (learn more by listening until the end of this episode): From the 1990s: Zhang Yimou's To Live an

In his memoir, Bang Bang Crash (Counterpoint, 2023), Nic Brown shares his experiences as a rock and roll drummer who abandons his successful music career to pursue his true passion and discovers a deeper understanding of artistic fulfillment in this episodic memoir of swapping one dream for another In the mid-1990s, fresh out of high school, Nic Brown was living his childhood dream as a rock and roll drummer. Signing a major label record deal, playing big shows, hitting the charts, giving interviews in Rolling Stone, appearing on The Tonight Show—what could be better for a young artist? But contrary to expectations, getting a shot at his artistic dream early in life was a destabilizing shock. The more he achieved, the more accolades that came his way, the less sure Brown became about his path. Only a few years into a promising musical career, he discovered the crux of his discontent: he was never meant to remain behind the drums. In fact, his true artistic path lay in a radically different direction entirely:

When Maya Phillips first saw the opening of Star Wars, Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back, she knew her life would change forever. She then spent her formative years loving not just the Star Wars saga but superhero cartoons, anime, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Harry Potter, Tolkien, and Doctor Who. In Nerd: Adventures in Fandom from This Universe to the Multiverse (Atria Books, 2022), Phillips, a critic at large for the New York Times, presents an incisive essay collection that explores race, religion, sexuality, class, and gender through the lens of pop culture fandoms. Maya Phillips received her BFA in writing, literature, and publishing with a concentration in poetry from Emerson College and her MFA in poetry from Warren Wilson's MFA Program for Writers. Latoya Johnson is an editor, writer, and bibliophile with a master's in humanities. Her research and writing interests include reading in popular culture, the public history of fiction writing, and women in Greco-Roman mythology. Learn more about your ad choi

William Shakespeare’s Hamlet contains some of the most famous words, images, and characters in all of literature. In this course, you’ll learn Hamlet’s story, explore its lead character’s mind, and hear its key speeches performed and analyzed by world-class Shakespearean actors and literary scholars. Part 2 turns from the political to the philosophical and psychological, as Simon Palfrey, professor of English at the University of Oxford, analyzes Hamlet’s character, language, and thought. You’ll learn what makes Hamlet one of the most complex and lifelike characters in literature and what strategies Shakespeare used to create this character. You’ll also explore the play’s deep questions about action, freedom, existence, and death--and learn how questions like these keep Shakespeare’s work open and alive. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/performing-arts

It’s the early 1990s, and the USSR is no more. An intrepid young American TV producer has been given a seemingly foolhardy task: bringing the beloved children’s show Sesame Street to Russia, and the rest of the post-Soviet sphere. This is the premise of Muppets in Moscow: The Unexpected Crazy True Story of Making Sesame Street in Russia (Rowman & Littlefield, 2022)—a memoir from that aforementioned producer, Natasha Lance Rogoff. Amidst car bombings, soldiers kidnapping Elmo, and a collapsing ruble, Lance Rogoff assembles a team of Russian creatives to adapt Sesame Street into Ulitsa Sezam, as the show is known in Russian. While culture clashes ensue at first, they eventually give way to cross-cultural empathy, as Lance Rogoff poignantly illustrates in the book. It’s a story that feels especially resonant in the present day, with Russia and the West again at opposite ends of a daunting geopolitical divide.  Lance Rogoff talks with the New Books Network's Anthony Kao about how she came to produce Sesame Street

How were understandings of chance, luck, and fortune affected by early capitalist developments such as the global expansion of English trade and colonial exploration? And how could the recognition that fortune wielded a powerful force in the world be squared with Protestant beliefs about the all-controlling hand of divine providence? Was everything pre-determined, or was there room for chance and human agency?  Jane Hwang Degenhardt's book Globalizing Fortune on the Early Modern Stage (Oxford UP, 2022) addresses these questions by demonstrating how English economic expansion and global transformation produced a new philosophy of fortune oriented around discerning and optimizing unexpected opportunities. The popular theater played an influential role in dramatizing the new prospects and dangers opened up by nascent global economics and fostering a set of ethical practices for engaging with fortune's unpredictable turns. While largely derided as a sinful, earthly distraction in the Boethian tradition of the Mid

Ever since Pearl Jam first blasted onto the Seattle grunge scene three decades ago with their debut album, Ten, they have sold 85M+ albums, performed for hundreds of thousands of fans around the world, and have even been inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. In Long Road: Pearl Jam and the Soundtrack of A Generation, music critic and journalist Steven Hyden celebrates the life, career, and music of this legendary group, widely considered to be one of the greatest American rock bands of all time. Long Road is structured like a mix tape, using 18 different Pearl Jam classics as starting points for telling a mix of personal and universal stories. Each chapter tells the tale of this great band -- how they got to where they are, what drove them to greatness, and why it matters now. Much like the generation it emerged from, Pearl Jam is a mass of contradictions. They were an enormously successful mainstream rock band who felt deeply uncomfortable with the pursuit of capitalistic spoils. They were progressiv

William Shakespeare’s Hamlet contains some of the most famous words, images, and characters in all of literature. In this course, you’ll learn Hamlet’s story, explore its lead character’s mind, and hear its key speeches performed and analyzed by world-class Shakespearean actors and literary scholars. In Part 1, you’ll be guided through a detailed account of the story with commentary by Paulina Kewes, professor of English at the University of Oxford. Professor Kewes lays out the wide-ranging moral and political questions that Hamlet raises and reveals how the play engages with some of the most important historical events of Shakespeare’s time. This summary is told using the language of the play itself, placing key quotations in context to help you understand where these lines come from and what they mean.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/performing-arts

In 1966 Stanley Kubrick told a friend that he wanted to make “the world’s scariest movie.” A decade later Stephen King’s The Shining landed on the director’s desk, and a visual masterpiece was born. J. W. Rinzler and Lee Unkrich's book Stanley Kubrick's The Shining (Taschen, 2023) is the definitive compendium of the film that transformed the horror genre features hundreds of never-before-seen photographs, rare production ephemera from the Kubrick Archive, and extensive new interviews with the cast and crew. Nathan Abrams is a professor of film at Bangor University in Wales. His most recent work is on film director Stanley Kubrick. To discuss and propose a book for interview you can reach him at n.abrams@bangor.ac.uk. Twitter: @ndabrams Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/performing-arts