New Books In Dance

In 1956, Alfred Hitchcock focused his lens on an issue that cuts to the heart of our criminal justice system: the risk of wrongful conviction. The result was The Wrong Man, a bracing drama based on the real-life false arrest of Queens musician Christopher “Manny” Balestrero. Manny's ordeal is part of a larger story of other miscarriages of justice in the first half of the twentieth century.  In Nothing to Fear: Alfred Hitchcock and the Wrong Men (Fayetteville Mafia Press, 2023), attorney Jason Isralowitz tells this story in a revelatory book that situates both the Balestrero case and its cinematic counterpart in their historical context. Drawing from archival records, Isralowitz delivers a gripping account of Manny’ s trial and new insights into an errant prosecution. He then examines how Hitchcock’ s film bears witness to issues that animate the contemporary innocence movement. Given the hundreds of exonerations of the wrongfully convicted in recent years, this genre-bending work of true crime and film histo

Django Generations: Hearing Ethnorace, Citizenship, and Jazz Manouche in France (U Chicago Press, 2021) shows how relationships between racial identities, jazz, and national belonging become entangled in France. Jazz manouche—a genre known best for its energetic, guitar-centric swing tunes—is among France’s most celebrated musical practices of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. It centers on the recorded work of famed guitarist Django Reinhardt and is named for the ethnoracial subgroup of Romanies (also known, often pejoratively, as “Gypsies”) to which Reinhardt belonged. French Manouches are publicly lauded as bearers of this jazz tradition, and many take pleasure and pride in the practice while at the same time facing pervasive discrimination. Jazz manouche uncovers a contradiction at the heart of France’s assimilationist republican ideals: the music is portrayed as quintessentially French even as Manouches themselves endure treatment as racial others. In Django Generations: Hearing Ethnorace, Citize

William Shakespeare, who lived in England from 1564 to 1616, is one of the world’s most popular and most captivating authors. Even four hundred years after his death, his plays still attract audiences around the globe. Why is that? In this course, you’ll learn who Shakespeare was, what kinds of plays he wrote, and what makes his body of work perhaps the greatest work of art ever created. In Episode One, Emma Smith, Professor of Shakespeare Studies at the University of Oxford, tackles the question, Why read Shakespeare? You’ll learn what makes Shakespeare newly relevant for each new generation of audiences and discover what is unique about Shakespeare’s approach to writing--an approach that lets us not only watch but actually take part in his plays.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/performing-arts

Rebecca Binn's Gee Vaucher: Beyond Punk, Feminism and the Avante Garde (Manchester University Press, 2022) is the first book-length work dedicated to the life and career of Vaucher. As one of the people who defined punk's protest art in the 1970s and 1980s, Gee Vaucher (b. 1945) deserves to be much better-known. She produced confrontational album covers for the legendary anarchist band Crass and later went on to do the same for Northern indie legends the Charlatans, among others. More recently, her work was recognized the day after Donald Trump's 2016 election victory, when the front page of the Daily Mirror ran her 1989 painting Oh America, which shows the Statue of Liberty, head in hands. This is the first book to critically assess an extensive range of Vaucher's work. It examines her unique position connecting avant-garde art movements, counterculture, punk and even contemporary street art. While Vaucher rejects all 'isms', her work offers a unique take on the history of feminist art. The book explores how

A special bonus episode in honor of the 93rd Academy Awards on April 25, 2021! One of the most-nominated films at this year's Oscars is "Nomadland," adapted from a book of the same name by journalist Jessica Bruder. "Nomadland" is about a 21st-century American phenomenon - the post-2008 increase in (mostly elderly) people who practice "vandwelling," living in vans, trucks, or other mobile housing and traveling the country in search of seasonal jobs. This episode talks about the characteristics of this nomadic community, how they adhere to an anthropological definition of the term "nomad," and nomadism in US history. Desert City by Kevin MacLeod. License. All other sounds courtesy of the BBC Sound Archive. 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 the 1990s, a network of twenty Soros Centres for Contemporary Art sprung up across Eastern Europe: Almaty, Belgrade, Budapest, Kiev, Ljubljana, Prague, Riga, Sarajevo, Tallinn, Warsaw, and Zagreb among them. These centres, funded as their name suggests by Geroge Soros’ Open Society Foundation, had as their mission the cataloguing of dissident pre-1989 art and the introduction of new forms of artistic practice to the art scenes of post-Eastern Block states. Within a decade, the centres wound up their operation and their histories have been forgotten but not because they made a mark on Eastern European art and societies. The Influencing Machine, Aaron Moulton’s exhibition and book traces the network’s history and evaluates its outsized impact on its host societies. Through the use of template annual exhibitions and synchronised open calls, the Centres pioneered forms of socially engaged practice that preceded the form’s development in Western art capitals and gave artists access to unprecedented production b

Jonathan Fessenden and I talk about two movies, Martin Scorsese’s Silence (2016) and Jerry London’s The Scarlet and the Black (1983) and what they say about how to confront evil in terrible times—seventeenth-century Tokugawa Japan in one film, and 1943 Nazi-occupied Rome in the other—how to face our shortcomings and lean on God even when He is hard to find. We also talk about Jonathan’s article about continuous prayer and his life and journey. Jonathan Fessenden is a Catholic writer, composer, and teacher of theology. He has written about movies and worked in the industry as a composer, and continues to write music for film. Note: In this episode we refer to my earlier conversation with Makoto Fujimura about his work on the film Silence and other topics: Almost Good Catholics, Episode 14. Jonathan Fessenden, Missio Dei, “Pray without Ceasing” (October 6, 2022) Pope Francis’s recent homily on continuous prayer (September 28, 2022) All of Jonathan Fessenden’s articles on Missio Dei are here. Jonathan Fesse

In this week’s episode from the Institute’s Vault, Molly Haskell talks about her 2009 book, Frankly, My Dear: "Gone with the Wind" Revisited, published by Yale University Press. Haskell grew up in Richmond, Virginia, and studied at the Sorbonne. She came to New York in the sixties to work for the French Film office, where she wrote a newsletter about French films. She wrote about movies for the Village Voice, Vogue, and New York magazine. 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 a burst of creativity unmatched in Hollywood history, Preston Sturges directed a string of all-time classic comedies from 1939 through 1948--The Great McGinty, The Lady Eve, Sullivan's Travels, The Palm Beach Story, and The Miracle of Morgan's Creek among them--all from screenplays he alone had written.  Stuart Klawans' Crooked, But Never Common: The Films of Preston Sturges (Columbia UP, 2023) pays close attention to Sturges' celebrated dialogue, but also to his films surprisingly intricate structures, marvelous use of a standard roster of character actors, and effective composition of shots. Klawans goes deeper than this, though, providing compelling readings of the underlying personal philosophy depicted in these films, which for all their seen-it-all cynicism nonetheless express firmly-held values, among them a fear for conformity and crowd-mentality, a dread of stasis, and a respect for intelligence, whether of a billionaire or of a Pullman porter. This is a book that will return you to these great fi

Jayne Mansfield (1933-1967) was driven not just to be an actress but to be a star. One of the most influential sex symbols of her time, she was known for her platinum blonde hair, hourglass figure, outrageously low necklines, and flamboyant lifestyle. Hardworking and ambitious, Mansfield proved early in her career that she was adept in both comic and dramatic roles, but her tenacious search for the spotlight and her risqué promotional stunts caused her to be increasingly snubbed in Hollywood. In Jayne Mansfield: The Girl Couldn't Help It (UP of Kentucky, 2021), Eve Golden offers a joyful account of the star Andy Warhol called "the poet of publicity," revealing the smart, determined woman behind the persona. While she always had her sights set on the silver screen, Mansfield got her start as Rita Marlowe in the Broadway show Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter?. She made her film debut in the low-budget drama Female Jungle (1955) before landing the starring role in The Girl Can't Help It (1956). Mansfield followed

In this conversation (one of my favorite interviews ever), I talk with Noah Askin of the University of California at Irvine about why some popular children's books, songs, and movies seem to last forever. Is it because the successful ones are similar but different? Is it a fluke? Is it the marketing? Or is it the story that the song/book/movie/anything tells, or is, or is it perhaps the story we make of it.  Noah Askin is Assistant Professor of Teaching Organization and Management at UC-Irvine in the Paul Merage School of Business. Prior to his arrival in Southern California, he was an Assistant Professor of Organizational Behavior at INSEAD, where he directed and taught multiple Executive Education programs in addition to teaching the organizational design and leadership core course in the MBA program. He has a popular TEDx talk on what makes popular songs succeed. Mel Rosenberg is a professor emeritus of microbiology (Tel Aviv University, emeritus) who fell in love with children's books as a small child an

Alternative Iran offers a unique contribution to the field of contemporary art, investigating how Iranian artists engage with space and site amid the pressures of the art market and the state's regulatory regimes. Since the 1980s, political, economic, and intellectual forces have driven Iran's creative class toward increasingly original forms of artmaking not meant for official venues. Instead, these art forms appear in private homes with "trusted" audiences, derelict buildings, leftover urban zones, and remote natural sites. These unusual cultural scenes are not only sites of personal encounters, but also part of the collective experience of Iran's citizens.  Drawing on interviews with over a hundred artists, gallerists, theater experts, musicians, and designers, Pamela Karimi throws into sharp relief extraordinary art and performance activities that have received little attention outside Iran. Attending to nonconforming curatorial projects, independent guerrilla installations, escapist practices, and tacitl

In The Dancer's Voice: Performance and Womanhood in Transnational India (Duke UP, 2022) Rumya Sree Putcha theorizes how the Indian classical dancer performs the complex dynamics of transnational Indian womanhood. Putcha argues that the public persona of the Indian dancer has come to represent India in the global imagination—a representation that supports caste hierarchies and Hindu ethnonationalism, as well as white supremacist model minority narratives. Generations of Indian women have been encouraged to embody the archetype of the dancer, popularized through film cultures from the 1930s to the present. Through analyses of films, immigration and marriage laws, histories of caste and race, advertising campaigns, and her own family’s heirlooms, photographs, and memories, Putcha reveals how women’s citizenship is based on separating their voices from their bodies. In listening closely to and for the dancer’s voice, she offers a new way to understand the intersections of body, voice, performance, caste, race, ge

On April 16, 2003, Luther Vandross suffered a near-fatal stroke, and the world held its breath. Inside sources said he might never sing again. He was too weak to receive visitors, but cards and good wishes came from Aretha Franklin, David Bowie, Anita Baker, Halle Berry, Patti LaBelle, Jesse Jackson, Burt Bacharach, Bette Midler, Star Jones, Gladys Knight, and Dionne Warwick, among others. With a will to live matched only by the enormous strength and power of his heart, soul, and singing talent, Luther survived and is regaining his voice. Craig Seymour's Luther: The Life and Longing of Luther Vandross (2017) is a loving tribute to the man who has entertained millions. Luther remains one of the music industry's most private celebrities. In Luther, the first biography of the hugely popular and beloved singer, Craig Seymour investigates and illuminates Luther's life, from his early obsession with soulful girl groups to the day he was discovered by glam rocker David Bowie to his devastating stroke and inspiring r

Scripts of Blackness: Early Modern Performance Culture and the Making of Race (U Pennsylvania Press, 2022) shows how the early modern mass media of theatre and performance culture at-large helped turn blackness into a racial category, that is, into a type of difference justifying emerging social hierarchies and power relations in a new world order driven by colonialism and capitalism. In this book, Noémie Ndiaye explores the techniques of impersonation used by white performers to represent Afro-diasporic people in England, France, and Spain in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, using a comparative and transnational framework. She reconstructs three specific performance techniques--black-up (cosmetic blackness), blackspeak (acoustic blackness), and black dances (kinetic blackness)--in order to map out the poetics of those techniques, and track a number of metaphorical strains that early modern playtexts regularly associated with them. Those metaphorical strains, the titular scripts of blackness of this b

Based on a close reading of Japanese director Yasujiro Ozu’s extant films, this book provides insights into the ways the director created narrative structures and used symbolism to construct meaning in his films. Against critics’ insistence that Ozu was indifferent to plot and unlikely to use symbols, Geist reveals the director’s subtle iconographic paradigms. Her incisive understanding of the historical and cultural context in which the films were conceived amplifies her analysis of the films’ structure and meaning. Ozu: A Closer Look (Hong Kong UP, 2022) guides the reader through Ozu’s earliest silent films, his sound films made during the wartime period and subsequent American Occupation of Japan, and finally takes up specific themes relevant to his later, better-known films. Geist also examines the impact that Ozu’s films had on specific directors in Europe, America, and Japan. Intended for film scholars, students, and fans of the director, this book provides fresh insights into the director’s films and n

In Paris in 1953, one of the strangest and most popular plays of the 20th century premiered, Waiting for Godot, written by the Irish writer Samuel Beckett. Since the premier, people have been trying to figure out what this play means. It’s been interpreted in countless ways, with no definitive confirmation from Beckett one way or another. Waiting for Godot is famous as a play about nothing, but it has endured because it is in fact a play about life. For what is life but a sequential collection of waitings? Waiting for school to end. Waiting to find someone to love. Waiting to know what to do. Waiting to feel better. Waiting for money or recognition. And ultimately, the last waiting, waiting for death. And yet, between all these waitings, we find meaning to continue on. Peter Connor is a professor of French and Comparative Literature at Barnard College. He is the author of Georges Bataille and the Mysticism of Sin (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins U.P., 2000). See more information on our website, WritLarge.fm. Follow

Many of the creative industries look like an hourglass. On the one side, you have creators; on the other, the rest of us. In the middle, Rebecca Giblin and Cory Doctorow say there's often a 'chokepoint.' Corporate behemoths -- be they streaming apps, publishers, tech giants, or others -- put on the squeeze, exploiting their market power to extract rents, push down wages, and push up costs. But Cory and Rebecca have solutions to break the stranglehold, and in this episode of Darts and Letters Cory helps Jay explore various chokepoints, from concert tickets to audiobooks, and how we can open up the industries and get workers paid. SUPPORT THE SHOW You can support the show for free by following or subscribing on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or whichever app you use. This is the best way to help us out and it costs nothing so we’d really appreciate you clicking that button. If you want to do a little more we would love it if you chip in. You can find us on patreon.com/dartsandletters. Patrons get content early, and o

William Shakespeare is the greatest writer in history, and Hamlet is his greatest work. In Hamlet, Shakespeare gave us one of the first modern characters in literature. We are invited into the mind of Hamlet, to see how he thinks and acts in the face of love, grief, and revenge. It is a work of deep psychological complexity, and has inspired many writers to explore and reveal the inner lives of their characters. Part of what keeps Hamlet alive is its delicate balance of textured specificity and capacious vagueness. It is specific enough for Hamlet to feel real while also inviting endless interpretations. Michael Dobson is the director of the Shakespeare Institute in Stratford-upon-Avon. He is the author of “Cutting, interruption, and the end of Hamlet” See more information on our website, WritLarge.fm. Follow us on Twitter @WritLargePod. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/performing-arts

Belfast Punk and the Troubles: an Oral History (Manchester UP, 2022) is an oral history of Belfast’s punk scene from the mid-1970s to the mid-80s that explores what it was like to be a punk in a city shaped by the violence of the Troubles, and how this differed from being a punk elsewhere. It suggests a critical understanding of sectarianism, subjectivity and memory politics in Northern Ireland, and argues for the importance of placing punk within the segregated structures of everyday life described by the interviewees. Adopting an innovative oral history approach, the book analyses a small number of oral history interviews in granular detail, looking at the punk scene as a structure of feeling shaped through the experience of growing up in wartime Belfast. Fearghus Roulston is the Chancellor's Fellow in the History of Activism at the University of Strathclyde. He is co-reviews editor of the Oral History Journal and a member of the journal's editorial board. His work focuses on how interpretative oral history