Dancing Women

<p><em>Dancing Women: Female Bodies Onstage</em> is a spectacular and timely contribution to dance history recasting canonical dance since the early nineteenth century in terms of a feminist perspective. Setting the creation of specific dances in socio-political and cultural contexts Sally Banes shows that choreographers have created representations of women that are shaped by - and that in part shape - society's continuing debates about sexuality and female identity.<br> Broad in its scope and compelling in its argument <em>Dancing Women</em>:<br> * provides a series of re-readings of the canon from Romantic and Russian Imperial ballet to contemporary ballet and modern dance<br> * investigates the gaps between plot and performance that create sexual and gendered meanings<br> * examines how women's agency is created in dance through aspects of choreographic structure and style<br> * analyzes a range of women's images - including brides mistresses mothers sisters witches wraiths enchanted princesses peasants revolutionaries cowgirls scientists and athletes - as well as the creation of various women's communities on the dance stage<br> * suggests approaches to issues of gender in postmodern dance<br> Using an interpretive strategy different from that of other feminist dance historians who have stressed either victimization or celebration of women Banes finds a much more complex range of cultural representations of gender identities.</p>