Bodies and Society Modules

This section addresses the question "What do bodies reveal about the social and aesthetic values as well as the political and economic mores of a culture?" Looking at how people dress, move, and interact can tell us a lot about what is important to a particular society. In a historical moment when the "body" is considered to be a direct purveyor of cultural identity, a moment when academics and scientists, as well as artists and politicians, are struggling to understand the cultural differences between people, bodies provide crucial examples of the dialectical relationships between representation and presentation, between life and the media. Put more simply, cultures both make and are made by the bodies that inhabit them. In the modules that follow, we offer examples of how dance, ritual, nonverbal behavior, sport and fitness training can provide valuable perspectives for the study of how these concepts are enacted in everyday life as well as on the stage.

Bodies and Machines By Ann Cooper Albright, Professor of Dance, Oberlin College This section foregrounds the issue of physical ability in dancing bodies, exploring the spectrum of aesthetic possibilities from the greatly challenged body to the extraordinarily skilled body. → View Module   Ecologies of Beauty By Deidre Sklar, Associate Professor of Dance, Texas Women's University This unit explores dance as one representation of human activity that illuminates beliefs and values found in, amongst, through, across cultural, historical and social conditions. → View Module

The Public is Invited to Dance: David Dorfman's underground By Ann Cooper Albright, Professor of Dance, Oberlin College David Dorfman's "underground" This unit presents a compilation of different sections of the choreography and aspects of the process, inviting you, the viewer, to watch and read and watch and read in whatever order inspires you. → View Module   Moving Self, Moving Earth: Studying the Environment and Ecology Through Movement and Dance By Katja Kolcio, Associate Professor of Dance, Wesleyan University This module utilizes dance as a method for deepening students' engagement in environmental studies. → View Module