Belle époque Paris adored dance. Whether at the music hall or in more refined theaters, audiences flocked to see the spectacles offered to them by the likes of Isadora Duncan, Diaghilev’s flashy company, and an embarrassment of Salomés. After languishing in the shadow of opera for much of the nineteenth century, ballet found itself part of this lively kinetic constellation. In Kinetic Cultures, Rachana Vajjhala argues that far from being mere delectation, ballet was implicated in the larger republican project of national rehabilitation through a rehabilitation of its citizens. By tracing the various gestural complexes of the period—bodybuilding routines, appropriate physical comportment for women, choreographic vocabularies, and more—Vajjhala presents a new way of understanding histories of dance and music, one that she locates in gesture and movement.
Rachana Vajjhala is Assistant Professor of Musicology at Boston University.
"Kinetic Cultures delivers on its promise to challenge conventional narratives of ballet music and choreography. Rachana Vajjhala explores a wealth of untapped archival sources and methods with captivating style and insight. Her richly textured study offers fresh, persuasive analyses of familiar belle époque works and sets a new standard for music and dance scholarship."—Jessie Fillerup, author of Magician of Sound: Ravel and the Aesthetics of Illusion
216 pp.6 x 9Illus: 29 b/w figures, 10 music examples
9780520356276$65.00|£55.00Hardcover
Dec 2023