Dancing Female: Lives and Issues of Women in Contemporary Dance

Why do women choreographers choose to create the dances they do in the manner they do? How do women in dance work independently, and organizationally? How do women set up institutions? How has higher education helped or hindered women in the world of dance? These are some of the questions addressed through interviews and research by the dancers and educators Sharon E. Friedler and Susan B. Glazer in Dancing Female. Their exploration of the intimate and diverse world in which women create, teach, direct, perform and write is subdivided into two books. In the first they examine the ways in which women transmit their art from one generation to the next through their professional and personal relationships, raising critical questions about women choreographers, dancers, writers, educators and administrators. Chapters cover major Western theatrical dance genres: ballet, modern, jazz, tap and theatre dance. In Book II, "The Physical Body, Theory and Practice, and using the Knowledge," they consider the dancer's relationship to her art from three perspectives: her physicality, the theory and practice of dance that impact her career in psychological and spiritual terms, and finally, the cultural context in which she works. In dealing with some of the tensions, joys, frustrations and fears women experience at various points of their creative lives, the contributors strike a balance between a theoretical sense of feminism and its practice in reality. In Dancing Female Sharon E. Friedler and Susan B. Glazer present answers to basic questions about women, power and action.