The People Have Never Stopped Dancing

The People Have Never Stopped Dancing

Native American Modern Dance Histories

Jacqueline Shea Murphy

Table of Contents

$25.00 paper
ISBN: 978-0-8166-4776-7
ISBN-10: 0-8166-4776-3

$75.00 cloth
ISBN: 978-0-8166-4775-0
ISBN-10: 0-8166-4775-5

Winner of the 2008 de la Torre Bueno Prize for Outstanding Book of the Year.

Addresses the Indian, absent and present, in modern dance studies.

During the past thirty years, Native American dance has emerged as a visible force on concert stages throughout North America. In this first major study of contemporary Native American dance, Jacqueline Shea Murphy shows how these performances are at once diverse and connected by common influences.

Demonstrating the complex relationship between Native and modern dance choreography, Shea Murphy delves first into U.S. and Canadian federal policies toward Native performance from the late nineteenth through the early twentieth centuries, revealing the ways in which government sought to curtail ceremonial dancing while actually encouraging staged spectacles, such as those in Buffalo Bill’s Wild West shows. She then engages the innovative work of Ted Shawn, Lester Horton, and Martha Graham, highlighting the influence of Native American dance on modern dance in the twentieth century. Shea Murphy moves on to discuss contemporary concert dance initiatives, including Canada’s Aboriginal Dance Program and the American Indian Dance Theatre.

Illustrating how Native dance enacts, rather than represents, cultural connections to land, ancestors, and animals, as well as spiritual and political concerns, Shea Murphy challenges stereotypes about American Indian dance and offers new ways of recognizing the agency of bodies on stage.

Jacqueline Shea Murphy is associate professor of dance studies at the University of California, Riverside, and coeditor of Bodies of the Text: Dance as Theory, Literature as Dance.

296 pages | 7 x 10 | 29 b&w photos | 2007

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction: Dance as Document

Part I. Restrictions, Regulations, Resiliences
1. Have They a Right? Nineteenth-Century Indian Dance Practices and Federal Policy
2. Theatricalizing Dancing and Policing Authenticity
3. Antidance Rhetoric and American Indian Arts in the 1920s

Part II. Twentieth-Century Modern Dance
4. Authentic Themes: Modern Dancers and American Indians in the 1920s and 1930s
5. Her Point of View: Martha Graham and Absent Indians
6. Held in Reserve: José Limón, Tom Two Arrows, and American Indian Dance in the 1950s

Part III. Indigenous Choreographers Today
7. The Emergence of a Visible Native American Stage Dance
8. Aboriginal Land Claims and Aboriginal Dance at the End of the Twentieth Century
9. We’re Dancing: Indigenous Stage Dance in the Twenty-first Century

Acknowledgments
Notes
Index



The People Have Never Stopped Dancing *Native American Modern Dance Histories* Jacqueline Shea Murphy Table of Contents		$25.00 paper ISBN: 978-0-8166-4776-7 ISBN-10: 0-8166-4776-3 $75.00 cloth ISBN: 978-0-8166-4775-0 ISBN-10: 0-8166-4775-5
Winner of the 2008 de la Torre Bueno Prize for Outstanding Book of the Year. Addresses the Indian, absent and present, in modern dance studies. During the past thirty years, Native American dance has emerged as a visible force on concert stages throughout North America. In this first major study of contemporary Native American dance, Jacqueline Shea Murphy shows how these performances are at once diverse and connected by common influences. Demonstrating the complex relationship between Native and modern dance choreography, Shea Murphy delves first into U.S. and Canadian federal policies toward Native performance from the late nineteenth through the early twentieth centuries, revealing the ways in which government sought to curtail ceremonial dancing while actually encouraging staged spectacles, such as those in Buffalo Bill’s Wild West shows. She then engages the innovative work of Ted Shawn, Lester Horton, and Martha Graham, highlighting the influence of Native American dance on modern dance in the twentieth century. Shea Murphy moves on to discuss contemporary concert dance initiatives, including Canada’s Aboriginal Dance Program and the American Indian Dance Theatre. Illustrating how Native dance enacts, rather than represents, cultural connections to land, ancestors, and animals, as well as spiritual and political concerns, Shea Murphy challenges stereotypes about American Indian dance and offers new ways of recognizing the agency of bodies on stage. Jacqueline Shea Murphy is associate professor of dance studies at the University of California, Riverside, and coeditor of Bodies of the Text: Dance as Theory, Literature as Dance. 296 pages \| 7 x 10 \| 29 b&w photos \| 2007 TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction: Dance as Document Part I. Restrictions, Regulations, Resiliences 1. Have They a Right? Nineteenth-Century Indian Dance Practices and Federal Policy 2. Theatricalizing Dancing and Policing Authenticity 3. Antidance Rhetoric and American Indian Arts in the 1920s Part II. Twentieth-Century Modern Dance 4. Authentic Themes: Modern Dancers and American Indians in the 1920s and 1930s 5. Her Point of View: Martha Graham and Absent Indians 6. Held in Reserve: José Limón, Tom Two Arrows, and American Indian Dance in the 1950s Part III. Indigenous Choreographers Today 7. The Emergence of a Visible Native American Stage Dance 8. Aboriginal Land Claims and Aboriginal Dance at the End of the Twentieth Century 9. We’re Dancing: Indigenous Stage Dance in the Twenty-first Century Acknowledgments Notes Index