The futures of dance studies /

Futures of Dance Studies celebrates two major initiatives: the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation's six-year project "Dance Studies in/and the Humanities" (2012--18) and the 2017 unification of two dance organizations into one, the Dance Studies Association. With this collection, Manning (Northwestern), Ross (Stanford), and Schneider (Brown) provide the reader with an opportunity to "reimagine" paradigms around movement, spaces, the dancing body, and the trajectory of dance history. Essays with such evocative titles as "Flesh Dance: Black Woman from Behind," "Disavowing Virtuosity, Performing Aspiration: Choreographies of Anticlimax in the Work of Yve Laris Cohen, Narcissister, and John Jasperse," and "Winin' through the Violence: Performing Carib[being]ness at the Brooklyn Carnival" reveal a multitude of theories, methods, and practices. Contributors invite the reader to consider, and possibly rethink, the necessity and implications of "newness" in the field of dance studies, while continuing to applaud existing methodologies, philosophies, attitudes, and praxes. Most of the essays are by postdoctoral fellows, but that should not deter underclass students from critically engaging them. The length of the essays (15--20 pages) suggests accessibility, and the references at the end of each essay provide a useful road map. Summing Up: Recommended. Lower-division undergraduates through faculty; professionals. --Gregory King, Kent State University