Bodies of Sound

Dr Sherril Dodds is Chair and Professor of Dance at Temple University, USA. Her scholarship centres on popular, social and screen dance practices and she has authored two books: Dance on Screen: Genres and Media from Hollywood to Experimental Art (2001) and Dancing on the Canon: Embodiments of Value in Popular Dance (2011). She is a founding member of the UK research group PoP Moves and sits on the Board of Directors and Editorial Board of the Congress on Research in Dance and the Editorial Boards of the Korean Society of Dance and Society of Dance History Scholars. Susan C. Cook is Professor of Music and the academic associate dean for the Arts and Humanities in the Graduate School at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Her teaching and research focus on contemporary and American musics of all kinds and demonstrate her abiding interest in dance history, cultural criticism and interdisciplinary scholarship. She is the author of Opera for a New Republic, co-editor of Cecilia Reclaimed and contributed essays to Audible Traces, The Cambridge History of Twentieth-Century Music, the Garland Encyclopedia of World Music, Teaching Music History, Contemporary Theatre Review, Woman and Music and The Arts of the Prima Donna.

• Contents: Preface; Introduction: embodying sound/sounding bodies, Sherril Dodds and Susan C. Cook; Part I Constructing the Popular: The problem of popularity: the cancan between the French and digital revolutions, Clare Parfitt-Brown; Bellowhead: re-entering folk through a pop movement aesthetic, Sherril Dodds; Sound understandings: embodied musical knowledge and ’connection’ in a ballroom dance community, Joanna Bosse. Part II Authenticity, Revival and Reinvention: Dancing out of time: the forgotten Boston of Edwardian England, Theresa Jill Buckland; The English folk voice: singing and cultural identity in the English folk revival, 1955-65, Simon Featherstone; Halling as a tool for nationalistic strategies, Anne Margrete Fiskvik. Part III (Re)Framing Value: Rocking the rhythm: dancing identities in drum ’n’ bass club culture, Joanna Hall; Authenticity, uplift, and cultural value in Bahian samba junino, Danielle Robinson and Jeff Packman; Hierarchical reversals: the interplay of dance and music in West Side Story, Rachel Duerden and Bonnie Rowell; Talking machines, dancing bodies: marketing recorded dance music before World War I, Susan C. Cook. Part IV Politics of the Popular: Superficial profundity: performative translation of the dancing body in contemporary Taiwanese popular culture, Chih-Chieh Liu; Keeping the faith: issues of identity, spectacle and embodiment in Northern Soul, Laura Robinson; Jazz, dance and Black British identities, Catherine Tackley; Epilogue: terms of engagement, Sherril Dodds and Susan C. Cook; Bibliography; Index.

’This anthology explores a neglected area of popular music studies - popular dance practices - and does so from a fresh perspective. The volume introduces some of the key popular dance scholars, and their latest thinking, to the field of popular music studies. From pioneering dance scholars such as Theresa Buckland to up-and-coming dance theorists such as Clare Parfitt-Brown, the array of perspectives addressed is always reliably grounded in rigorous research. ... The impact of this collection of essays is in the originality of its topics and in its engagement with popular dance practices. The volume’s value is in its empirical rigour, where theorising tends to emerge from the practices themselves. Most notably, these projects provide a model for seeing what hasn’t been noticed before. It’s commendable that dance scholars are leading the way here at the intersections of popular music and cultural studies’. Popular Music