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Dance, Sex, and Gender

Signs of Identity, Dominance, Defiance, and Desire

"Ambitious in its scope and interdisciplinary in its purview. . . . Without doubt future researchers will want to refer to Hanna’s study, not simply for its rich bibliographical sources but also for suggestions as to how to proceed with their own work. Dance, Sex, and Gender will initiate a discussion that should propel a more methodologically informed study of dance and gender."—Randy Martin, Journal of the History of Sexuality

233 pages | 44 halftones | 6 x 9 | © 1988

Anthropology: Cultural and Social Anthropology

Gay and Lesbian Studies

Gender and Sexuality

Music: Ethnomusicology

Women's Studies

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations
Overture
Acknowledgments
Part One: Spotlight
1. Sex, Learning, and Dance Images
Be a Man, Be a Woman: Nature and Nurture
Danced Sexual Imagery: Modeling
2. Odyssey toward Understanding
The Social Construction of Reality
Sources of Evidence
So What?
Part Two: A Worldwide Erotic and Sex-Role Dance Heritage
3. Sexuality
Aphrodisiac Dancing toward Culturally Licit Procreation
Dance as Pre- and Extramarital Entertainment, Art, and Artifice
Love, Life, Death, and Divinity
Seduction of Forces and Female Shamans
Sexual Sublimination
4. Sex Role Scripting
Initiation
Movement Metaphor
Modulating Sex Roles: Transvestism, Adulation, and Appeasement
5. India’s Dance Kaleidoscope: Divine Sexuality, Sex Roles, Erotic Fantasy, Profanity, and Emancipation
Sacred and Secular Merge
Sex Role Encoding
Erotic Fantasy
Profanity and Further Exploitation of Women
Renaissance
Part Three: Western Theater Dance
6. Patterns of Dominance: Men, Women, and Homosexuality
Gender and the Evaluation of Dance
Dance for Women’s Liberation: Indict, Dismantle, Create
Gay and Men’s Liberation
Big Bucks and the Challenge
7. The Sense and Symbol of Sexuality and Gender in Dance Images
Awareness of Sexuality
Gender Signs in Everyday Life
Sexual Symbols in Western Theater Dance
8. Spotlighted Performances: More on Telling Sex Stories
Insistent Traditional Masculinity and Femininity
Life Cycle Portrayals
Sexuality and Shock
Beauty and the Body
The Nutcracker: Christmas and Unconscious Cruel Sex
Against Their Wills
Ambiguities and Sexual Options
9. New Moves for Women
Two Temperaments—One Woman
Roles of Stature
Men and Women Sharing
Guiltless Female Protagonists
Identity as Victim
Female Bonding and Lesbianism
Role Reversal and Androgyny
Asexual Female Dance
Multiple Roles?
10. New Moves for Men
Derogation of Women
Unisexuality and Role Reversal
Gay Men?
11. Coda
Spotlight
Global Occurrence
Transformations: The American Scene
New Directions
Appendix: Coding Variables for Gender Patterns in Dance
Notes
References
Index

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