Dance on Its Own Terms: Histories and Methodologies
By Allegra Angelini
Dance on its Own Terms: Histories and Methodologies is an anthology of recent dance scholarship developed and edited by professors Melanie Bales and Karen Eliot and published by Oxford University Press in 2013. Bales and Eliot have featured in this work a selection of writings that are designed to equip readers with knowledge of current conversations in the field, while drawing particularly on work that reflects the distinctive direction of the department’s PhD in dance studies, which focuses on discipline-specific methodologies in the generation of new knowledge. The book is divided into three sections, foregrounding scholarship that illuminates dances themselves, scholarship that focuses on the knowledge of dancers and choreographers, and scholarship that addresses a variety of approaches to the written record of dance. Gathered from an international selection of scholars, the book includes articles by current students and faculty. Stephanie Jordon, research professor in dance, University of Roehampton, U.K. states, “Here is an unquestionably lively book of dance essays, made more stimulating by the variety of new voices on the subject. Especially welcome is the central place given to dance itself, bravely situated here within a framework of current theory.”
