Table of Contents

Introduction: modern dance and the birth of the twentieth century; 1. Modern dance and the business of popular culture; 2. Art, women, liberation; 3. Blood and make believe: race, identity, and performance; 4. Embodied revelation: dance, religion, and knowledge; 5. Legacies: dance as profession, spectacle, therapy, politics; Conclusion: coherent contradictions in modernism and modernity.

Promotional Information

This book explores the revolutionary impact of modern dance on European culture in the early twentieth century.

About the Author

Edward Ross Dickinson is Professor and Chair of the History Department at the University of California, Davis. His areas of research and expertise include the history of imperialism, terrorism, sexuality and gender, crime, social policy, social reform, women's movements, modern dance, and racial theory. He is the author of a number of books including Sex, Freedom, and Power in Imperial Germany, 1880–1914 (Cambridge, 2014).

Reviews

'Edward Ross Dickinson brilliantly demonstrates that aesthetic modernism danced a neat double-two-step in the early decades of the twentieth century, combining the tense oppositions of global modernity into a harmonious new language. With its nimble prose and adroit research, Dancing in the Blood is itself a delightfully artful and informative cultural history.' Michael Saler, University of California, Davis

'Dancing in the Blood makes a major new contribution to the scholarship of early twentieth-century dance. Edward Ross Dickinson brings a fresh historical perspective to dance and asks us to reconsider the formative early years of modern dance with new readings of modernism and modernity. An exhilarating read.' Michael Huxley, De Montfort University

'Dancing in the Blood is extremely readable and packed full of solid historical detail, offering a brilliant resource every scholar working in the field should turn to.' Lucia Ruprecht, The Journal of Modern History

'I thoroughly enjoyed this tremendous book, and I expect all historians of the early twentieth century will, too.' Robert M. Brain, The American Historical Review