Dance in US Popular Culture

This innovative textbook applies basic dance history and theory to contemporary popular culture examples in order to examine our own ways of moving in-and through-culture.

By drawing on material relevant to students, Dance in US Popular Culture successfully introduces students to critical thinking around the most personal of terrain: our bodies and our identities. The book asks readers to think about:

• what embodied knowledge we carry with us and how we can understand history and society through that lens
• what stereotypes and accompanying expectations are embedded in performance, related to gender and/or race, for instance
• how such expectations are reinforced, negotiated, challenged, embraced, or rescripted by performers and audiences
• how readers articulate their own sense of complex identity within the constantly shifting landscape of popular culture, how this shapes an active sen