Becomings

Pregnancy, Phenomenology, and Postmodern Dance

Johanna Kirk

$273

Hardback

Forthcoming
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English

Routledge
03 June 2024

Performance art; Theatre Studies; Dance; Anthropology; Creative therapy (eg art, music, drama)

Series: Routledge Advances in Theatre & Performance Studies

This book explores postmodern choreographic engagements of pregnant bodies in the US over the last 70 years.

Johanna Kirk discusses how choreographers negotiate identification with the look of their pregnant bodies to maintain a sense of integrity as artists and to control representations of their gender and physical abilities while pregnant. Across chapters, the artists discussed include Anna Halprin, Trisha Brown, Twyla Tharp, Sandy Jamrog, Jane Comfort, Jody Oberfelder, Jawole Willa Jo Zollar, Miguel Gutiérrez, Yanira Castro, Noémie LaFrance, and Meg Foley. By presenting their bodies in performance, these artists demonstrate how their experiences surrounding pregnancy intersect not only with their artform and its history but also with their personal experiences of race, gender, and sexual identification. In these pages, Johanna Kirk argues that choreography offers them tools that are alternative to medicine (or other forms of social representation) for understanding what/how pregnant bodies do and feel and what they can mean for individuals and their communities. The works within these chapters invite readers to see dancing bodies and pregnant bodies in new ways and for their potential to manifest new possibilities.

This study will be of great interest to students and scholars exploring dance, theatre and performance, race, and gender.

By: Johanna Kirk
Imprint: Routledge
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Dimensions: Height: 229mm, Width: 152mm,
ISBN: 9781032270883
ISBN 10: 1032270888
Series: Routledge Advances in Theatre & Performance Studies
Pages: 308
Publication Date: 03 June 2024
Audience: General/trade , Professional and scholarly , ELT Advanced , Undergraduate
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Forthcoming

Introduction 1 Pregnant body as choreographic sight/site 2 Pregnant body as creative spacetime Part one: Worlding a lived score Part two: Queer orientations toward pregnancy, choreographing pure becoming 3 Choreographies of feminist maternal health/care Conclusions and connections

Johanna Kirk, PhD is a Lecturer in World Arts and Cultures/Dance at UCLA. She is a choreographer, writer, and movement educator with undergraduate and graduate degrees in Dance. She has designed and taught courses in Experiential Anatomy, Yoga and Dance to students of a wide variety of ages and backgrounds on three continents.