Consuming Dance

Dunagan (California State Univ., Long Beach) offers smart, engaging analyses of deployments of dance in television advertising. She demonstrates how dance matters in contexts of commodities, marketplace, and the social lives of American consumption across three generations. Working with several theoretical models, Dunagan argues effectively that dance in advertising arrives as a part of American popular culture and as an active participant in disciplinary discourses....Summing up: Highly recommended. -- CHOICE Dunagan has crafted a smart, engaging analysis of the deployments of dance in television advertising. Written with playful enthusiasm, this book demonstrates how dance matters in contexts of commodities, marketplace, and the social lives of American consumption across three generations. Through original findings, based on years of careful research, Dunagan proves that dance in advertising reflects the changing standards of expressive labors of the body. - -Thomas F. DeFrantz, Author of Dancing Revelations: Alvin Ailey's Embodiment of African American Culture Dunagan's terrific book makes vital archival, historical, and theoretical interventions at the under-examined intersection of dance, advertising, and popular culture. Her compelling close readings of over sixty years of advertisements featuring spectacular dancing bodies helps us understand the work of dance-in-advertising in promoting consumption as a performance of identity. In the process, Consuming Dance greatly expands our understanding of how social and cultural meaning is made and remade in American popular culture. -- Brett Mizelle, Professor and Director of the American Studies Program at Long Beach State Consuming Dance shows how and why advertising agencies have leapt upon the spectacular art of dance to sell products. Through her meticulous readings of popular television commercials, Dunagan exposes the aesthetic, ideological, and affective work of dance in advertising. Much like the ads she explores, this book offers a compelling read for anyone interested in dance or media studies. -- Sherril Dodds, Professor of Dance, Temple University