Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #8167115 in Books
• Published on: 2005-08-07
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 320 pages

Customer Reviews

Not much about Madonna or Salome
The sub-title of this book promises a look at dance from a feminist and orientalist perspective: "dancing women from Salome to Madonna." However, it will disappoint anyone who's looking for any information or analysis of Salome or Madonna. The author tries to cover several dance traditions (tango, jazz, ballet, early modern dance, belly dance, flamenco), but doesn't add anything new to what has already been said on any of them. Some of the information in the book is just innacurate (e.g. Shakira, the singer, is Colombian, not Brazilian) and most of the book reads like anecdotal information (no footnotes or endnotes.) The book is full of overaching generalizations that are not backed up ("[...]ballet is the most concerted attack on the female body of any dance ever invented." and "[...] in every culture restrictions have been placed on women dancing, even in private.") The writing is often poor and sometimes angry, which weakens what the author has to say. The only mention of Madonna in the whole book is reduced to three paragraphs, where the author summarizes all the things we already know about Madonna (her religious imagery, the fact that she studied dance and that she smart and independent).
I was very disappointed, especially because the title is so provocative and it makes you expect something completely different.

So So
I was well into this book and thinking "This author does NOT like middle eastern dance" You can imagine my suprise when I got to the last chapter and realized middle eastern dance is her passion. The last chapter was the only one that kept me interested. The rest of the book had some small interesting tid-bits, but just not enough. I do see she as a book just on middle eastern dance and I will give that a try. This one was a little hard to read.

Historical Perspective on Women in Dance
Wendy Buonaventura's book is a book about the way women have gained freedom from the constraint's of society through dance. How the "battle of the sexes" have played out on the dance floor, and how society views women during different historical periods. This book is a "must read" for any serious student of dance, whether male or female. Some people may find sections of the book offensive, but, hey, the way women were treated in society and are still treated is offensive, Wendy just points out the obvious!
It's an intelligent, thoughtful, well-written book, with all her sources listed for further study. For those of us women in the dance world, it rings very true and very close to home.
However, this book should be read by the general public, just not dancers. It is for anyone interested in societal pressures on women, and men, and how dance often spurs change.
I have bought this book for dancer friends and donated to a few libraries, it is a book that should be on every dancer's shelf.