Moving Performances : Divas, Iconicity, and Remembering the Modern Stage / Jeanne Scheper.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Scheper, Jeanne, author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Performing arts--Social aspects--United States--20th century.

Performing arts.

Performing arts--Political aspects--United States--20th century.

Women in the performing arts--United States.

Women in the performing arts.

African Americans in the performing arts.

Women entertainers--United States--History--20th century.

Women entertainers.

African American women entertainers--History--20th century.

African American women entertainers.

United States--Race relations--20th century.

United States.

Genre:

Electronic books.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (226 pages) : illustrations, photographs

Place of Publication:

New Brunswick, NJ : Rutgers University Press, [2016]

Language Note:

In English.

Summary:

Fabulous yet fierce, imperious yet impetuous, boss yet bitchy-divas are figures of paradox. Their place in culture is equally contradictory, as they are simultaneously venerated and marginalized, hailed as timeless but then frequently forgotten or exhumed as cult icons by future generations. Focusing on four early twentieth-century divas-Aida Overton Walker, Loïe Fuller, Libby Holman, and Josephine Baker-who were icons in their own time, Moving Performances considers what their past and current reception reveals about changing ideas of race and gender. Jeanne Scheper examines how iconicity can actually work to the diva's detriment, reducing her to a fetish object, a grotesque, or a figure of nostalgia. Yet she also locates more productive modes of reception that reach to revive the diva's moving performances, imbuing her with an affective afterlife. As it offers innovative theorizations of performance, reception, and affect, Moving Performances also introduces readers to four remarkable women who worked as both cultural producers and critics, deftly subverting the tropes of exoticism, orientalism, and primitivism commonly used to dismiss women of color. Rejecting iconic depictions of these divas as frozen in a past moment, Scheper vividly demonstrates how their performances continue to inspire ongoing movements.

Contents:

Frontmatter

Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction: Divas, Iconicity, Remembering

1. The Color Line Is Always Moving: Aida Overton Walker

2. Transnational Technologies of Orientalism: Loïe Fuller's Invented Repertoires

3. "Voices within the Voice": Aural Passing and Libby Holman's Deracinated/Reracinated Sound

4. "Much Too Busy to Die": Josephine Baker's Diva Iconicity

Conclusion: Diva Remains

Notes

Bibliography

Index

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 22. Okt 2019)

ISBN:

9780813585468

0813585465

9780813585475

0813585473

OCLC:

966429821