Dance anima techniques of vitality Hilary Bergen

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Bergen, Hilary, author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Dance--Philosophy.

Dance.

Physical Description:

1 online resource

Place of Publication:

Oxford University Press, 2026.

New York, NY Oxford University Press [2026]

Summary:

"Dance Anima argues that the practice of dance holds a paradox at its core: we view dance as a uniquely human thing, and yet, the acquisition of choreography and technique produces the dancer as a mechanized body whose porousness of boundaries mark the more-than-human condition of our present. Through a series of interdisciplinary case studies from cinema, animation, robotics, and screen-based social media, and using a methodology critically attuned to issues of race and embodiment, Bergen tracks dance's driving energy (or "anima")- a kinetic and collective force produced by dancers, choreographies, techniques, technologies, and the imagination of the audience-as a valuable (and extractable) resource for engineering life. Dance Anima proposes that a new history and theory of dance, one that moves beyond the human, is necessary to understand dance as a cultural technique of ensoulment that can be passed between (nonhuman, animated, robotic, digital) bodies. Why are the Boston Dynamics industrial-military robots, designed to be soulless and dehumanized on the battlefield, doing the twist to Black soul music in viral videos online? How does Loie Fuller's Serpentine Dance, described by symbolist poet Stéphane Mallarmé as "the dizziness of soul made visible by an artifice," become even dizzier within today's algorithmic suck of YouTube, where it gathers up countless other dancers under Fuller's name? Dance Anima follows these and other questions to explore dance as both an apparatus of viral vitality, and an uncontainable energetic force"-- Provided by publisher

Contents:

Cover

Half Title

Title Page

Copyright Page

Dedication

Epigraph

Contents

Preface

Acknowledgments

Introduction

Anima/Soul

Dance as Cultural Technique

1 The Dizzy Soul of the Serpentine

Repeating the Unrepeatable

"Movement Uncomplicated by Persona"

Techniques of Ownership

The Viral Echo

2 The Dancing Machine

Olympia (1816)

Maria (1927)

Kyoko (2014)

Miquela (2022)

3 Animating Anima

The Shameful Body

Secret Dancers

Ghostcatching

4 Esprit de Corps

The Military-Industrial Dancer

Choreographing Work

Esprit de Corps

Selling Soul

Conclusion

The Dance Between Life and Death

Notes

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Index

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index

Description based on online resource; title from digital title page (viewed on March 20, 2026)

Other Format:

Print version Dance anima

Print version :

ISBN:

9780197786666

0197786669

9780197786673

0197786677

9780197786659

0197786650

OCLC:

1573500461

Access Restriction:

Restricted for use by site license