Performing Arts

20901 books

$18.22

by Lisa Wheeler (Author), R. Gregory Christie (Illustrator)With a simple clap of hands, an itty-bitty beboppin' baby gets his whole family singing and dancing. Sister's hands snap. Granny sings scat. Uncle soft-shoes--and Baby keeps the groove. Things start to wind down when Mama and Daddy sing blues so sweet. Now a perfectly drowsy baby sleeps deep, deep, deep. Lisa Wheeler and R. Gregory Christie pair up for a celebration of music, imagination, and big families--but they know that even a ja...

Mr. Putter & Tabby Toot the Horn - Paperback

$5.74

by Cynthia Rylant (Author), Arthur Howard (Illustrator)Mr. Putter and his fine cat, Tabby, like sharing music with their neighbors Mrs. Teaberry and her good dog, Zeke. But when Mrs. Teaberry decides they should join a band, Mr. Putter isn't so sure. He doesn't even play an instrument--in fact, neither does Mrs. Teaberry. But they aren't going to let that stop them! Number of Pages: 44 Dimensions: 0.2 x 8.5 x 6 IN Illustrated: Yes Publication Date: August 09, 1999 Accelerated ...

The Misanthrope and Tartuffe, by Molière - Paperback

$16.30

by Richard Wilbur (Author)In brilliant rhymed couplets, Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Richard Wilbur renders two of seventeenth-century French playwright Moliere's comic masterpieces into English, capturing not only the form and spirit of the language but also its substance. The Misanthrope is a searching comic study of falsity, shallowness, and self-righteousness through the character of Alceste, a man whose conscience and sincerity are too rigorous for his time. In Tartuffe, a wily, opportun...

$14.38

by Molière (Author), Richard Wilbur (Translator)The renowned French playwright Molière's most masterful and most frequently performed play, skillfully translated into English by the Pulitzer Prize-winning translator Richard Wilbur. The rich bourgeois Orgon has become a bigot and prude. The title character, a wily opportunist and swindler, affects sancity and gains complete ascendancy over Ogron, who not only attemps to turn over his fortune but offers his daughter in marriage to his "spiritua...

André Bazin's Film Theory: Art, Science, Religion - Paperback

$68.38

by Angela Dalle Vacche (Author)Through metaphors and allusions to art, science, and religion, André Bazin's writings on the cinema explore a simple yet profound question: what is a human? For the famous French film critic, a human is simultaneously a rational animal and an irrational being. Bazin's idea of the cinema is a mind-machine where the ethical implications have priority over aesthetic issues. And in its ability to function as an art form for the masses, cinema is the only medium that...

Show and Tell: The New Book of Broadway Anecdotes - Paperback

$19.15

by Ken Bloom (Author)Did you know that Frank Sinatra was nearly considered for the original production of Fiddler on the Roof? Or that Jerome Robbins never choreographed the famous "Dance at the Gym" in West Side Story? Or that Lin-Manuel Miranda called out an audience member on Twitter for texting during a performance of Hamilton (the perpetrator was Madonna)? In Show and Tell: The New Book of Broadway Anecdotes, Broadway aficionado-in-chief Ken Bloom takes us on a spirited spin through some...

Tap Dancing America: A Cultural History - Paperback

$82.08

by Constance Valis Hill (Author)Here is the vibrant, colorful, high-stepping story of tap -- the first comprehensive, fully documented history of a uniquely American art form, exploring all aspects of the intricate musical and social exchange that evolved from Afro-Irish percussive step dances like the jig, gioube, buck-and-wing, and juba to the work of such contemporary tap luminaries as Gregory Hines, Brenda Bufalino, Dianne Walker, and Savion Glover. In Tap Dancing America, Constance Valis...

Sonidos Negros: On the Blackness of Flamenco - Paperback

$71.42

by K. Meira Goldberg (Author)How is the politics of Blackness figured in the flamenco dancing body? What does flamenco dance tell us about the construction of race in the Atlantic world? Sonidos Negros traces how, in the span between 1492 and 1933, the vanquished Moor became Black, and how this figure, enacted in terms of a minstrelized Gitano, paradoxically came to represent Spain itself. The imagined Gypsy about which flamenco imagery turns dances on a knife's edge delineating Christian and...

Classical Myth and Film in the New Millennium - Paperback

$87.98

by Patricia Salzman-Mitchell (Author), Jean Alvares (Author)Offering unique and in-depth discussions of films that have been released since 2000, Classical Myth and Film in the New Millennium uses various modern approaches--ranging from myth criticism to psychology and gender studies--to analyze popular movies that make use of themes and stories from Greek and Roman mythology, including Troy, The Hunger Games, Pan's Labyrinth, and Clash of the Titans. FEATURES * Provides a critical analysi...

Ray Bolger: More Than a Scarecrow - Hardcover

$41.42

by Holly Van Leuven (Author)Best remembered for his role as the Scarecrow in the 1939 MGM musical The Wizard of Oz, Ray Bolger led a rich and extraordinary career in the decade before and more than four decades after the creation of the film. Ray Bolger: More Than a Scarecrow is the first biography of this classic American entertainer, covering the luminous and forgotten career of the eccentric dancer outside of his burlap mask. The product of a fragmented, working-class Boston Irish family, ...

Hollywood Harmony: Musical Wonder and the Sound of Cinema - Paperback

$56.22

by Frank Lehman (Author)Film music often tells us how to feel, but it also guides us how to hear. Filmgoing is an intensely musical experience, one in which the soundtrack structures our interpretations and steers our emotions. Hollywood Harmony explores the inner workings of film music, bringing together tools from music theory, musicology, and music psychology in this first ever book-length analytical study of this culturally central repertoire. Harmony, and especially chromaticism, is embl...

Roadshow!: The Fall of Film Musicals in the 1960s - Paperback

$40.30

by Matthew Kennedy (Author)Full-page newspaper ads announced the date. Reserved seats went on sale at premium prices. Audience members dressed up and arrived early to peruse the program during the overture that preceded the curtain's rise. And when the show began, it was--a rather disappointing film musical. In Roadshow!, film historian Matthew Kennedy tells the fascinating story of the downfall of the big-screen musical in the late 1960s. It is a tale of revolutionary cultural change, busine...

Katherine Dunham: Dance and the African Diaspora - Hardcover

$48.14

by Joanna Dee Das (Author)One of the most important dance artists of the twentieth century, dancer and choreographer Katherine Dunham (1909-2006) created works that thrilled audiences the world over. As an African American woman, she broke barriers of race and gender, most notably as the founder of an important dance company that toured the United States, Latin America, Europe, Asia, and Australia for several decades. Through both her company and her schools, she influenced generations of per...

Eyes Wide Shut: Stanley Kubrick and the Making of His Final Film - Paperback

$62.30

by Robert P. Kolker (Author), Nathan Abrams (Author)Twenty years since its release, Stanley Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut remains a complex, visually arresting film about domesticity, sexual disturbance, and dreams. It was on the director's mind for some 50 years before he finally put it into production. Using the Stanley Kubrick Archive at the University of the Arts, London, and interviews with participants in the production, the authors create an archeology of the film that traces the progress o...

Rock in the Musical Theatre: A Guide for Singers - Paperback

$53.18

by Joseph Church (Author)Today's musical theatre world rocks. Now that rock 'n' roll music and its offshoots, including pop, hard rock, rap, r&b, funk, folk, and world-pop music, are the standard language of musical theatre, theatre singers need a source of information on these styles, their origins, and their performance practices. Rock in the Musical Theatre: A Guide for Singers fills this need. Today's musical theatre training programs are now including rock music in their coursework a...

Nobody's Girl Friday: The Women Who Ran Hollywood - Hardcover

$41.42

by J. E. Smyth (Author)Looking back on her career in 1977, Bette Davis remembered with pride, "Women owned Hollywood for twenty years." She had a point. Between 1930 and 1950, over 40% of film industry employees were women, 25% of all screenwriters were female, one woman ran MGM behind the scenes, over a dozen women worked as producers, a woman headed the Screen Writers Guild three times, and press claimed Hollywood was a generation or two ahead of the rest of the country in terms of gender e...

Mindful Musician: Mental Skills for Peak Performance - Paperback

$53.18

by Vanessa Cornett (Author)In The Mindful Musician: Mental Skills for Peak Performance, author Vanessa Cornett offers guidelines to help musicians cultivate artistic vision, objectivity, freedom, quiet awareness, and self-compassion, both on- and offstage in order to become more resilient performers. Contrary to modern culture's embrace of busyness and divided attention, Cornett's contemplative techniques provide greater space for artistic self-expression and satisfaction. With the aid of a c...

Film: A Very Short Introduction - Paperback

$11.47

by Michael Wood (Author)Film is arguably the dominant art form of the twentieth century. In this Very Short Introduction, Michael Wood offers a wealth of insight into the nature of film, considering its role and impact on society as well as its future in the digital age. As Wood notes, film is many things, but it has become above all a means of telling stories through images and sounds. The stories are often quite false, frankly and beautifully fantastic, and they are sometimes insistently sa...

Risk, Failure, Play: What Dance Reveals about Martial Arts Training - Paperback

$68.38

by Janet O'Shea (Author)Risk, Failure, Play illuminates the many ways in which competitive martial arts differentiate themselves from violence. Presented from the perspective of a dancer and writer, this book takes readers through the politics of everyday life as experienced through training in a range of martial arts practices such as jeet kune do, Brazilian jiu jitsu, kickboxing, Filipino martial arts, and empowerment self-defense. Author Janet OâShea shows how play gives us the ability to ...

How to Land: Finding Ground in an Unstable World - Paperback

$71.42

by Ann Cooper Albright (Author)How to Land: Finding Ground in an Unstable World foregrounds the importance of embodiment as a means of surviving the disorientation of our twenty-first century world. Linking somatics and politics, author Ann Cooper Albright argues that a renewed attention to gravity as both a metaphoric sensibility and a physical experience can help transform moments of personal disorientation into an opportunity to reflect on the important relationship between individual resi...

Get Close: Lean Team Documentary Filmmaking - Paperback

$62.30

by Rustin Thompson (Author)A refreshing new practical approach to documentary filmmaking, Get Close: Lean Team Documentary Filmmaking equips new and veteran filmmakers with the knowhow to make artistically rewarding documentaries for less money, less hassle, and less time. Author and veteran filmmaker Rustin Thompson shows that by stripping away, sidestepping, or reassessing the entrenched industry hurdles-long waits for funding, the unwieldy crews, the unnecessary gear, the gauntlet of film ...

Documentary: A History of the Non-Fiction Film - Paperback

$33.42

by Erik Barnouw (Author)Now brought completely up to date, the new edition of this classic work on documentary films and filmmaking surveys the history of the genre from 1895 to the present day. With the myriad social upheavals over the past decade, documentaries have enjoyed an international renaissance; here Barnouw considers the medium in the light of an entirely new political and social climate. He examines as well the latest filmmaking technology, and the effects that video cassettes and...

The Ultimate Musical Theater College Audition Guide: Advice from the People Who Make the Decisions - Paperback

$53.18

by Amy Rogers Schwartzreich (Author)In The Ultimate Musical Theatre College Audition Guide, author, acting teacher, and musical theatre program director Amy Rogers offers an honest, no-nonsense guide to the musical theatre audition. Written for high school students and their parents, teachers, and mentors, the book demystifies what can be an overwhelming process with step-by-step explanations of audition checkpoints to answer every student's question, "where do I begin?" Chapters explore degr...

Valuing Dance: Commodities and Gifts in Motion - Paperback

$71.42

by Susan Leigh Foster (Author)Because dance materializes through and for people, because we learn to dance from others and often present dance to others, the moment of its transmission is one of dance's central and defining features. Valuing Dance looks at the occasion when dancing passes from one person to another as an act of exchange, one that is redolent with symbolic meanings, including those associated with its history and all the labor that has gone into its making. It examines two way...

$33.42

by Robert Coles (Author)Sitting in his study, William Carlos Williams once revealed to Robert Coles what he considered to be his greatest problem in writing a documentary about his patients in New Jersey. "When I'm there, sitting with those folks, listening and talking," he said to Coles, "I'm part of that life, and I'm near it in my head, too.... Back here, sitting near this typewriter--its different. I'm a writer. I'm a doctor living in Rutherford who is describing 'a world elsewhere.'" Wil...

Love and Theft: Blackface Minstrelsy and the American Working Class - Paperback

$54.70

by Eric Lott (Author), Greil Marcus (Foreword by)For over two centuries, America has celebrated the same African-American culture it attempts to control and repress, and nowhere is this phenomenon more apparent than in the strange practice of blackface performance. Born of extreme racial and class conflicts, the blackface minstrel show appropriated black dialect, music, and dance; at once applauded and lampooned black culture; and, ironically, contributed to a "blackening of America." Drawing...

Behind the Curtain: Making Music in Mumbai's Film Studios - Paperback

$60.78

by Gregory D. Booth (Author)Beginning in the 1930s, men and a handful of women came from India's many communities-Marathi, Parsi, Goan, North Indian, and many others--to Mumbai to work in an industry that constituted in the words of some, "the original fusion music." They worked as composers, arrangers, assistants, and studio performers in one of the most distinctive popular music and popular film cultures on the planet. Today, the songs played by Mumbai's studio musicians are known throughou...

Foundation: B-Boys, B-Girls, and Hip-Hop Culture in New York - Paperback

$50.14

by Joseph G. Schloss (Author)B-boying is a form of Afro-diasporic competitive dance that developed in the Bronx, NY in the early 1970s. Widely - though incorrectly - known as "breakdancing," it is often dismissed as a form of urban acrobatics set to music. In reality, however, b-boying is a deeply traditional and profoundly expressive art form that has been passed down from teacher to student for almost four decades. Foundation: B-boys, B-girls and Hip-Hop Culture in New York offers the first...

Eye for Music: Popular Music and the Audiovisual Surreal - Paperback

$80.56

by John Richardson (Author)The music we hear is always inhabited by voices of previous performances. Because listening is now so often accompanied by moving images, this process is more complex than ever. Music videos, television and film music, interactive video games, and social media are now part of the contemporary listening experience. In An Eye for Music, author John Richardson navigates key areas of current thought - from music theory to film theory to cultural theory - to explore what...

Dance Me a Song: Astaire, Balanchine, Kelly, and the American Film Musical - Hardcover

$71.42

by Beth Genné (Author)Dancer-choreographer-directors Fred Astaire, George Balanchine and Gene Kelly and their colleagues helped to develop a distinctively modern American film-dance style and recurring dance genres for the songs and stories of the American musical. Freely crossing stylistic and class boundaries, their dances were rooted in the diverse dance and music cultures of European immigrants and African-American migrants who mingled in jazz age America. The new technology of sound cine...

The Piano Trio: Its History, Technique, and Repertoire - Paperback

$100.32

by Basil Smallman (Author)Over the centuries, the piano trio has gained a repertoire of exceptional size and richness; works written for this genre include some of the greatest of all chamber works. The first study devoted solely to the piano trio, this book reviews the development of the trio in different countries within the context of general music history, and shows how it has reflected changes in style and technique from Mozart and Haydn to the avant-garde composers of today. Smallman fo...

Ted Shawn: His Life, Writings, and Dances - Hardcover

$51.50

by Paul A. Scolieri (Author)Ted Shawn (1891-1972) is the self-proclaimed "Father of American Dance" who helped to transform dance from a national pastime into theatrical art. In the process, he made dancing an acceptable profession for men and taught several generations of dancers, some of whom went on to become legendary choreographers and performers in their own right, most notably his protégés Martha Graham, Louise Brooks, Doris Humphrey, and Charles Weidman. Shawn tried for many years and...