Alien Bodies

This work looks at dance in Germany, France and the USA during the 1920s and 1930s. Including ballet, modern dance, and dance in the cinema and Revue, it explores the work of European, African American and white American artists. Concerned with how artists respond to the disturbing and alienating experience of modern life, this book focuses on issues of: national and "racial" identity; new spaces of modernity; the "New Woman" and the slender modern body; and fascist uses of mass spectacles. Artists whose work is examined include: Josephine Baker, Jean Cocteau, Fernand Lege, Jean Borlin, Valeska Gert, Kurt Jooss, George Balanchine, Katherine Dunham and Doris Humphrey.