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When Is Contemporary Dance?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 December 2017

SanSan Kwan
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Abstract

This article interrogates the multivalent understandings of the term “contemporary dance” in concert, commercial, and world dance contexts. I argue that placing multiple uses of the term “contemporary” alongside one another can provide insight into the ways that “high art” dance, popular dance, and non-Western dance are increasingly wrapped up with each other and, at the same time, the ways that their separations reveal our artistic, cultural, and political prejudices, as well as the forces of the market.

Keywords

commercial dancecompetition danceconcert dancecontemporarycontemporaneityethnic dancelyrical dancenon-Western dancetemporalityworld dance
Type
Articles
Information
Dance Research Journal , Volume 49 , Issue 3 , December 2017 , pp. 38 - 52
Copyright
Copyright © Dance Studies Association 2017 

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