(Part 2) Best dance books according to redditors

	

	

	

> # These Guys Were Argentina At Its Best
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> Leer en español
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> I was practically a kid, 22 years old, when I moved to Argentina in 2000 with the crazy idea of making it as a reporter. Shockingly, the Buenos Aires Herald was in no rush to hire a Texan with no experience, and the economy seemed to be in a bit of trouble. I knew only two Argentines – both lovely, but older, with kids and lives of their own. So I spent sweltering days wandering the streets and riding the #60 bus (it crossed the whole city from Constitución to Tigre for under a dollar, and offered a nice breeze) while devouring empanadas, ñoquis and ham sandwiches on a budget of 70 pesos – which then was 70 dollars – per week.
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> Weekends were most desolate of all. I read Borges, Arlt and Mafalda. I binge-watched the Weather Channel in Spanish, and memorized the lyrics to a Rodrigo song. Finally, after watching the inauguration of Uruguayan President Julio María Sanguinetti on TV from start to finish, I decided I either needed to get a life or go home.
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> Two things ended up saving me. The first, though a total cliché, was tango lessons – which turned into a nice hobby and, years later, into a book. The second, far more important, was a group of a dozen Argentine guys from Temperley, an old railway suburb of Buenos Aires, whom I met through a common friend back home. They had known each other since high school; they spent weekends playing tennis, making asados and going to 1980s-themed nightclubs until 5 a.m.; they gave each other ridiculous nicknames like Wallet, Wolfman and Boti. They took me in, for reasons I still don’t quite understand, and baptized me “Caruso” – after an Argentine child actor of that era, the only other “Brian” they knew.
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> I had my own crew back home, but I quickly discovered the Argentine talent for life-long group friendships was in a class of its own. These guys did everything together. They had decade-old running jokes – one guy was always “getting married next spring” – and indecipherable slang. They were also open about their struggles, sometimes shockingly so – girlfriend trouble, job losses and family squabbles were dissected with both humor and subtle compassion. They vacationed together: Villa Gesell, Bariloche, the glaciers. I tagged along several times, awed by the strength of their bonds, convinced – correctly, as it turned out – that this group would stay together over the years, even after marriage, kids and careers began to take root.
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> I thought of those guys last night, in the wake of the terrible terrorist attack in New York City, where I now reside. Among the eight fatalities were five Argentine men, high school friends on a group trip to celebrate the 30th anniversary of their graduation – exactly the sort of thing my Temperley crew would have done. When I saw the photo of them (above) gathered at the Buenos Aires airport, wearing T-shirts that said “FREE,” I instantly understood what this trip meant to them. Sure, they were “free” for a weekend from the middle-aged pressures of jobs and family, but I reckon that was secondary. Above all, this was an opportunity to maintain those bonds, to re-up on those three-decade-old jokes, and laugh until 5 a.m.
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> According to Argentine press reports, Ariel Erlij, 48, had a successful career as a steel executive in Rosario, where the group had studied. He helped pay for his friends’ tickets – no small thing in a country just emerging from a nasty recession. They landed in New York, then made a quick side trip to Boston, where another member of the group now lives. Upon returning to the Big Apple yesterday, they decided to go on a bike ride in Lower Manhattan. Erlij and four others – Hernán Diego Mendoza, Diego Enrique Angelini, Alejandro Damián Pagnucco and Hernán Ferruchi – lost their lives. One of the survivors’ wives told La Nación: “They’d been waiting for this trip for so long. I can’t believe it ended this way.”
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> I have lived in other Latin American countries in the years since, and social bonds are tight there, too. But – I insist – there’s something special about Argentina. So much else has gone wrong over the years: the brutal dictatorship of the 1970s, the hyperinflation of the 1980s, and the devastating 2001-02 economic crisis, which I experienced firsthand (and eventually covered in my first reporting job). Why hasn’t everybody just abandoned the country? Well, many did. But those Argentines who remained will almost universally tell you it was because of those bonds – family, yes, but also their crew from high school or college. The national talent for lifelong camaraderie is surely Argentina at its very best. To see it now at the epicenter of an international tragedy, in the city where I live – I’m so sorry. It just breaks my heart.

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originally posted in: https://www.reddit.com/r/aves/comments/58ikxy/can_someone_define_rave/d90p5io/

The definition is different depending on who you talk to.

Personally I think of a rave as a recontextualized space in a Temporary Autonomous Zone spirit with a sound system playing electronic music

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Over the years I have grown to appreciate "freedom" as a very important aspect for ravers especially in the underground scene.

Going back out to a macro scale - with electronic dance music culture having grown and spread over the last 30ish years, there now exist differing layers of "rave culture" or as academia likes to call it "EDMC" (electronic dance music culture)

If you take people who have only gone to top 40 night clubs with stringent dress codes/discriminatory entry policies, then you plop them into something like EDC, they might think "wow this is so much freedom, I love raves"

But if you take those people and plop them into a free tekno rave, they might not even know what to do with themselves. "it's just a sound system in the woods, what am I supposed to do?!?" In the perfect case, the answer is: "whatever you want" - but not everyone gets this point of view, or is even interested. People make tradeoffs between music styles, sound system/visual production quality, personal freedom, personal opportunity costs (price of event/time to get there), feelings of safety, level of acceptance, etc. when deciding what to do with their lives.

Everything from the most basic of club nights to the most farout bunker rave, people will call "rave" - I think it's good to ask what people think the term means, but I personally wouldn't get too hung up about anyone's individual definition. It's been re-used for different purposes by people/groups that want to market a specific element of "original rave" (e.g. the sound system/electronic dance music) without including the freedom/friendly anarchy/TAZ aspects. I don't blame people for using the term in various ways, especially people who haven't studied or researched the culture, or haven't been to a free party themselves.

If anyone is interested in reading about EDMC on a global scale and its sociological/cultural impact, I highly recommend checking out Technomad by Graham St John and also the authors who contribute to Dancecult

That is simply a poorly written article.

Dance theory, choreography, and general concepts of contemporary dance are quite well defined and clearly articulated.

In the history of dance, there have been a number of approaches to formalize specific principles and vocabulary, even actual dance notation (Labanotation) was created to record specific choreographic movement in order to be reproduced. The availability of film and especially video made this obsolete.

Ballet is still actually the foundation of modern dance, which introduces variations of technique and extended vocabulary. It would literally be impossible to be a professional performer or choreographer in the contemporary sphere without not only a solid ballet foundation, but other well known principles set out since the Denishawn school (school founded by Ted Shawn and Ruth St. Denis that is considered the origin of contemporary dance's break with ballet).

Anyway, here are some essential reads that I would strongly encourage anyone that is interested in choreography or staging, especially in the context of marching arts, to read:

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The Art of Making Dances - Doris Humphrey (<<< critical read!)
https://www.amazon.com/Art-Making-Dances-Doris-Humphrey/dp/0871271583

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The Intimate Act of Choreography - Lynne Anne Blom & L. Tarin Chaplin

https://www.amazon.com/Intimate-Choreography-Lynne-Anne-Blom/dp/0822953420/

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Anatomy of Movement - Blandine Calais-Germain

https://www.amazon.com/Anatomy-Movement-Revised-Blandine-Calais-Germain/dp/0939616572

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Dance and the Specific Image - Daniel Nagrin

https://www.amazon.com/Dance-Specific-Image-Daniel-Nagrin/dp/0822955202

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Technical Manual and Dictionary of Classical Ballet - Gail Grant

https://www.amazon.com/Technical-Manual-Dictionary-Classical-Ballet/dp/0486218430/

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The Routledge Studies Dance Reader - Alexandra Carter

https://www.amazon.com/Routledge-Dance-Studies-Reader/dp/0415485991

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Every Little Movement: A Book About Delsarte - Ted Shawn

https://www.amazon.com/Every-Little-Movement-About-Delsarte-ebook/dp/B01N1YQQXX/

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What Is Dance?: Readings in Theory and Criticism - Roger Copland & Marshall Cohen

https://www.amazon.com/What-Dance-Readings-Theory-Criticism/dp/0195031970

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The Illustrated Dance Technique of José Limon - Daniel Lewis

https://www.amazon.com/Illustrated-Dance-Technique-Jos%C3%A9-Lim%C3%B3n/dp/0871272091/

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There are so many more!

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Also recommended, free OCW course from MIT:

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Dance Theory and Composition

https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/music-and-theater-arts/21m-675-dance-theory-and-composition-fall-2003/

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If you're making a request for someone in your area, it generally helps to say what area you're in.

Some tips on how to get started:

1. First - nail the fundamentals of photography. Learn about exposure, light, and composition, basic post-processing. You don't need a model to learn that, and if you try to shoot a model without really knowing that stuff you'll waste time and money. Practice on objects, practice by doing self portraiture, practice on a friend (they don't need to be nude).
   
2. Have some idea of what it is you like and you're trying to accomplish. Go to museums. Study the masters. Buy some photo books full of art that you like in a style you might want to mimic, and look at the photos critically (a personal favorite. Or if you're looking for something with true nudist flavor.). Flickr/Instagram can be good resources as well. Look at the photos and ask what's going on with the lighting? Where was the photographer standing and what lens might they have been using? What would I say to a model to tell her to do this pose?
   
3. Find a workshop or shootout in your area - search meetup or eventbrite. They're usually run as group shoots (multiple photographers shooting a model at once). These vary in quality (to say the least), but if you find a good one you'll learn a lot and get some shots to start a portfolio with. The worst ones are just a dozen guys snapping away at a hot naked girl. But the best ones will have organizers that can teach about lighting and posing and give you some opportunity to experiment and try things, and are really worthwhile.
   
4. Hire a model yourself. As in, be prepared to pay them money for their time, talent and skill. An experienced model is worth their weight in gold if you're new at this. They'll know poses, they'll know angles, they'll bring their own ideas to the table and you'll learn a lot from them in the process. Friends and models willing to work for free are amateurs. If you yourself are an amateur as well, you'll just get amateur results. Once you're really experienced to the point that you can comfortably guide and post a model who has no idea what they're doing, then you can try pinching pennies on amateurs. Though honestly even then, the professionals are still worth it.
   
   When you talk to a model, be able to articulate a rough vision for the kinds of shots you're hoping to get. There are sub-genres of nude photography - nude in nature, figure lighting, erotica, boudoir/glamour, nude portraiture, etc. Stay within the bounds of whatever style the model agreed to.
   
   Some other things that I shouldn't have to say but will anyway. Don't touch the model. If the model says she's uncomfortable with something, don't ask her to do it again. Don't ask the model out, don't ask her for sex. Keep your clothes on when you're working with her. Do not, under any circumstances, take a photo of someone without their consent, especially if they're nude. Do not put that photo online in any way without the consent of the subject, especially if they're nude.
   
   I think nudist photography is a particularly difficult genre to do well, and probably isn't where you want to start out for that reason. It's actually closer to candid portraiture than art nudes - you might want to practice by taking photos at parties if you hope to one day shoot nudists. The ideal nudist photograph should have a storytelling quality to it - it should be a portrait of the subject and give a sense of who they are. It should give a sense about nudism itself, both what it is to the subject and just the lifestyle more generally. For that it needs context, either in the form of a story around the photo or within the photo itself.
   
   Good luck.

Naxos is the publisher and they are pretty solid for classical sources. The item you linked to is an audio recording and not a score. Are you buying it for school? My university has a bunch of scores in the library, and I also have access to databases of scores. If you're a music student you likely do too.

Edit: found this on amazon US

Frankie Manning: Ambassador of Lindy Hop

Some sources you might enjoy reading:

• Mark Twain's magazine-style description of Chang and Eng Bunker, the Siamese twins, who retired from show biz and bought a plantation and slaves (meaning: they were pretty well off), and then the Civil War broke out and their fortunes were considerably diminished.
  
  Twain's piece seems to largely be fictionalized, actually - lots of gags and inaccuracies. But the fact that they were that much in the popular imagination says something about their standing, I think.
  
  
• A Cabinet of Medical Curiosities by Dr. Jan Bondeson, which takes a medical perspective of some famous cases, but includes personal information. Julia Pastrana is the little hairy woman on the cover.
  
  That might be the best starting point.
  
  
• Especially pertinent to American Horror Story is the case of Grady Stiles. There was one good book on his case, but I honestly can't remember which one it was. I think it was Fred Rosen's Lobster Boy: The Bizarre Life and Brutal Death of Grady Stiles Jr. but can't swear to it. (Might also be Erik Hedegaard's Cruel & Unusual: the Bizarre Life and Ugly Death of Grady Stiles, the Lobster Boy - they both have pretty similar covers, and really similar subtitles.)
  
  
• Shocked and Amazed: On & Off the Midway by James Taylor is also a pretty good introduction to sideshow lore and the life of the carnival. It's a collection of articles from Taylor's sideshow magazine, produced in conjunction with his sideshow museum (and website).
  
  "Treated well or exploited" is kind of tricky. I mean, exploitation is part of the deal, but some performers made fairly good money.
  
  There was a hierarchy within the sideshow. At the bottom was the Geek, who was usually a bum who dressed up as a wild man or beast man and who had an act that climaxed with biting the head off a live chicken.
  
  Not much skill, and no physical oddities. Skilled performers like blockheads (Jim Rose is one) were higher up, and so were oddities, with, like, acrobats and trapeze artists pretty far up the pecking order.
  
  ---
  
  Less formally, I know that in Sarasota, in an otherwise normal suburban neighborhood of 1940s-era tract houses, there are two houses that look like miniature castles. The story goes that they were built for the husband-and-wife dwarves who performed with the Ringling Brothers circus in the 1930s.
  
  This is denied by the Ringling family, but the houses are definitely there, definitely featured in tours and definitely stand out - it seems like they were built first and the rest of the neighborhood sprang up around them. (Just west of 41, east of Bayside and north of Myrtle, if you're curious - walking distance from the Ringling estates.)
  
  (EDIT: Getting my directions right - Sarasota always seems backwards to someone raised on the Atlantic coast.)
  
  
  
  
  

If she's both a good dancer and attractive, she probably has leaders falling over themselves at the home milongas to get a dance with her. When that becomes the norm, anything less might feel like people don't want to dance with her. Also, she probably doesn't have to develop dance-getting skills at the home milonga.

Another idea...do guys from your group sit next to her? Often, if a guy comes in with a girl and they sit next to each other, even if they're just friends, it can be a dance-repellent.

I'd recommend this ebook for your group: https://www.amazon.com/Enjoy-Getting-Dances-You-Want-ebook/dp/B01N2K8E0G
It specifically addresses the phenomenon that dance skill and dance-getting skill are two separate beasts.

https://www.amazon.com/Letras-tango-Selección-1897-1981-Spanish/dp/9508980788

Well , you want to look up dancing, cadence as it relates to dancing, fighting, and so on. The last time I saw a thread like this, or I inquired about it I came across these materials here and this here

I hope that's helpful to you :)

Historical

• Women in Old Norse Society - Probably one of the most balanced looks at the roles of men and women before, during, and after Christianization.
  
• The Dancing Goddess: Folklore, Archaeology, and the Origins of European Dance - Wonderful look at some of the origins of tradition that are rooted in dance from an Indo-European perspective.
  
• Norse Magical and Herbal Healing - Written in Iceland around the year 1500, the little book now known only as AM 434a is a treasure trove of medieval medical knowledge. It contains a number of magical spells, charms, prayers, runes, and symbols to bring health, wealth, and good fortune. The roots of the healing traditions in AM 434a go back thousands of years before the book itself was written.
  
  General Heathen Cultural Interest
  
  
• Gods of the Blood: The Pagan Revival and White Separatism - Really in depth book about the racialist Pagan movements, their origins, and how they think.
  
  
  The following are a bit controversial, but I feel they are worth reading:
  
  
• NeoPagan Rites by Isaac Bonewits - This is a rather religiously agnostic book, but it speaks to how to create rituals that work.
  
• Seeking the Mysteries: An Introduction to Pagan Theologies - I honestly found this book useful to be able to understand theological construction from a non-Christian POV.
  
  

I do! I was looking for it as well, and was only able to find it in print in this book: http://www.amazon.com/Tango-History-Obsession-Virginia-Gift/dp/143921462X

Here is a scan I made of the essay from the book: https://mega.nz/#!Ukd2UBQC!D5bv9gmhG0GuV52wuryT_EhBLeT_W5vFaxRhW0jgyE8

My closest item is $2.99 (potentially slightly nsfw i guess?) and my favorite pie is good ol' american Apple Pie, no ice cream. Thanks for the contest!

Start with folk songs and dances. Folk songs are great because 1) they're easier and 2) the community knows them. Plus it teaches culture and history, just pick songs that are age-appropriate. Folk dances are great because it gets the kids up and moving. You can use a website for ideas or find some literature on folk dances.

Sure, teach them how to read music too, but don't focus on it. For young music students, the goal is to expose them to high-quality music and make music fun.

The above is solid advice.

This is one of those, "let's sit down over a beer and talk" subjects. I wrote an entire book, simply so that I don't have to condense it into a few paras.

You can get the first chunk of it free on the Amazon preview.

https://www.amazon.com/Enjoy-Getting-Dances-You-Want/dp/152146104X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1521640389&sr=8-1&keywords=oliver+kent

The only thing I would add is have a treat waiting for you at home. If the night sucks, it's good to know you've got a favourite dvd or chocolate waiting for you.

The book is here: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0789167TH/

The titled looked familiar so I thought it might good, but why would the author of a book on stoicism pay for so many fake reviews?

It took me about a year to go to my community's Milonga and another 5 years to venture on my own to Milongas in other areas.

You can't use me as an example though. I am quite incredibly shy, and ridiculously fearful of new experiences!

All this "one chance and you've blown it" stuff comes from contemporary sources ( from the 40s ) that describe Milongas in some barrios as pretty unforgiving. Once you were seen dancing badly, no one would ever ask you again.

I think this should be taken with a pinch of salt. There were hundreds of Milongas in the golden age and I think it would be very difficult to ruin your reputation at them all.

Also, there is the very palpable example of Juan carlos Copes, who apparently was dismissed as a "cart" at his first Milonga. But returned a couple of months later to get another dance with Maria Nieves

In reality, all communities these days want new dancers and there is no way they will hold it against you if you are slightly clumsy the first time you attend a Milonga.

For a slightly more up-to-date description of how Milongas work. I would recommend Kapka Kassabova's 12 minutes of love:

https://www.amazon.com/Twelve-Minutes-Love-Tango-Story/dp/1846272858

I can't quote it directly, but there is a passage in there where Kapka talks about the dangers of rejecting a beginner who could turn into an excellent dancer in the future.

Of course Copes and Nieves met at a Barrio Milonga where they played D'arienzo and the rules are always looser where they play modern music.

Maybe A Child's Introduction to Ballet? Amazon has a pretty long preview of the book.

Let's Dance: Learn to Swing, Foxtrot, Rumba, Tango, Line Dance, Lambada, Cha-Cha, Waltz, Two-Step, Jitterbug and Salsa With Style, Elegance and Ease

Ok, so here's the thing. There is a ton of strength and technique that mostly isn't taught. Most of the bunions you see are there because of poor strength and technique. Very, very few teachers teach pointe in any way that builds towards a solid foundation.

https://www.amazon.com/Perfect-Pointe-Book-pointe-dancer/dp/1452857407

My point being, adding more classes may not be the best path. Spending more time building strength is the better path.