Kinetic Cultures

Belle époque Paris adored dance. Whether at the music hall or in more refined theatres, audiences flocked to see the spectacles offered to them by the likes of Isadora Duncan, Diaghilev’s flashy company, or an embarrassment of Salomes. After languishing in the shadow of opera for much of the nineteenth century, ballet found itself part of this lively kinetic constellation.

In Kinetic Cultures, Rachana Vajjhala argues that far from being mere delectation, ballet was implicated in the larger republican project of national rehabilitation through a rehabilitation of its citizens. By tracing the various gestural complexes of the period—bodybuilding routines, appropriate physical comportment for women, choreographic vocabularies, and more—the author presents a new way of understanding histories of dance and music, one that she locates in gesture and movement.