Dance and Activism

Mills artfully weaves together a massive array of case studies, drawing connections across the globe and throughout the century. * Dance International * Mills brings an investigative style and ethnographic approach to dig deep-within contextual layers and personal stories-to discover an interpretation that positions the dialog between the social cultural moment, the dancer, and the dance ... A tightly and provocatively argued book that provides a new perspective on dance as activism. * Journal of Dance Education * Dance and Activism: A Century of Radical Dance Across the World, makes an important contribution to ongoing conversations within the field of dance studies about the political nature of dance. The book explores the mobilization of dance as a language and method for activism and radical hope, extending and refining the intimate relationship between dance and politics outlined in Mills's previous work. * Dance Chronicle * Mills's book provides unique case studies that draw from different forms of dance across the globe. These case studies analyse the actions of the dancers and choreographers, not choreographed works. The majority of books about dance and politics rely on analysis of dance pieces or theorize from generalized notions of dance. Mills also focuses on the actions of the dancers and choreographers whose actions are explicitly political/create direct action in the world. The site of their action is the world at large, not the theatre for a select audience. The majority of books about dance and politics discuss the political effects of events that occur in the closed environment of the theatre or dance studio. * Leah Cox, Dean of the American Dance Festival * Mills shows how dance and dancers from the stage to the streets have responded to forces of alienation and oppression, and how they have moved their bodies-and others-to imagine different worlds. It is a stirring and powerful read, and a prelude to action. * Glory Liu, Harvard University, USA * A most intriguing, erudite book. * Sydney Arts Guide * The past is constantly present as Dana Mills chronicles the extraordinary potential our expressive dancing body/mind. In an age of increasingly sedentary work, her deep analysis of dance as activism lays bare a far-reaching radicalism and breadth of diversity in dance forms. Dance and Activism is both timely and necessary. * Blakeley White-McGuire, Dancer, Choreographer, Educator and Activist, USA * In this groundbreaking multi-disciplinary book, Dana Mills leads dance from the wings of political activism to the centre stage of human resistance and the creative struggle for freedom and our most precious, primordial material possession - the bodies in which we live and struggle for self-possession. Mills deftly choreographs a century of global theatre of street protest and popular movements through the individual stories and collective moments and movements that create surprising uprisings and new solidarities. A brilliant political theorist, activist and dancer at the forefront of the pursuit of a new dialectics for our troubled modern age, Mills shares her cogent analysis and innovative thinking in a readable, engaging form that leaps beyond intellectual boundaries and galvanises a new genre of thought in action. Vividly describing how our restless bodies can and will reach out, rise up and protect everything that is human and beautiful in our world, Dana Mills shows, with passion and commitment, why people will never stop dancing in search of freedom. * Rachel Holmes is critically acclaimed author of, most recently, Eleanor Marx: a Life and Sylvia Pankhurst: Natural Born Rebel *