Dance is more than an aesthetic of life – dance embodies life. This is evident from the social history of jive, the marketing of trans-national ballet, ritual healing dances in Italy or folk dances performed for tourists in Mexico, Panama and Canada. Dance often captures those essential dimensions of social life that cannot be easily put into words. What are the flows and movements of dance carried by migrants and tourists? How is dance used to shape nationalist ideology? What are the connections between dance and ethnicity, gender, health, globalization and nationalism, capitalism and post-colonialism? Through innovative and wide-ranging case studies, the contributors explore the central role dance plays in culture as leisure commodity, cultural heritage, cultural aesthetic or cathartic social movement.

Dance is more than an aesthetic of life – dance embodies life. This is evident from the social history of jive, the marketing of trans-national ballet, ritual healing dances in Italy or folk dances performed for tourists in Mexico, Panama and Canada. Dance often captures those essential dimensions of social life that cannot be easily put into words. What are the flows and movements of dance carried by migrants and tourists? How is dance used to shape nationalist ideology? What are the connections between dance and ethnicity, gender, health, globalization and nationalism, capitalism and post-colonialism? Through innovative and wide-ranging case studies, the contributors explore the central role dance plays in culture as leisure commodity, cultural heritage, cultural aesthetic or cathartic social movement.

Introduction: The Movement of Dancing Cultures
Hélène Neveu Kringelbach and Jonathan Skinner

Part I: Dance and globalisation

Chapter 1. Globalization and the Dance Import/Export Business: The Jive Story
Jonathan Skinner

Chapter 2. Ballet culture and the market: a transnational perspective
Helena Wulff

Chapter 3.  “We’ve got this rhythm in our blood”:  dancing identities in Southern Italy 
Karen Lüdtke

Part II: Tourism, Social Transformation and the Dance

Chapter 4. Performance in tourism: transforming the gaze and tourist encounter at Híwus Feasthouse
Linda Scarangella-McNenly

Chapter 5. Movement on the move: performance and dance tourism
Felicia Hughes-Freeland

Chapter 6. Dance, visibility and representational self-awareness in an Embera community in Panama
Dimitrios Theodossopoulos

Part III: Dance, identity and the nation

Chapter 7. Moving shadows of Casamance: dance and regionalism in Senegal
Hélène Neveu Kringelbach

Chapter 8. Ballet Folklórico Mexicano: choreographing a national identity in a transnational context
Olga Nájera-Ramírez

Chapter 9. Dance, youth and changing gender identities in Korea
Séverine Carrausse

Chapter 10. Preparation, presentation and power: children’s performances in a Balinese dance studio
Jonathan McIntosh

Epilogue: Making culture
Caroline Potter                                                                      

Notes on Contributors
Bibliography
Index