MOVING THROUGH CONFLICT

Edited by Dina Roginsky and Henia Rottenberg

Moving through Conflict: Dance and Politics in Israel proposes a framework for research and discussion of the changing nature of relations between Jews and Arabs as reflected in dance from the late 19th century Palestine until present-day Israel.

Drawing on multiple disciplines, this book examines a variety of social and theatrical venues (communities, dance groups, evening classes, and staged performances), dance genres (folk-dancing, social dancing, and theatrical dancing) and different cultural identities (Israeli, Palestinian and American). This study is a pioneering project examining this conflict through dance. Underlying this work is a fundamental question: can the body and dance operate as non-verbal autonomous agents to mediate change in conflicting settings, transforming the "foreign" into the "familiar? Or are they bound to their culturally-dependent significance—and thus nothing more than additional sites of an embodied politics?

This anthology expounds various studies on dance, historical periods, points of view and a variety of points of contact that help promote thinking about this fundamental issue. It will be of great interest to students and scholars of dance studies, sociology, anthropology, art history, education and cultural studies as well as conflict and resolution studies.