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Body Knowledge: Performance, Intermediality, and American Entertainment at the Turn of the Twentieth Century (2013) is a book by Mary Simonson.

Abstract

The book includes a chapter (Choreographing Salome : re-creating the female body) specifically devoted to the character of Salome.

"While female performers in the early 20th century were regularly advertised as dancers, mimics, singers, or actresses, they wove together techniques and elements drawn from a wide variety of genres and media. Onstage and onscreen, performers borrowed from musical scores and narratives, referred to contemporary shows, films, and events, and mimicked fellow performers. Behind the scenes, they experimented with cross-promotion and new advertising techniques and technologies to broadcast images and tales of their performances and lives well beyond the walls of American theaters, cabarets, and halls. The performances and conceptions of art that emerged were innovative, compelling, and deeply meaningful ... Body Knowledge examines these performances and the performers behind them, highlighting the Ziegfeld Follies and The Passing Show revues, Salome dancers, Isadora Duncan's Wagner dances, Adeline Genée and Bessie Clayton's danced histories, Hazel Mackaye and Ruth St. Denis's pageants, and Anna Pavlova's opera and film projects. As a whole, it re-imagines early twentieth-century art and entertainment as both fluid and convergent."--Publisher description

Editions

Published in New York : Oxford University Press, 2013.

Contents

• Prologue: Singing intermediality : Darktown, downtown
• Choreographing Salome : re-creating the female body
• Acting ancient : Hellenism, pageantry, and American modernity
• Dancing music : Isadora Duncan and Wagnerism in the American imagination
• Dancing pictures : Rita Sacchetto's Tanzbilder
• Moving images : Adeline Genée and Bessie Clayton's danced histories
• Filming opera : Anna Pavlova and The dumb girl of Portici
• Finale: Performing intermediality in The passing show of 1913.

External links

• [ Google Books]