Dance and Music

A musical genre and a popular cultural event involving music, dance, and poetry. It is found across a wide geographic and cultural area in Northeastern Brazil, especially in urban and rural areas of the states of Sergipe, Alagoas, Pernambuco, Paraíba, and Rio Grande do Norte. Although there is no way to date with certainly the historical emergence of the term or its associated musical practices, scholars generally agree that coco developed among Northeastern Afro-Brazilians during the period of slavery (from the late 16th century to 1888).

Coco can be divided into two major subgenres: coco de embolada, which is characterized by poetic duels between singers who accompany themselves on the pandeiro (a Brazilian tambourine) or the ganzá (a kind of shaken rattle); and coco de roda, a ring dance. Coco songs are predominantly organized in strophic form with the repetition of phrases or words, or else are organized as stanzas that alternate with a repeated refrain. These stanzas, commonly sung by a soloist, comprise traditional verses as well as textual and musical improvisation....

(b Buenos Aires, Argentina, Dec 8, 1939). American director, choreographer, and performer. Trained in classical ballet at the Teatro Colón in Buenos Aires, Daniele became a professional dancer at age 14. She performed for several years with ballet companies in South America and Europe and came to the United States in 1964 to learn American-style jazz dance. She made her Broadway debut in the musical What Makes Sammy Run? that same year, which led to several more Broadway roles. She first assisted prominent Broadway director/choreographers Michael Bennett and Bob Fosse before taking the helm herself on numerous shows, first as a choreographer and then adding the director’s role. She choreographed major Broadway productions as The Pirates of Penzance (1981), The Mystery of Edwin Drood (1985), and Ragtime (1998), and three Woody Allen films, including Mighty Aphrodite (1995). Daniele’s first Broadway production as a director/choreographer was ...

(b Pittsburgh, PA, Sept 18, 1960). American composer, dance arranger, and vocal arranger. He completed the B.Mus. at the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music and pursued graduate studies at New York University. Flaherty later enrolled in the BMI Musical Theatre Workshop, where, in 1982, he met Lynn Ahrens (b New York, NY, 1 Oct 1948), who would become his longtime book- and lyric-writing collaborator. In 1988 the songwriting team arrived on the New York theater scene with the Off-Broadway musical Lucky Stiff and, two years later, introduced Once on This Island, which moved to Broadway for a modest run and received eight Tony Award nominations. Flaherty and Ahrens are best known for Ragtime (1998 and 2009 revival), adapted from E.L. Doctorow’s 1975 novel. For the musical Flaherty and Ahrens won Broadway’s triple crown—Tony, Drama Desk, and Outer Critics Circle Awards—as well as two Grammy nominations. Flaherty’s evocative score blends ragtime, early jazz, gospel, marches, and other American musical styles. In ...

Balinese dance and music group founded in 1979 in the San Francisco Bay Area by Michael Tenzer, Rachel Cooper, and I Wayan Suweca. It has since grown into an internationally recognized ensemble that has toured throughout North America and Bali. Under the leadership of its permanent directors and visiting artists from Bali, its members have studied using traditional methods, foregoing written notation, learning instead through imitation and by rote. The group has performed a variety of Balinese dance and music genres, including gender wayang, gong kebyar, bamboo jegog, and angklung. Its repertoire has included traditional works as well as kreasi baru (“new creations”) by Balinese and American artists, commissioned with the support of public and private funding initiatives. The group’s long-standing ties to artistic circles in both the United States and Bali have positioned it as a strongly cross-cultural organization, mutually influencing both American and Balinese musicians and dancers. In addition to performances, the ensemble has hosted educational workshops to share and promote Balinese arts and culture. In ...

(b Romania, 1930; d Copenhagen, 4 April 2015). Romanian-Danish ethnochoreologist. She worked as a researcher at the Institute of Ethnography and Folklore in Bucharest from 1953 to 1979. She contributed to the foundation and development of scientific research on traditional dance in Romania, where she conducted extensive fieldwork, filming dances and rituals in over 200 villages. Her main interests concerned the contextual study of dance, the analysis of dance structure, the processes of dance improvisation, and dance as an identity marker for the Roma minority group. She also investigated the way traditional symbols were manipulated in Romania for national and political power legitimation.

After 1980 she lived in Denmark, where she conducted research on topics such as continuity and change in the traditional culture of the Vlachs (a Romanian speaking ethnic minority of Serbia) living in Denmark, the Romanian healing ritual căluş, and on the theory and methods of field research in contemporary society. She was the Honorary Chairperson of the ICTM Study Group on Ethnochoreology and the leader of the Sub-Study Group on Fieldwork Theory and Methods, a Board member of Danish National Committee for ICTM, and Doctor Honoris Causa of Roehampton University, London. She had a great number of publications and a fruitful activity as a lecturer on an international level. In her last years, she worked with Margaret Beissinger and Speranța Rădulescu on the volume ...

Hawaiian hula school in Hilo, Hawaii. Founded in 1953 by Edith Kanaka’ole, the school has been instrumental in the preservation and dissemination of hula and chant practices associated with Pele, the goddess of fire. Knowledge about these traditions was passed down to Kanaka’ole through matrilineal descent for at least seven generations, and she in turn instructed her own daughters, Pualani Kanaka’ole Kanahele and Nalani Kanaka’ole, who inherited the school in 1979 upon their mother’s death.

The style of hula taught and performed by the school, ’aiha’a, is characterized by a bent-knee posture and vigorous movements, a reflection of the energy and power of the volcano goddess. In addition to learning hula, dancers at the school become fully immersed in the culture of Hawaii and hula. They learn the Hawaiian language and how to play the ipu (gourd) and pahu (sharkskin drum), and create their own costumes and props using the traditional materials and practices....

Sisters Pualani Kanaka‘ole Kanahele (b Keaukaha, HI, 14 Sept 1937), writer, teacher, and producer, and Nalani Kanaka‘ole Kanahele (b Hawaii, 19 March 1946), choreographer and teacher, are the daughters of Edith Kanaka‘ole, famed chanter and kumu hula (master teacher) of Hilo, Hawaii. After Edith’s death in 1979, they inherited her hula school, Halau o Kekuhi, and became respected elders and teachers in their own right. The sisters continue the legacy of their mother by preserving ancient practices while incorporating innovations into their hula presentations. They codirected and coproduced the hula drama, Holo Mai Pele, the epic tale of the goddess of fire, Pele, and Hi‘iaka, the patron goddess of hula dancers. The production blends traditional hula and oli (chant) with narration and modern stagecraft into a theatrical performance. Pualani and Nalani have created other experimental hula performances that utilize new or non-Hawaiian influences, while maintaining a strong classical hula tradition....

(b Austin, TX, May 16, 1963). American dance critic. She studied ballet while growing up before earning a bachelor’s degree in English from the University of Maryland and a master’s degree in journalism from Northwestern University. Early in her career she worked for the Buffalo News, the Daily Herald in Arlington Heights, Illinois, and for English-language journals in Munich, Germany. She freelanced for the Washington Post until 1996, when she succeeded Alan Kriegsman, the Post’s long-time writer and the first dance critic to win a Pulitzer Prize.

Kaufman’s writing about dance has earned her notice, including the Missouri Lifestyle Journalism Award for Arts and Entertainment Reporting (2001), and the Pulitzer Prize for Criticism (2010). She has covered such diverse subjects as George Balanchine and Michael Jackson, and she has examined dance in ballets, film, popular culture, and everyday life. In July 2000 she broke the story that works by Martha Graham may not have copyright protection. Kaufman’s style blends acute description and historical savvy with fearless wit. She explains the hard truths and beautiful meanings of the art of movement....

(b Providence, RI, April 28, 1937; d Dec 11, 2018). Scholar of American dance and dance music. After studies at the Hartford Conservatory of Music, she was awarded the BA in music from Vassar College in 1959, the same year she married Robert Monteith Keller (b 1934). Keller’s interest in colonial-era dance began during the time of the Bicentennial celebrations in the mid-1970s. She and her family were living in a former tavern in Coventry, Connecticut—built in 1801—that had a 42-foot ballroom on the second floor, which was open to the public during the Bicentennial festivities in the town. Curious about what kind of dances had been held there, she and her husband began a quest to bring early American dance back to life. (Her husband aided her in her research after that time, especially in the area of data management.)

Keller was the first scholar to thoroughly and systematically investigate American dance music of the colonial era and early Republic. She compiled a comprehensive database of dance tunes of American (and many foreign) sources from the 18th century, with Carolyn Rabson, which resulted in the ...

A popular dance music genre that rose to prominence in Haiti during the mid-1950s and which remains at the forefront of the Haitian music scene, both in Haiti and in the Haitian diaspora. There are two conflicting theories of the genre’s origins. Some scholars explain that konpa was adapted from the merengue típico from the Cibão region of the Dominican Republic. Others locate its roots in the Haitian folkloric music that includes the contredanse, quadrille, and menuet of European origin, in addition to the rada, kongo (also, congo), and petwo (also, pétro) rhythms that have provenance in Africa.

Early ensembles typically comprised vocals, saxophones, accordion, acoustic guitar, string bass, drum set, and various percussion instruments. From the 1960s, band composition decreased in size and shifted to include more electronic instruments (guitar, bass, and synthesizers). During the 1970s, konpa bands began widely incorporating trumpets, trombones, and congas or tambou...

[Eugene Louis Facciuto]

(b Steubenville, OH, March 20, 1925; d New York, April 7, 2015). American jazz dance innovator and teacher. Coached by his brother, he developed an act with singing, dancing, and acrobatic tricks that made him a frequent winner of talent shows and that led to his first jobs as vaudeville emcee and band singer. After military service in World War II, he went to Hollywood seeking a career in movie musicals, but his plans were disrupted when a car accident left him partially paralyzed. He developed a series of exercises that enabled him to recover from his injuries and to begin studying ballet and tap dance. Despite initial limitations, he had an eight-year career in which he appeared in more than forty musical films, working with many leading choreographers and dancers of the late 1940s and early 1950s. His importance lies not in his performing career, however, but in the exercise routine he created for his rehabilitation, which became the first complete technique for learning jazz dance. In ...

Ring shout performers. The group formed in the Bolden community of McIntosh County on the coast of Georgia to promote the survival of the Ring shout—the oldest African American performance tradition in North America. The group performs after church worship services and on special occasions at a local church, Mt. Calvary Baptist. Because of space limitations in the sanctuary, an annex was built behind the church to accommodate performance of the ring shout, which employs call-and-response singing, percussive rhythm, and expressive and formalized dance-like movement in a counter-clockwise ring. Presumed to have died out in the 20th century, the tradition was rediscovered in 1980 when the group consented to perform at the Sea Island Festival on St. Simon’s Island in Glynn County, Georgia. The repertory is often Biblical in nature and consists of a special song type, at one time called a “running spiritual,” and believed to be a precursor to the Negro spiritual. In ...

(b London, July 11, 1930; d Herefordshire, October 10, 2003). British designer . After studying with distinction at the Royal College of Art with Hugh Casson, she joined the BBC in 1955 as a television designer, remaining until 1967. She designed a number of distinguished theatre, ballet and opera productions between 1967 and 1988, including Yevgeny Onegin (1971), La bohème (1974; for illustration see) and Die Fledermaus (1977) for Covent Garden, and Arabella (1984) for Glyndebourne. International productions include Un ballo in maschera for the Hamburg Staatsoper (1973), Otello for the Royal Opera, Stockholm (1982), Die Csárdásfürstin for Kassel Opera (1983) and The Consul for Connecticut Opera (1985).

Oman was much admired by critics and audiences for the social and historical accuracy of her designs. Her costumes appeared as real clothes worn by real people, and her sets as places where people actually live, work and play. She stylishly and inventively combined the visually appealing with a particular care for detail that always served the dramatic needs of the work at hand. She was elected a Royal Designer for Industry (...

(b Ganghwa Island, South Korea, 1954). South Korean dancer, naturalized American. She was exposed to traditional Korean dance from a young age through the shamanistic Buddhist rituals that her family hosted when she was a child. At the age of four she moved with her family to the capital city of Seoul. From age six she was encouraged by her parents to study dance, and at age 13 she entered an art and performance school (kwonbon). She immigrated to the United States after she finished a tour there in 1981.

Park became involved with the Korean immigrant community in New York, including the Association for Korean Performing Arts. She later established a branch of the Korean Traditional Music Association in New York (1993) under the appellation Korean Traditional Performing Arts Association and founded Sounds of Korea, a performance group dedicated to preserving Korea’s traditional performing arts....

The dances and music of the Polynesian peoples have had varying impact on the United States over the last one and half centuries. Of greatest importance are Hawaiian music and dance, including musical instruments such as the Pedal steel guitar and Ukulele, and practices such as the Hula (see Hawaii). Owing to US colonial involvement in the region, exchange and influences transcend just the Hawaiian connection. For the 1909 production Inside the Earth at the New York Hippodrome 50 Maori performers were imported from New Zealand for the season. To promote her 1926 silent film, Aloma of the South Seas, the dancer Gilda Gray toured with a Polynesian band, The Royal Samoans, and performed her “Polynesian dance” before showings. The Royal Samoans capitalized on the craze for Hawaiian and Tahitian music and dancing. They performed throughout the United States in the interwar period, even obtaining a live cameo in the ...

(b Boskovice, 19 Jan 1984).Czech composer and performer (voice, accordion, and tap dance). She studied the accordion (2004–10) and composition (2007–8) at the Brno Conservatory, and composition at the Janáček Academy of Music and Performing Arts (with martin smolka and Peter Graham[1]). She also studied as an exchange student at the Royal Conservatory in The Hague, the California Institute of the Arts (with michael pisaro), the Universität der Künste Berlin (with Marc Sabat), and Columbia University (with george e. lewis).

While she often works with elements outside of music, there is almost always an intense engagement with direct listening, often arrived at through intense focus on very limited material. Sources for her work include Morse code, maps of garments which she turns into scores (Shirt for Harp, Oboe, and Accordion; Jacket for Ensemble), field recordings which she notates descriptively and then asks musicians to interpret the notation (...