Acrobats of the Gods PDF Download

Author: Joan Dexter Blackmer
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 140

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Book Description
Relating the rigors of dance to the travails of the alchemical opus, the author, herself a former Martha Graham dancer, allows us to experience the process that for many gives birth to an enhanced awareness of the Self. A timely reminder of the interaction between body and soul.

Author: Matthew G. Looper
Publisher: University of Texas Press
ISBN: 029277818X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 295

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Book Description
Winner, Association for Latin American Art Book Award, 2010 The Maya of Mexico and Central America have performed ritual dances for more than two millennia. Dance is still an essential component of religious experience today, serving as a medium for communication with the supernatural. During the Late Classic period (AD 600-900), dance assumed additional importance in Maya royal courts through an association with feasting and gift exchange. These performances allowed rulers to forge political alliances and demonstrate their control of trade in luxury goods. The aesthetic values embodied in these performances were closely tied to Maya social structure, expressing notions of gender, rank, and status. Dance was thus not simply entertainment, but was fundamental to ancient Maya notions of social, religious, and political identity. Using an innovative interdisciplinary approach, Matthew Looper examines several types of data relevant to ancient Maya dance, including hieroglyphic texts, pictorial images in diverse media, and architecture. A series of case studies illustrates the application of various analytical methodologies and offers interpretations of the form, meaning, and social significance of dance performance. Although the nuances of movement in Maya dances are impossible to recover, Looper demonstrates that a wealth of other data survives which allows a detailed consideration of many aspects of performance. To Be Like Gods thus provides the first comprehensive interpretation of the role of dance in ancient Maya society and also serves as a model for comparative research in the archaeology of performance.

Author: Kenny Pearl
Publisher: FriesenPress
ISBN: 1460262719
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 283

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Book Description
When Kenny Pearl arrived in New York City, determined to succeed as a dancer, he was penniless, friendless and jobless. His memories shine against the backdrop of the turbulent ’60s and ’70s, including Vietnam War protests, the military draft and the rampant crime that once plagued the city. From humble beginnings in the hippie-populated Lower East Side, to performing with the greats of the New York modern dance scene—he danced with the companies of both Martha Graham and Alvin Ailey—Pearl’s life is one of tenacity, hard work and passion. This is the engaging story of the hurdles he faced on his unique journey and the remarkable people he met along the way. www.dancegodsbook.com

Author: Joanne Pillsbury
Publisher: Metropolitan Museum of Art
ISBN: 1588397319
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 251

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Book Description
An introduction to the complex stories of Mesoamerican divinity through the carvings, ceramics, and metalwork of the Maya Classic period Lives of the Gods reveals how ancient Maya artists evoked a pantheon as rich and complex as the more familiar Greco-Roman, Hindu-Buddhist, and Egyptian deities. Focusing on the period between A.D. 250 and 900, the authors show how this powerful cosmology informed some of the greatest creative achievements of Maya civilization.

Author: Jo Ford
Publisher: iUniverse
ISBN: 1462039650
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 430

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Book Description
As King Ashoka leads his army and elephant cavalry to war, he leaves behind a gilded Palace on Indias Ganges River, a beleaguered Prime Minister to cope with monsoons and a devious princess in the harem plotting to become queen. Instead of being awakened each morning by the High Priest and twenty beautiful women with trumpets, he will be greeted by savage tribesmen in surprise attacks. The young scribe assigned to record glorious victories observes in dismay the Kings excessive wrath in battle. Unexpectedly, however, the Kings love for the tall, blonde leader of the Royal Women Guards and regrets over a village chieftain cause him to question his war of conquest. Back at the Palace, intrigue at court and illicit trysts in the harem threaten the Kings power. The Dwarf, a Palace spy, watches allfrom a concubines erotic seduction of the Prince to violence on the Kings sacred white elephant. Alarmed citizens of Pataliputra from highest to lowest castes wonder when their warrior King will return. Has Ashoka fallen under the influence of a Buddhist holy man in the forest? Will the gods that favored him with two rare, white elephants bless his empire with peace and prosperity?

Author: Victoria Phillips
Publisher:
ISBN: 0190610360
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 497

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Book Description
""I am not a propagandist," declared the matriarch of American modern dance Martha Graham while on her State Department funded-tour in 1955. Graham's claim inspires questions: the United States government exported Graham and her company internationally to over twenty-seven countries in Europe, Eastern Europe, the Middle East, the Near and Far East, and Russia representing every seated president from Dwight D. Eisenhower through Ronald Reagan, and planned under George H.W. Bush. Although in the diplomatic field, she was titled "The Picasso of modern dance," and "Forever Modern" in later years, Graham proclaimed, "I am not a modernist." During the Cold War, the reconfigured history of modernism as apolitical in its expression of "the heart and soul of mankind," suited political needs abroad. In addition, she declared, "I am not a feminist," yet she intersected with politically powerful women from Eleanor Roosevelt, Eleanor Dulles, sister of Eisenhower's Dulles brothers in the State Department and CIA, Jackie Kennedy Onassis, Betty Ford, and political matriarch Barbara Bush. While bringing religious characters on the frontier and biblical characters to the stage in a battle against the atheist communists, Graham explained, "I am not a missionary." Her work promoted the United States as modern, culturally sophisticated, racially and culturally integrated. To her abstract and mythic works, she added the trope of the American frontier. With her tours and Cold War modernism, Graham demonstrates the power of the individual, immigrants, republicanism, and, ultimately freedom from walls and metaphorical fences with cultural diplomacy with the unfettered language of movement and dance"--

Author: Thurman C. Petty
Publisher: Autumn House Publishing
ISBN: 0812704444
Category : Babylonia
Languages : en
Pages : 130

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Book Description
Flushed with victory, the young Babylonian prince surveyed the battleground where his army had defeated the Egyptians. In the distance a division of elite soldiers rapidly pursued the fleeing survivors. He mourned the loss of so many brave warriors, but quickly focused on his questto expand Babylons control of world trade. Egypt was only one of the nations to be conquered; before long Lebanon, Phoenicia, Syria, and Judah would feel the edge of Babylonian swords. Soon he, Nebuchadnezzar, would be king, and all the world would pay homage to him

Author: Jason K. Mintel
Publisher: iUniverse
ISBN: 0595126227
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 270

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Book Description
I am the Mosquito Man whispering in your ear, singing all the songs you know you love to hear. Oh horror! Besides being a bad poet, the Mosquito Man is pure evil, fed off of fear, and even worse, he knows the secrets of life! The corporate executives enslave a world of corruption. The fools! They bleed the earth like a rabid dog that will not heel. When the world is a nut, they crack it. Decode my eyes. The sunlight, a set of instructions from the creator, reveals a message of enlightenment. The twelve corporations, each under an astrology sign, scramble to decode and unlock the secrets of life... As a band of off-worlders search for the one with a heart of steel to vanquish the Mosquito Man, they pay the ultimate sacrifice. Will they be able to cast his lot in the tree of knowledge? Is the network called Mindville a bridge to the sun, or is it the path to oblivion? Will the pawns in this game of creation ever find peace? Is this the end? No, it's just the beginning...of the end of the world?

Author: Dmitry Sergeyevich Merezhkovsky
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Christianity
Languages : en
Pages : 262

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Author: Earl R. Anderson
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 1476633452
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 243

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Book Description
Focusing on modern-day fiction set in the Middle Ages or that incorporates medieval elements, this study examines storytelling components and rhetorical tropes in more than 60 works in five languages by more than 40 authors. Medievalist fiction got its "postmodern" start with such authors as Calvino, Fuentes, Carpentier and Eco. Its momentum increased since the 1990s with writers whose work has received less critical attention, like Laura Esquivel, Tariq Ali, Matthew Pearl, Matilde Asensi, Ildefonso Falcones, Andrew Davison, Bernard Cornwell, Donnal Woolfolk Cross, Ariana Franklin, Nicole Griffith, Levi Grossman, Conn Iggulden, Edward Rutherfurd, Javier Sierra, Alan Moore and Brenda Vantrease. The author explores a wide range of "medievalizing" tropes, discusses the negative responses of postmodernism and posits four "hard problems" in medievalist fiction.