Rhythms of resurrection: The comebacks of Ruth St. Denis
Ruth St. Denis (1879–1968) had one of the first and longest careers as a professional modern dancer. At age 62, she embarked on a “comeback” that lasted nearly three decades, appearing on stage and screen in the dances that had made her an international star earlier in her career. This essay examines the relationship between her well-known “Orientalism,” her feminism, her spirituality, and her perspective on aging and ageism. In particular, it brings into relief her innovative efforts to redefine dance as a feminist project at the intersection of aging and modern dance history. St. Denis converted “oriental tradition” into a feminist dance praxis, thus, staking a claim for the aging dancer under the banner of feminist politics.
When Good Adjectives Go Bad: The Case of So-called Lyrical Dance
One afternoon in 1995 as I interviewed a young dancer for a research project, I stumbled on an unknown dance form. It was unknown to me and most of my dance studies colleagues, that is, so I counted it a fascinating first encounter with a curious subculture. I had come to a dance studio in a Virginia suburb of Washington, D.C., where I was studying the sociocultural aspects of an annual Nutcracker. Most traditions of this and other Nutcracker communities were known to me—ballet training, casting, volunteering backstage, rehearsing, performing, socializing. But when I asked a twelve-year-old “party girl” from act 1 about her favorite kind of dance class, she named the dance form I had not heard of. It seemed she loved “lyrical” best. “Lyrical what?” I asked. She looked at me quizzically. “Just lyrical,” she said. I was puzzled. I gathered from her attempts at description that “lyrical” was sort of like ballet but more fun, sort of like jazz, but more emotional—it was “just lyrical,” she repeated. I would run across many such attempted explanations of “lyrical” after that, mostly from the undergraduate dance majors I taught in university history classes and the children of friends who took dance classes. It took some time for me to realize that so-called lyrical dance was known only in competition dance culture, which had become “a primary site of dance training for many amateur dancers, across many backgrounds and experiences, throughout the United States.”1 My involvement with dance had always been in the realm of dance as an art form, from my training, to a brief performing career (in ballet and musicals), to dance writing and scholarship. Once working in a university dance department or two, I found out that many, if not most, young dancers did train at “competition dance” studios and participated in the contests and ethos of that world. It could be that the popularity of competition dance and “dance teams” (I found that high schools often have those, separate from the private studio system) results from their resemblance to the sports world and the familiarity and appeal of working with team spirit. The team can be celebrated as a democratic learning tool, and the idea of staying fit and winning prizes perhaps is more easily explained than is “art”—both to young students and to parents.
Evaluation of Analgesic Effect of Caudal Epidural Tramadol, Tramadol-Lidocaine, and Lidocaine in Water Buffalo Calves (Bubalus bubalis)
Aim of this study was to compare the analgesic effect of tramadol and a combination of tramadol-lidocaine with that produced by lidocaine administration in the epidural space in buffalo calves. In a prospective randomized crossover study, ten male buffalo calves were used to compare the epidural analgesic effect of tramadol (1 mg/kg) and tramadol-lidocaine combination (0.5 mg/kg and 0.11 mg/kg, resp.) with that produced by 2% lidocaine (0.22 mg/kg). Loss of sensation was examined by pin-prick test. Onset time, duration, and degree of analgesia and ataxia were recorded after each treatment. Heart rate (HR), respiratory rate (RR), rectal temperature, and haematobiochemical parameters were recorded after all treatments. Time to onset and duration of analgesia, respectively, were as follows: tramadol 11 ± 2 min and 208 ± 15 min; tramadol-lidocaine 6 ± 2 min and 168 ± 9 min; lidocaine 4 ± 1 min and 67 ± 13 min. Onset time and duration were significantly longer with tramadol than the other treatments. Duration was significantly longer with tramadol-lidocaine than lidocaine. Ataxia was mildly observed in tramadol-lidocaine and was moderate in lidocaine. HR, RR, and rectal temperature did not differ significantly from baseline after any treatment. Haematobiochemical parameters returned to basal levels by 24 h after all treatments. This combination might be clinically useful to provide analgesia in buffalo for long-duration surgical procedures.