JULIA FOULKES, FACULTY MEMBER AT THE NEW SCHOOL,
RELEASES NEW BOOK ON MODERN DANCE

MODERN BODIES: DANCE AND AMERICAN MODERNISM FROM
MARTHA GRAHAM TO ALVIN AILEY

(New York, NY – August 20, 2002) Julia L. Foulkes, core faculty member at The New School, is releasing a new book on modern dance, Modern Bodies: Dance and American Modernism from Martha Graham to Alvin Ailey (The University of North Carolina Press, September 2002).

In 1930, dancer and choreographer Martha Graham proclaimed the arrival of "dance as an art of and from America." Dancers such as Doris Humphrey, Ted Shawn, Katherine Dunham, and Helen Tamiris joined Graham in creating a new form of dance, and, like other modernists, they experimented with and argued over their aesthetic innovations, to which they assigned great meaning. Their innovations went beyond aesthetics. While modern dancers devised new ways of moving bodies in accordance with modern principles, their artistry was indelibly shaped by their place in society. Through their art, modern dancers challenged conventional roles and images in gender, sexuality, race, class, and regionalism with a view of American democracy that was confrontational and participatory, authorial and populist.

"Modern Bodies" exposes the social dynamics that shaped American modernism and moved modern dance to the edges of society, a place both provocative and perilous. For more information, visit the University of North Carolina Press at http://www.uncpress.unc.edu/ and search for Modern Bodies: Dance and American Modernism from Martha Graham to Alvin Ailey.

Julia Foulkes is a Core Faculty member of The New School in New York City, where she teaches history. She received her Ph.D. in history at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and her research focuses on 20th-century U.S. cultural history, especially the politics of artists, with an interdisciplinary approach integrating questions of aesthetics, race, and gender. Her recent book, Modern Bodies: Dance and American Modernism from Martha Graham to Alvin Ailey (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2002), highlights the social dynamics in the development of modern dance in the United States. This research led to her role as an advisor for the PBS documentary "Free to Dance," about African Americans in dance in the U.S., which first aired in June 2001. She has also been the recipient of a Rockefeller Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship at the Center for Black Music Research, Columbia College Chicago (1997-98), and a selected participant in a 2001 NEH Summer Seminar on "American Pragmatism and Culture: Art and Society."

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New School University, with 7,000 matriculated students and 25,000 continuing education students, is a New York City university comprised of a liberal arts foundation of three schools: The New School, Graduate Faculty of Political and Social Science, and Eugene Lang College and five professional schools: Parsons School of Design, Mannes College of Music, Milano Graduate School of Management and Urban Policy, Actors Studio Drama School and the Jazz and Contemporary Music Program. New School Online University offers one of the largest selections of online courses in the nation. For further information about admission to New School University, call (877) 528-3321 or go to the Web site at www.newschool.edu