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Christy Adair is a freelance writer and cultural critic, contributing to such dance journals as Spare Rib and Everywoman. Women and Dance: sylphs and sirens (Macmillan, 1992), is a text used on dance and performance courses in Britain, America and Asia. Adair contributes reviews and articles to journals, magazines, radio and television both nationally and internationally. She also facilitates a range of performance and education events. Adair is a Reader in Dance Studies at York St John University and is committed to radical performance which communicates an exhilaration of moving and challenges social contexts. Christy has significant links with the dance performance industry both locally in the UK and internationally. Her current research interests focus on gender and ethnicity in relation to dance studies and performance. Her forthcoming book is entitled Dancing the Black Question: The Phoenix Dance Company Phenomenon.

In Women and Dance, Adair introduces the reader to an analysis of Western dance from the point of view of gender and post-feminist analysis. Despite the traditionally high profile of women as principal dancers, Adair asserts that modern Western dance is far from a woman-centered medium. Due to the lack of women choreographers and directors, the genre’s vision of women continues to be rooted in patriarchal notions of the female. It is a representation of the female body that is seriously limited, still unable to reflect the depth of women’s reality.

Adair sees the most synchronous images of women having their origins in dance/performance companies that evolved as in the period post 1970. According to Adair, these groups reflected the fluid, politically progressive images of women following the last wave of the feminist movement. Their major contribution was the development of a type of performance that pushed the boundaries of gender and sex-role expectations. In a piece entitled She Is Giving Birth to Herself, Adair describes how the group Bush Mama explores the primacy of woman relating to other women, not woman-as-male-love-object.

The most useful portion of the book was: “The subversives...women’s dance practices.” It underscores Adair's central tenet that images of women will only be expanded with women themselves taking control of developing, directing, and mounting their own work. This, according to Adair, must occur despite the social and economic barriers involved.

This is particularly potent for me as I try to work more on dance and spoken word pieces. I came to the same realization over the last ten years that I needed to do whatever was necessary to control my own work, how it was showcased, etc. It's also an opinion I've shared with other writer/performers, such as Tara Betts and Sharmili Majmudar, as well as initial discussions with dramaturg and performer Coya Paz, founding member of Teatro Luna here in Chicago.

My only two hesitations in recommending Women and Dance are these: it's an extremely dense read, which made for laborious, although worthwhile reading, and that the book is expensive and better gotten through library sources. But simply put, Women and Dance a vital sourcebook for women performers across the board.

• ISBN-10: 0814706215
• ISBN-13: 978-0814706213

Sam Quinones's new book ANTONIO'S GUN AND DELFINO'S DREAM,
a book of vignettes on immigration that has been lauded in the San Francisco
Chronicle, Los Angeles Times, Publishers Weekly, and Library Journal,
as well as having been featured by La Bloga's Daniel Olivas.

Quinones has spoken about immigration--indeed a hot topic again as
Homeland Security begins cracking down on companies that hire
"illegals"--on NewsHour, NPR, and CSPAN.

The newest feature of Sam's website, www.samquinones.com is a link
where the public can tell their "True Tale," the name of which taken
from Sam's first book, TRUE TALES FROM ANOTHER MEXICO.
Here's the link, which has five or six stories from people on it.
http://www.samquinones.com/other_stories.asp 

Manuel Ramos

SAM QUINONES
We received the following note from the University of New Mexico Press:

Sam Quinones' Antonio's Gun and Delfino's Dream (UNM Press, 2007), a book of immigration vignettes, picked up great reviews from the San Francisco Chronicle, Los Angeles Times, Publishers Weekly, and Library Journal, among other publications. The newest feature of Sam's website is a link where the public can tell their True Tale, based on Sam's first book, True Tales From Another Mexico (UNM Press, 2001).

Here's the link: http://www.samquinones.com/other_stories.asp

You can read La Bloga's interview with Quinones, by Daniel Olivas, here.

And a review of Antonio's Gun and Delfino's Dream, by R. Ch. Garcia, here.


GENERATION TO GENERATION
Stories on Stage (Theater of the Imagination) begins its 2007-2008 season on August 26 with a program entitled Generation to Generation. Stories on Stage has taken a great concept and turned it into a great series of entertaining events. The concept? Excellent literature read by accomplished and acclaimed actors. Not plays, not performances: readings. The motto for Stories on Stage is Adults Deserve a Great Story ... and Cookies & Milk, Too!


Generation to Generation features four selections: The Queen of Mold by Ruth Reichi, My Son the Fanatic by Hanef Kureishi, Vanderbilt Genes by Augusten Burroughs, and an excerpt from Migrant Souls by Arturo Islas (William Morrow, 1990). The Islas piece will be read by Adriana Gaviria, who performed last year in Hermanas at the FringeNYC and the 52nd Street Project's Power of Ten: Plays That Count at the Public Theater in New York. Her other credits include Anna In The Tropics, September Shoes, and The Birds. She's worked with numerous theater companies including the Immigrants' Theater Project, Young Playwrights, Inc., and Pregones and Repertorio Español. Other readers are Annette Helde, Joshua Coomer, and Shishir Kurup.

Migrant Souls has an excellent reputation. The Library Journal's review of this book said: "Continuing the saga of the Angel family that began in Rain God, Islas explores the effects of life on the border. Burdened by the pride of matriarch Mama Chona, all her children and grandchildren are raised to hate their Mexican, dark-skinned heritage, valuing a mythical light-skinned Spanish ancestry. Islas contrasts rebel Josie Salazar, dark and divorced, who fights the family on every front, with Josie's widowed aunt, Jesus Maria, who attempts to maintain Mama Chona's values despite the scorn of her children. The author displays consummate skill in portraying the anguish of Hispanics living on both sides of a literal and figurative border in the second volume of a proposed trilogy. An excellent addition to fiction collections."

Generation to Generation is scheduled for August 26, 2:00 PM and 7:00 PM, Stage Theater, Denver Center for the Performing Arts.