DANC 042: Japanese Dance (SC)

"With its dynamic choreographies and booming drumbeats, taiko has gained worldwide popularity since its emergence in 1950s Japan. Harnessed by Japanese Americans in the late 1960s, taiko's sonic largesse and buoyant energy challenged stereotypical images of Asians in America as either modelminorities or sinister foreigners. While the majority of North American taiko players are Asian American, over 400 groups now exist across the US and Canada, and players come from a range of backgrounds. Using ethnographic and historical approaches, combined with in-depth performance description andanalysis, this book explores the connections between taiko and Asian American cultural politics. Based on original and archival interviews, as well as the author's extensive experience as a taiko player, this book highlights the Midwest as a site for Asian American cultural production and makes embodied experience central to inquiries about identity, including race, gender, and sexuality. Thebook builds on insights from the fields of dance studies, ethnomusicology, performance studies, queer and feminist theory, and Asian American studies to argue that taiko players from a variety of identity positions perform Asian America on stage, as well as in rehearsals, festivals, schools, andthrough interactions with audiences. While many taiko players play simply for the love of its dynamism and physicality, this book demonstrates that politics are built into even the most mundane aspects of rehearsing and performing."

2012, by Shawn Bender. "With its thunderous sounds and dazzling choreography, Japanese taiko drumming has captivated audiences in Japan and across the world, making it one of the most successful performing arts to emerge from Japan in the past century. Based on ethnographic fieldwork conducted among taiko groups in Japan, Taiko Boom explores the origins of taiko in the early postwar period and its popularization over the following decades of rapid economic growth in Japan’s cities and countryside. Building on the insights of globalization studies, the book argues that taiko developed within and has come to express new forms of communal association in a Japan increasingly engaged with global cultural flows. While its popularity has created new opportunities for Japanese to participate in community life, this study also reveals how the discourses and practices of taiko drummers dramatize tensions inherent in Japanese conceptions of race, the body, gender, authenticity, and locality."

2005, by Heidi Varian. "Taiko drumming is an ancient sacred practice in Japan, originally used to drive away pests from rice fields and then to call to the gods in thanks at harvest time. Today taiko in Japan, and especially in North America, has evolved into a form of mental, physical, and martial arts training that combines rhythm, harmony, and movement. This book is for anyone who would like to try taiko or who is fascinated by the instruments, dances, and compositions of a typically powerful taiko performance. Contains an introduction to taiko history as well as resources for students. Heidi Varian is a longtime student of taiko and a taiko event producer. Seiichi Tanaka is founder and director of the renowned San Francisco Taiko Dojo."

2004, Oedo Sukeroku. "Marvel at the wizardry of the taiko drum masters Oedo Sukeroku as they wow a French audience with this live 102-minute concert video. A bombastic show like no other, see what Tokyo has been keeping secret for years and experience the taiko drum the way it was meant to be heard."

2004, streaming audio, performed by Joji Hirota & The Taiko Drummers

2004, by Kimberly Powell, from the book Knowing Bodies, Moving Minds, edited by Liora Bresler.

2002, streaming audio, performed by Wadaiko Matsuriza

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This is a gigantic catalog of millions of materials owned by libraries all over the world describing books, essays, scores, videos, sound recordings, websites, and manuscript collections. If you find something in WorldCat not owned by the Tri-Colleges we can probably get it for you.

Part of the New York Public Library, this catalog lists works about all forms of dance, from all cultures, in print and other media. Offers citation information for an international range of dance periodicals.

ProQuest Dissertations and Theses is a collection of scholarly research in the Humanities and Social Sciences that consists of 2.7 million searchable citations to dissertations and theses from around the world, and 1.2 million full-text dissertations that are available for download in PDF format. Coverage is from 1861 to the present day.