Description
Book SynopsisWinner, Oscar G. Brockett Book Prize in Dance Research, 2014
Honorable Mention, Sally Banes Publication Prize, American Society for Theatre Research, 2014
de la Torre Bueno® Special Citation, Society of Dance History Scholars, 2013
From Christopher Columbus to “first anthropologist” Friar Bernardino de Sahagún, fifteenth- and sixteenth-century explorers, conquistadors, clerics, scientists, and travelers wrote about the “Indian” dances they encountered throughout the New World. This was especially true of Spanish missionaries who intensively studied and documented native dances in an attempt to identify and eradicate the “idolatrous” behaviors of the Aztec, the largest indigenous empire in Mesoamerica at the time of its European discovery.
Dancing the New World traces the transformation of the Aztec empire into a Spanish colony through written and visual representations of dance in colonial discourse
Trade Review
"The textual, iconographic, and linguistic analyses demonstrate Scolieri's depth and breadth of understanding of the historical and cultural implications of the European colonizing of Mexico. With glossy color plates, well-reproduced black-and-white images, and ten appendixes of translated source material, the book provides a great example of in-depth research using primary sources." * Choice magazine *
"Paul A. Scolieri’s beautifully illustrated Dancing the New World is breathtaking in its intellectual breadth and depth. The book examines the ways in which dance and power were mutually imbricated in a signal moment of modern history—the European colonization of the Americas. Scolieri’s scholarship is rigorous and detailed, but his analyses are particularly compelling because of the theoretical questions he brings to bear on previously under-examined materials. Dance historians always need to grapple with the problem of limited archival sources. Scolieri manages to turn a particularly problematic research site—an archive devastated by the processes of colonization itself—to his advantage, making it an occasion for reflecting on the complexities of all attempts to describe, document and contain dance. For this reason, the book adds significantly not only to “New World” scholarship, but also to theoretical debates in dance history." * de la Torre Bueno® Prize Committee, Society of Dance History Scholars *
"...an excellent addition both to conquest scholarship and to the cultural history of colonial Mexico.This is a clearly written work that will appeal to a variety of readers, from the sixteenth-century Mexicanist to the upper-level undergraduate student. . . . Scolieri’s interdisciplinarity is another ofthe book’s strengths; the fields of dance and performance studies, art history, ethnography, and history come together seamlessly in this very fine contribution to conquest historiography." * Hispanic American Historical Review *
Table of Contents
- List of Appendices
- List of Maps and Images
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- Chapter 1. On the Areíto: Discovering Dance in the New World
- Chapter 2. Unfaithful Imitation: Friar Toribio de Benavente "Motolinía" and the "Counterfeit" Histories of Dance
- Chapter 3. The Sacrifices of Representation: Dance in the Writings of Friar Bernardino de Sahagún
- Chapter 4. Dances of Death: The Massacre at the Festival of Toxcatl
- Chapter 5. The Mystery of Movement: Dancing in Colonial New Spain
- Conclusion
- Appendices A–J
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
