The lens of dance can provide a multifaceted view of the present-day Cuban experience. Cuban contemporary dance, or tecnica cubana as it is known throughout Latin America, is a highly evolved hybrid of ballet, North American modern dance, Afro-Cuban tradition, flamenco and Cuban nightclub cabaret. Unlike most dance forms, tecnica was created intentionally with government backing. For Cuba, a dancing country, it was natural--and highly effective--for the Revolutionary regi...

A heart-warming nostalgia memoir from a member of the world famous dance troupe, The Tiller Girls. Based in London in the 1930s, 40s and 50s, Irene’s story will transport readers back to a more innocent, simple way of life.This is the story of a little girl who loved to dance. Growing up in London in the 1930s, dancing was so much more to Irene than just a hobby. It was her escape and it took her off into another world away from the harsh realities of life. A fairytale world away f...

In this dazzling memoir, Richard Rodriguez reflects on the color brown and the meaning of Hispanics to the life of America today. Rodriguez argues that America has been brown since its inception-since the moment the African and the European met within the Indian eye. But more than simply a book about race, Brown is about America in the broadest sense—a look at what our country is, full of surprising observations by a writer who is a marvelous stylist as well as a trenchant observe...

During World War II, unprecedented employment avenues opened up for women and minorities in U.S. defense industries at the same time that massive population shifts and the war challenged Americans to rethink notions of race. At this extraordinary historical moment, Mexican American women found new means to exercise control over their lives in the home, workplace, and nation. In From Coveralls to Zoot Suits, Elizabeth R. Escobedo explores how, as war workers and volunteers, dance h...

In this engaged critique of the geopolitics of knowledge, Egla Martínez Salazar examines the genocide and other forms of state terror such as racialized feminicide and the attack on Maya childhood, which occurred in Guatemala of the 1980s and '90s with the full support of Western colonial powers. Drawing on a careful analysis of recently declassified state documents, thematic life histories, and compelling interviews with Maya and Mestizo women and men survivors, Martinez Salazar shows how...

The guitar-based music known as bachata was born in the Dominican Republic in the early 1960s. Brought to the U.S. by Dominican migrants, it has continually developed to reflect the changing tastes of fans and musicians. Bachata became increasingly popular among younger Dominican Americans in the 1990s and 2000s. This generation of artists reshaped the music, blending multiple genres with Spanish and English lyrics to reflect their multicultural reality. In this book, 27 artists share thei...

Rudolf Laban, the famed dancer-choreographer and 'founding father' of modern dance, also had experience as a painter, sculptor, and architect, and allowed those skills to influence his innovative choreographic techniques. His important works and his creation of one of the most significant forms of dance notation make him an essential component of dance history. Rudolf Laban: The Dancer of the Crystal examines Laban's training, his teaching experiences, and the discovery and develo...

In the early decades of the twentieth-century, Main Street was the heart of Los Angeles’s Mexican immigrant community. It was also the hub for an extensive, largely forgotten film culture that thrived in L.A. during the early days of Hollywood. Drawing from rare archives, including the city’s Spanish-language newspapers, Colin Gunckel vividly demonstrates how this immigrant community pioneered a practice of transnational media convergence, consuming films from Hollywood and Mexico, while a...

In Cultural Hermeneutics, Mario J. Valdés offers a synthesis of the hermeneutic philosophies of Miguel de Unamuno and Paul Ricoeur, a dialectical method that has formed the basis for many of Valdés’ own studies in comparative literature. As Valdés explains in these insightful essays, what Unamuno and Ricoeur shared in their hermeneutic studies was a theory of interpretation in which the meaning of a work of art comes into existence through the dialectical relationship between its ...

STREET DANCE: THE BEST MOVES is the perfect introduction to major street dance styles with easy-to-follow step-by-step photography. As well as learning the various types of street dance, including B-boy, Popping, Locking, Hip Hop and House - and the basic moves of each of these - you'll get tips on the best tracks to dance to, what clothes to wear to look the part, and be given expert advice from top dancers across the globe. .Throughout the book there are also embedded vi...

Winner, 2019 Summerfield G. Robert Award, sponsored by The Sons of the Republic of TexasFaces of Béxar showcases the finest work of Jesús F. de la Teja, a foremost authority on Spanish colonial Mexico and Texas through the Republic. These essays trace the arc of the author’s career over a quarter of a century. A new bibliographic essay on early San Antonio and Texas history rounds out the collection, showing where Tejano history has been, is now, and where it might go in t...

“Midway through Water & Power comes a scene so perfectly written, so chilling and yet so hilarious [it] encapsulates all the anger and social criticism fueling [the play], beginning with the agonizing realization (also central to Culture Clash’s smash Chavez Ravine) that the fates of the L.A. many are held in the hands of the often capricious and heartless few.”—VarietyFor Zorro in Hell:“The funniest show the Bay Area comedy troupe has ever writte...