Facial Choreographies

The face contributes a vital, yet often overlooked, component of dance performance. Facial Choreographies: Performing the Face in Popular Dance examines what the face does in dance and what it may mean. Author Sherril Dodds focuses on popular presentational dance, which permits the face to be one of excess and spectacle, as well as disclosure or deception. The concept of facial choreography resists the idea that the expressive countenance in dance is simply by chance, and instead conceives its movement as purposeful, creative, and communicative. The book centers on three facial case studies: global celebrity Michael Jackson, whose face has occupied a site of fervent controversy; Maddie Ziegler, child star of the reality television series Dance Moms and de facto face of pop star Sia; and a community of hip hop dancers who engage in fiercely contested dance battles. Chapters are organized according to action-expressions, actively working even in times of stillness: SMILE, LOOK, FROWN, CRY, SCREAM, and LAUGH. Across each case study, the book explores pedagogies of facial composition, the purpose of codified expressions, and how dancers re-choreograph their faces as a critical unworking of what a dancing visage might represent. Facial choreographies engender opportunity for startling creativity, the articulation of identity, a cathartic expression of emotions and attitudes, and the capacity to dismantle previously held assumptions. As the dancing face tauntingly slips between visual, sensory, and kinetic registers it ensures that nothing can be taken at face value.

Sherril Dodds is Professor of Dance at Temple University. Her books include Dance on Screen, Dancing on the Canon, Bodies of Sound (co-edited with Susan C. Cook), The Oxford Handbook of Dance and Competition, and The Bloomsbury Companion to Dance Studies. She has been a visiting scholar at Trondheim University in Norway, Griffith University in Australia, Stanford University in the USA, and Blaise-Pascal University in France. She was awarded the 2015 Gertrude Lippincott prize for her article, “The Choreographic Interface: Dancing Facial Expression in Hip Hop and Neo-burlesque Striptease.”

About Face The Face in Performance Performing the Habitual Face The Work of Facial Choreography SMILE Michael Jackson and the Pedagogy of a Smile The Tenacity of the Minstrel Smile Maddie Ziegler and the Billion-Dollar Smile Smiling Towards Happiness LOOK (En)Visioning the World Performances of Looking in Hip Hop Feeling the Gaze in Battles Check out the B-Girls FROWN Michael Jackson and The Intention to be Bad Frowning and Facial Signifyin(g) Mythologies of Mean Mugging in Breaking Mugsy, Bugsy, and Keeping it Real CRY The Surrogate Face of a Reluctant Celebrity Sia and Big Girls Cry Maddie Ziegler and her Affective Cry A Cry of Outrage SCREAM Re-Facing Michael Jackson Defacement, Freakery, And Race A Choreographic Scream Michael Jackson: The Commodity and the Cut LAUGH The Viral Face of Maddie Ziegler Maddie, Eddie, and a Wookie Laughter and Derision in Hip Hop Battles Tickling the Cypher Crowd Face the Facts Bibliography Index