Anthropology of the Performing Arts

Dr. Royce, dancer, musician, poet, anthropologist, linguist, critic, writer, and teacher undertook the daunting task of defining virtuosity, one of the most elusive elements in the arts. The results are illuminating, educational, thought provoking and, above all, good reading. She has my utmost admiration. -- Janos Starker, Cellist, Distinguished Professor, Indiana University
Anya Royce was a ballet dancer before becoming a skilled ethnographer. Later she apprenticed herself as a musician. All of this combines to make Anthropology of the Performing Arts a must for ethnographers who study dance, mime, music, theatre or ritual or for those who look at cross cultural communication. Royce analyzes how performers learn their craft and come to embody basic skills, with some acquiring virtuosity and others moving on to the artistry that holds us spellbound, and then identifies commonalities of performance across cultures and across genres within culture that underlie the codified and metaphorical vocabularies through which the performer reaches out to us, the audience. Now that she has made these explicit it is possible to engage at a deeper level with what is happening on stage or in the rituals of daily life. -- Elizabeth F. Colson, Professor Emeritus, UC Berkeley
Pioneering dance anthropologist Anya Royce provides a magisterial account of the role of the performing arts in social life, from the Ballets Russes and Marcel Marceau to kabuki, butoh, and Tewa Indian dance. Based on more than forty years of experience, starting as a ballet dancer and coming of age as an anthropologist among the Isthmus Zapotec, Royce thinks broadly across the arts, while attending to the particulars of distinct artistic traditions. Bringing together her experience as a performer and her anthropological training, she senses and makes sense of the embodied nature of performance. The result is a profound sensitivity to what makes a performance what it is and a precise exposition of its felt characteristics. This book is an important contribution to the anthropology of the performing arts. -- Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, New York University, author of Destination Culture: Tourism, Museums, and Heritage
Anya Peterson Royce is Chancellor's Professor of Anthropology and Comparative Literature. Her extraordinary book about Anthropology of the Performing Arts is a treasure. Anya Peterson Royce goes deeply in all directions, touching the roots of human culture in art which includes classical and contemporary dance, music, opera, commedia dell'arte, pantomime (the white face of Pierrot), modern mime revealing Etienne Decroux, Jean Louis Barrault, and myself. But she evokes with depth the Ballets Russes, Fokine, Nijinski, south Indian dance, Indian rituals, silence, Japanese zen, Kabuki, Noh, Bunraku, Butoh. At the same time she reveals the greatness of contemporary dancers?Mikhail Baryshnikov, Nureyev, Spanish flamenco, the elegance of Fred Astaire, the Pilobolus style, Zapotec music and dance, the art of shaman healers, the Italian quattrocento from Michelangelo who influenced the sculptures of Rodin. She assumes with great authority Masonic symbols, compares virtuosity, style, and aesthetics. Her thoughts will enlighten the general public, all professions, especially the young generations who have lost the history of those cultures. The lack of knowledge of the past will bring a fragile future for our culture of today. I am very proud to have met An -- Marcel Marceau, Directeur Artiste de la Nouvelle Compagnie Théâtral MARCEL MARCEAU, Member of L'Institute de France, Academie des Beaux-Arts
Drawing on her immensely varied experience as a dancer, musician, ethnographer, teacher, and student of performance as well as of music and languages, Anya Peterson Royce has crafted a testament—at once engaged and analytic, both passionate and knowledgeable—to the multiple ways in which artistry is recognized in her own as well as other societies. In the process, she shows that modern anthropology has an important role to play in the cultures that gave it birth, and especially in respect of the cultural significance of the exceptional and the aesthetic in performances of many kinds. -- Michael Herzfeld, Harvard University; author of Cultural Intimacy: Social Poetics in the Nation-State
The book provides a viewpoint on how a dance anthropologist interprets her experience both as a performer and as an anthropologist. In this regard, the book provides insight into the thinking process of one of the primary contributors to dance ethnology. -- Barbara Sellers-Young * Dance Research Journal, Vol. 39, No. 2, Winter 2007 *
Anya Peterson Royce is Chancellor's Professor of Anthropology and Comparative Literature. Her extraordinary book about Anthropology of the Performing Arts is a treasure. Anya Peterson Royce goes deeply in all directions, touching the roots of human culture in art which includes classical and contemporary dance, music, opera, commedia dell'arte, pantomime (the white face of Pierrot), modern mime revealing Etienne Decroux, Jean Louis Barrault, and myself. But she evokes with depth the Ballets Russes, Fokine, Nijinski, south Indian dance, Indian rituals, silence, Japanese zen, Kabuki, Noh, Bunraku, Butoh. At the same time she reveals the greatness of contemporary dancers—Mikhail Baryshnikov, Nureyev, Spanish flamenco, the elegance of Fred Astaire, the Pilobolus style, Zapotec music and dance, the art of shaman healers, the Italian quattrocento from Michelangelo who influenced the sculptures of Rodin. She assumes with great authority Masonic symbols, compares virtuosity, style, and aesthetics. Her thoughts will enlighten the general public, all professions, especially the young generations who have lost the history of those cultures. The lack of knowledge of the past will bring a fragile future for our culture of today. I am very proud to have met Anya for the first time in New York in 1960 when I introduced our theatrical pantomime art to New York. Today in 2004, her book is essential. Her writing reveals such poetry, knowledge—a wonderful exploration and a moving encounter with the creators of all art forms who influenced deeply our contemporary culture. Her new book is a MUST. Don't miss this opportunity to read it. She is indeed a master. Her tribute will be eternal. -- Marcel Marceau, Directeur Artiste de la Nouvelle Compagnie Théâtral MARCEL MARCEAU, Member of L'Institute de France, Academie des Beaux-Arts