In this article, I investigate the historical precedents of site-adaptive dance. After walking through the mobility discourse as applied to site-specific art by such scholars as Miwon Kwon, Fiona Wilkie, and Victoria Hunter, I examine the mobile site works of North American choreographers Ann Carlson, PearsonWidrig DanceTheater, Eiko & Koma, and Stephan Koplowitz as exemplary of early attempts to take site dance on tour. Finally, I argue for the value of employing the lens of adaptation to analyze such works, both for the field of site performance and for the larger cross-disciplinary dialogues that could be activated.

This article analyzes two contemporary pieces, Faustin Linyekula's La Création du Monde 1923–2012 and Vera Mantero's A mysterious thing said e. e. Cummings, which respond to dance productions presented in Europe in the early decades of the twentieth century by criticizing their “negrophilic” attitude. The article juxtaposes the analysis of these two contemporary pieces with rereadings of the historical choreographies/events of the 1920s to which they refer, namely, Les Ballets Suédois's La Création du Monde (1923) and Josephine Baker's performances. Theoretically revisiting historical works that developed within such a “negrophilic” framework alongside contemporary pieces relating to them can be taken as attacking this very framework, trying to “undo” the Eurocentrism inherent in its cannibalistic processes. Such a perspective may allow for the acknowledgement of plural, multiple views of Africanistic presences in an otherwise “negrophilic” context.

Since being listed as intangible cultural heritage by UNESCO in 2010, Kalbeliya dance from Rajasthan is now generally conceptualized as an ancient tradition from India. However, this same dance practice, also known as a form of “Indian Gypsy” or “snake charmers’” folk dance, appears to have originated as recently as the 1980s. This article gives an account of the swift development of Kalbeliya dance from its first appearance on stage in 1981 to the present. Ethnographic research with Kalbeliya dancers’ families has elucidated how this inventive dance practice was formed to fit into national and transnational narratives with the aim of commercializing it globally and of generating a new, lucrative livelihood for these Kalbeliya families. As a new cultural product of Rajasthani fusion, the dance finds itself at the crossroads of commercial tourism and political folklorism and is grounded in neo-orientalist discourses (romanticism and exoticism).

In the 1784–85 London season, there was a conjunction between Shakespeare's Macbeth and three of the most thrilling artists of the eighteenth century: the dancer Geltruda Rossi, the actress Sarah Siddons, and the artist Henry Fuseli. They were thrown into figurative proximity when a commentator on Rossi's performance wrote in the Morning Herald and Daily Advertiser: “Madame Rossi, in Lady Macbeth, impresses one more with the recollection of Fusili’s [sic] painting, than of Mrs Siddons’s representation—indeed comparison would be doing an injustice to our critical and admired English performer.” While we know much about the art of Siddons and Fuseli, we know little about Rossi's performances, which makes the Morning Herald’s parallel worth exploring as an example of eighteenth-century London ballet d'action.

This article examines the work of Annie Payson Call (1853–1940) who was during her lifetime a highly regarded teacher of her method of bodily education and a prolific author. I place Call's work against the background of American Delsartism, the flourishing of health movements, and innovations in dance forms of the period. I suggest that Call, a now forgotten figure, can be seen as a contributor to a lineage in American approaches to movement that place bodily awareness and sensory knowledge at the heart of movement experience and training. The first half of the article introduces the reader to key concepts in Call's movement philosophy and outlines her method of training bodily awareness and releasing muscular tension. The second part looks at characteristics of Call's writing to shed light on the hereto neglected aspect of somatics and somatic education: the role of language and imagination in writings about movement.