Strip Show: Performances of Gender and Desire (Gender in Performance)
Author | : | |
Rating | : | 4.75 (662 Votes) |
Asin | : | 0415173817 |
Format Type | : | paperback |
Number of Pages | : | 268 Pages |
Publish Date | : | 2014-04-24 |
Language | : | English |
DESCRIPTION:
'Insightful, informative, and as provocative as the art form it considers. Strip Show is a refreshing book, which seeks to illuminate a subject too often avoided or misunderstood, highlighting the professional theatricality of some of the world's most daring performers.' - Neil Eckersley, Manchester on Stage
. Katherine Liepe-Levinson has worked as a professional dancer, actor, choreographer, director, and playwright in both Europe and the United States. She currently lives and works in New York City as a freelance writer, researcher, and educational consultant. She has taught courses in theatre and performance studies fo
This book offers an account of an unprecedented North American study of contemporary female and male strip shows. Her findings readily complicate several of the most prominent and prevalent theories about sexual representation, gender and desire.. Liepe-Levinson's intriguing, comprehensive study concentrates on the cultural and theatrical elements of the strip shows themselves including the geographic locations and interior designs of the clubs, the choreography and costumes of the dancers and the all-important participation of the audience. It particularly focuses on the contradictory sex roles, cultural positions, and performance practices of 'straight' strip shows during their second heyday in the early 1990s.Katherine Liepe-Levinson's research took her to over seventy different strip bars, clubs, theatres and sex emporiums ranging from elaborate lap-dancing and couch-dancing 'gentlemen's' clubs in New York, Houston, and San Francisco; to Peoria's onetime duplex cabaret where women strip for men downstairs, and men for women upstairs; to the nightclubs of Montreal where female and male performers displayed the 'Full Monty'. She draws upon a variety of methodologies as well as interviews with performers to explore how the str
"The fascinating worlds of male and female strip shows" according to A Customer. I would recommend this book to anyone interested in learning more about the intriguing worlds of male and female strip shows as well as about the complexities of sexual desire. Among the topics it covers are: How strip shows simultaneously uphold and break traditional sex roles; the symbiotic relationship between performers and spectators; why New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani was incorrect in his assessment that strip shows, by their very nature, produce ne. Reviewer said Informative yet Repetitive. This book had a lot of interesting content and would be recommended (though not highly) for those who are interested in the gender roles involved in strip shows. It's analysis of the separate components of the strip show (a chapter each for physical location of the venues, interior decorating, clothing of the dancers, dance moves, audience involvement) offers something that other books covering the same topic don't touch on. However, a lot of the book gets repe