Belle époque Paris adored dance. Whether at the music hall or in more
refined theaters, audiences flocked to see the spectacles offered to
them by the likes of Isadora Duncan, Diaghilev's flashy company, or an
embarrassment of Salomes. After languishing in the shadow of opera for
much of the nineteenth century, ballet found itself part of this lively
kinetic constellation. In Kinetic Cultures, Rachana Vajjhala argues
that far from being mere delectation, ballet was implicated in the
larger republican project of national rehabilitation through a
rehabilitation of its citizens. By tracing the various gestural
complexes of the period--bodybuilding routines, appropriate physical
comportment for women, choreographic vocabularies, and more--the author
presents a new way of understanding histories of dance and music, one
that she locates in gesture and movement.