With heroines like Josephine Baker, Colette, Isadora Duncan, and the cancaneuses of the Moulin Rouge, this is far from a conventional history.Rich with both fascinating anecdotes (such as the New Jersey girl picked up by the police for dancing the very sexy turkey trot one day during the Roaring Twenties), and astonishing facts (the first geishas were men), Something in the Way She Moves shows us the world of dance and sex through women's eyes. Best-selling author Wendy Buonaventura brings us from Buenos Aires, Argentina, where immigrants created the delicious tango, to Paris and the bawdy, leggy cancan dancers of the Moulin Rouge, to New York, where struggling African-Americans cakewalked, Charlestoned, and shimmied into the public eye, creating "jazz dance" (originally--and tellingly--called "jass" dance). This is a book for lovers of dance and lovers of history alike, and an engrossing introduction to a slightly seamy side of a cultural legacy.

Something In The Way She Moves: Dancing Women From Salome To Madonna

Politics & Social Sciences

Buonaventura, Wendy

Women's Studies

Da Capo Press

A celebration of the female dancers of the Arab world and their impact on the West, this book explains the origins of this ancient art, which has survived in the face of commercialism, religious disapproval and changing times. Focusing on the 19th- and early-20th centuries, the book shows how Arabic dance came to be influenced by Western ideas about art and entertainment. But the influence was two-way. In the heyday of Orientalism, Arabic dance exerted a powerful influence on the Western imagination - on such writers and artists as Flaubert, David Robers and Jean-Leon Gerome, and imitators Colette and Mata Hari. Their fascination was often based on common fantasies about the women of the Middle East. Yet, as the book's illustrations show, this obsession also produced evocative images. At the turn of the century, the genre also had an impact on fashion, theatre and popular entertainment.

Serpent of the Nile: Women and Dance in the Arab World (Spanish and English Edition)

Arts & Photography

Photography & Video

Al Saqi

This fascinating story of body care and the creation of sensual ambiance focuses on customs practised in the Middle East, Africa and India and takes a humorous look at the often converse attitudes towards the body prevailing in the West.

Beauty & the East

Graphic Design

Saqi Books

Serpent of the Nile: Women and Dance in the Arab World

History & Criticism

Women with pizzazz. Dances to shock and enchant. With heroines like Josephine Baker and Isadora Duncan, this was never going to be a conventional history. Buonaventura's book is rich with fascinating anecdotes (like the New Jersey girl arrested for dancing the Turkey Trot on her lunch hour) and astonishing facts (the first geisha were men), as well as tender portrayals of dancers whose stage antics have earned them lasting fame. The author takes us to Buenos Aires and the first immigrants dancing the tango; to Paris and the bawdy entertainers of the Moulin Rouge; to Chicago and New York, where struggling black Americans cakewalk, charleston and shimmy their long road from slavery. She returns to the Middle East, and the Arabic dance that led to a life-long fascination with the dancing body. On the way, she takes in Princess Diana, anorexia, transvestism and cosmetic surgery. This is a book for anyone intrigued by the sublime, sexy and downright surreal ways we find to strut our stuff.

I Put a Spell on You: Dancing Women from Salome to Madonna

Performing Arts

"I think it is the most eloquent of female dances, with its haunting lyricism, its fire, its endlessly shifting kaleidoscope of sensual movement."  With these words, Wendy Buonaventura explains her own fascination with Arabic dance.  Her book is a unique celebration of the female dancers of the Arab world, and their impact on the West.  She explains the origins of this ancient art, which has survived in the face of commercialism, religious disapproval and changing times.  Focusing on the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, she shows how Arabic dance came to be influenced by Western ideas about art and entertainment.  But the influence was two-way.  In the heyday of "Orientalism," Arabic dance exerted a powerful influence on the Western imagination-on such writers as Flaubert, such artists as David Roberts and Jean-Leon Gerome, and such imitators as Colette and Mata Hari.  Their fascination was often based on common fantasies about the women of the Middle East.  Yet, as the book's sumptuous illustrations show, this obsession also produced wonderfully evocative images.  At the turn of the century, the genre also had an impact on fashion, theater and popular entertainment.

Interlink Pub Group Inc

Focusing on the late 19th and early 20th century obsession with woman as femme fatale, this book looks at beliefs about women’s bodies and sexuality. Dancer Maud Allan came to embody the image of the femme fatale. In 1918 she brought a libel case against an MP who accused her in print of lesbianism. There was a belief in some circles that "New Women" like Maud were a cause of the war. To others, she and her kind were a sinister fifth column. Allan, fondling on stage the severed head of John the Baptist whose death she had demanded as her prize for dancing, expressed elements of sexual perversion, including sadism, necrophilia and incest, that were truly terrifying to Edwardian society. This is a close examination of attitudes to women in the Belle Epoque and beyond. 

Dark Venus: Maud Allan and the Myth of the Femme Fatale

Humor & Entertainment

Amberley Publishing

Serpent of the Nile Women and Dance in the Arab World

This fascinating story of body care and the creation of sensual ambiance focuses on customs practiced in the Middle East, Africa and India and takes a humorous look at the often converse attitudes toward the body prevailing in the West.

Beauty and the East: A Book of Oriental Body Care

Health, Fitness & Dieting

Beauty, Grooming, & Style

INTERLINK+BOOKS

Newly updated and reissued in an appealing new format, this classic book is a lavishly illustrated celebration of female dancers of the Arab world and their impact on the West.
 "I think it is the most eloquent of female dances, with is haunting lyricism, its fire, its endlessly shifting kaleidoscope of sensual movement." With these words, Wendy Buonaventura explains her own fascination with Arabic dance and gives the reader a thorough understanding of the origins, history and development of this ancient art, which has survived in the face of commercialism, religious disapproval, and changing times.

Social Sciences

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Buonaventura, Wendy. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Buonaventura, Wendy

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Buonaventura, Wendy. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Something In The Way She Moves: Dancing Women From Salome To Madonna

Serpent of the Nile: Women and Dance in the Arab World (Spanish and English Edition)

Beauty & the East

Serpent of the Nile: Women and Dance in the Arab World

I Put a Spell on You: Dancing Women from Salome to Madonna

Serpent of the Nile: Women and Dance in the Arab World

Dark Venus: Maud Allan and the Myth of the Femme Fatale

Serpent of the Nile: Women and Dance in the Arab World

Beauty and the East: A Book of Oriental Body Care

Serpent of the Nile: Women and Dance in the Arab World