Choreographic Dwellings: Practising Place offers new readings of the kinaesthetic experiences of site-specific and nomadic performance; parkour; installation and walking practices. It extends the remit of the choreographic by reframing the kinaesthetic qualities of place as action.
#1682773 in eBooks 2014-08-11 2014-08-11File Name: B00NB5FI76
Review
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful. THE FORGOTTEN MARY MARGARET MCBRIDEBy kipWhile not presented in the conventional; chronological way; this is a good and long-overdue biography of the Oprah of her day; Mary Margaret McBride. McBride was a radio personality in the 30s and 40s; and very popular. Her interview program was listened to by millions and her public appearances were always major happenings. She was an amazing woman; but for some reason her talents did not translate well to TV when it came in; and owing mainly to the ill health and death of her longtime companion and manager; she gave up her radio show and retired. After her friends death; she returned to doing an interview program on a local station and was quite popular in the region it was broadcast; but she faded away into obscurity after her own death in the late 70s. The author has done a good job of relaying McBrides life story and helps us understand the broadcasting milieu of those years and McBrides place in it. Its a good; informative read about a highly interesting pioneer of broadcasting and; to some extent; feminism.2 of 2 people found the following review helpful. Doing The ProductsBy Kevin KillianI couldnt put the book down and took it with me on a flight to Seattle; then finished it on another flight to San Diego. What a ride! Susan Ware; one of the editors of NOTABLE AMERICAN WOMEN; has gone back way in the past for this one. McBride was the premiere radio interviewer in the US in the 1940s and 1950s; as Ware astutely observes; she was yesteryears equivalent of Oprah Winfrey; but plus . . . Plus what? Through the privileged relation then of radio to home; McBride created an intimacy with her listeners--seventy percent of them women--which even Oprah cant approximate; though shes certainly tops at what she does. Even Oprahs struggles with her weight; which have endeared her to millions of us; had their original rehearsal in McBrides huge girth; and in one famous incident in 1948 she got caught in a zipper and had to delay coming on to her own show--with complete honesty and charm she told the studio audience what had happened; and people loved her even more.She came from a rocky girlhood in Missouri; and Ware is at her best showing us how she survived all kinds of grim childhood tragedies with a poignant determination to escape poverty. She never looked back; well; except to pen a series of best-selling memoirs of her youth a la Maya Angelou; and she brought her family with her; making sure all were well taken care of. Her mother was a frequent guest on her program; and when the mother died all America cried with her.Mary Margaret never accepted advertising from any sponsors whose products she had not personally tried and approved. Every episode of her show had her; interrupting herself constantly; to talk about up to 14 different ad campaigns. She called this "doing the products;" and she believed in sponsorship religiously.Ware is very good showing how McBride helped to bolster; indeed create; middlebrow culture; but her distinctions are problematic. McBride; like Oprah; specialized in book promotion; and Ware says that she shunned highbrow culture and never had Hemingway; Faulkner; Thomas Wolfe; or Eugene ONeill on the program. And yet as Ware allows; McBride welcomed William Carlos Williams; James Thurber; Tennessee Williams; Zora Neale Hurston; Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings; and Erskine Caldwell. Not to mention the cultural figures like Orson Welles; Martha Graham; etc. Like it or not; these authors are just as much a part of "modernist culture" as Faulkner and Company. Theres a strange diffusion to some of Wares arguments in this direction; if she wants to argue one thing; she reads Evidence Item X to prove it; but she then turns around and uses the same item to argue something completely different. In this case; its arguing for McBrides disdain of modernism and yet her sympathy for writers of color; of course the paths intersect more than Ware wants to admit.The same diffusion is present also during her discussion of whether or not Mary Margaret McBride might have been a Lesbian; or were she and Stella Karn (her producer) just "girlfriends" of a different sort. Wares conclusions on this topic vary from chapter to chpater.I love her story about Langston Hughes; present during a taping during which McBride was advertising Dromedary Gingerbread Mix; and she urged him to help her out; and he responded with a perfect ad lib poem (that does not appear in his Collected Poems you may be sure):"Dromedary; help me carryNews of chocolate cake;Also; news of gingerbreadFor all the folks who bake."Wares research (she listened to hundreds of hours of the program to transcribe wonderful tidbits like this) is fantastic. It is a book well done and so provcative in todays radio climate.0 of 0 people found the following review helpful. Disstaff Greatless Broadcast DailyBy Roy WilliamsWhen I was in my grandmothers care in 1950s New York; Mary Margaret McBride was on her radio. Even as a five year old; I knew she was important. So; when Oprah landed a generation later; I understood the link. When women broadcasters leave the scene they are gone for good. And thats bad. Barbara Walters doesnt dare retire. Mary Margaret McBride deserves better in the ethereal world of broadcast history. Thats what Susan Ware does in this book.
