This exciting new and original collection locates dance within the spectrum of urban life in late modernity, through a range of theoretical perspectives. It highlights a diversity of dance forms and styles that can be witnessed in and around contemporary urban spaces: from dance halls to raves and the club striptease; from set dancing to ballroom dancing, to hip hop and swing, and to ice dance shows; from the ballet class, to fitness aerobics; and 'art' dance which situates itself in a dynamic relation to the city.

List of Plates - Preface - Notes on Contributors - PART 1: DANCE IN THE CITY/THE CITY IN DANCE - Dancing around Meaning (and the Meaning around Dance); A.Ward - Exer(or)cising Power: Black Bodies in the Black Public Sphere; P.Gilroy - 'Keep your Great City Paris!': the Lament of the Empress and other Women; V.A.Briginshaw - The Beat Goes On: Trance, Dance and Tribalism in Rave Culture; G.Gore - Dirt, Noise, Traffic: Contemporary Indian Dance in the Western City: Modernity, Ethnicity and Hybridity; S.Roy - PART 2: STEPPING OUT - Ballroom Blitz; H.Thomas & N.Miller - Cyborgs, Nomads and the Raving Feminine; M.Pini - Madame Smudge, some Fossils, and other Missing Links: Unearthing the Ballet Class; L-A.Sayers - Safe Sets: Women, Dance, and 'Communitas'; B.O'Connor - PART 3: BORDER COUNTRY - Nazism and the Call of the Jitterbug; L.Back - Aerobic Dance and the City: Individual and Social Space; S.Prickett - Dance and Erotica: The Construction of the Female Stripper; S.Dodds - Let's Face the Music - and Dance?: Torvill and Dean: 'Champagne on Ice'; S.Jordan & H.Thomas - Index