This groundbreaking collection combines ethnographic and historic strategies to reveal how dance plays crucial cultural roles in various regions of the world, including Tonga, Java, Bosnia-Herzegovina, New Mexico, India, Korea, Macedonia, and England. The essays find a balance between past and present and examine how dance and bodily practices are core identity and cultural creators. Reaching beyond the typically Eurocentric view of dance, "Dancing from Past to Present" opens a world of debate over the role dance plays in forming and expressing cultural identities around the world.

Theresa Jill Buckland is Research Professor of Performing Arts at De Montfort University, Leicester, England. She is editor of Dance in the Field: Theory, Methods and Issues in Dance Ethnography, coeditor of Aspects of British Calendar Customs, and she has contributed chapters on dance and oral history to Dance History: An Introduction.