"The book begins by discussing the problem of the body in social and cultural theory, providing a lucid and succinct overview of the important thematic concerns that have dominated thinking about the body and drawing on the perspectives of feminism, semiotics, postculturalism and postmodernism. It then moves, via a discussion of ethnography as an embodied research methodology, to its second part, which focuses on the dancing body. Here a close reading of dance forms, content, traditions and bodily regimes - from classical ballet to rave culture - reveals how dance offers cultural and social criticism a rich and relatively uncharted terrain for studying and conceptualising expressive bodies"--P.[4] de la couv.[-]