This article examines Dao Yin (Saying Vagina), a feminist play produced by the Beijing-based theatre collective Vagina Project, focusing on textile theatrical objects representing the vagina, such as cloth, plush puppets and woven fabric scenery. Sharing methodological foundations with Eve Ensler’s The Vagina Monologues, Dao Yin engages in feminist myth making through textile art. By analysing both onstage and offstage female textile work, this study highlights a dual dynamic: the visible artistic labour animating textile props onstage and the inert woven vaginal scenery that obscures the labour of its fabrication. Situating this work within a global commodity meshwork, the article foregrounds the weaving labour of female migrant workers and its translation to symbolic representation. Drawing on Eve Sedgwick’s concepts of texture and ‘texxture’, the analysis surfaces effaced histories of textile labour, the corporeal vulnerability it entails, and the material traces entangled in a theatre of feminist vaginal symbolism.

The pursuit of a utopian community through theatre-making involves re-examining the concept of stage presence. This article contributes to the discourse on the nature of stage presence in theatre, proposing a middle ground between the views that stage presence is solely a result of the performer’s quality and that it is an effect that technology can produce. Through a phenomenological lens, the author argues that stage presence is a contingent and relational phenomenon achieved through the bodily communicative process of both the performer and the spectator. Through the exploration of traditional Chinese theatre, this research found that the bodily encounter between the performer and the spectator contributes to stage presence. The article aims to stimulate further discourse on the significance of stage presence in constructing a utopian community.

This dialogue begins with Egil Bakka’s proposal for a science-based definition of dance. Bakka identifies four principles to structure the definition which are (1) drawn on methodologies from studies of dance as culture, (2) informed by the natural sciences, (3) influenced by a relation-based approach adapted to computer science, and (4) based on methods used in constructing dictionary definitions. Following peer review, we solicited public responses to gauge scholarly receptivity to the initial essay. The result is a single-authored proposal by Bakka followed by four independent responses by Kunej, Sarkar Munsi, Savage, and López-Yánez, respectively, ending with a response to the comments by Bakka.

In Tuscany, music is employed by park authorities, as well as cultural and conservation organisations, to attract visitors to natural and protected areas. This article examines the benefits of incorporating music performances within these natural settings, highlighting improvements in management, income generation for maintenance and conservation, increased visitor numbers, and enhanced environmental awareness. Through qualitative interviews and the analysis of four case studies, this article explores how integrating musical performances into ecotourism activities can foster a sense of place and stewardship among visitors and local communities.

In this essay, I analyse how practices of press denunciation operated within Hungary and impacted the theatrical landscape during the Cold War era. I examine how this technique of denunciatory criticism was transformed in Hungary with the change from the Stalinist ideocratic field of power to a post-Stalinist, now post-ideocratic, system, and also how denunciatory theatre criticism in the press, in its most severe form in the given circumstances, operated in this system. Adopting a structural approach, my aim is to examine what I am calling the ‘denunciatory article or criticism’ – the published article denouncing a particular artist or work aiming at ‘withdrawing from circulation’ the targeted artist, work or, indirectly, sometimes a whole series of artworks, or an entire movement. I argue that the denunciatory article is part of the system of state cultural control rather than simply aesthetic criticism. I am taking a well-known case in Hungary – the neo-avant-garde artists of Balatonboglár – to explore the operations of sociopolitical and professional power that resulted in the exile of these artists from Hungary in the early 1970s. In an era of ‘fake news’ and of increasing censorship of publications, this operation of power is becoming increasingly relevant and urgent.

This study discusses the changing role of music informants in the printed collections of Greek folk music from the mid-nineteenth to mid-twentieth century. The earliest collections do not even include the informants’ names, the focus being laid on the information (the ethnographic material) per se. Even in the early-twentieth century, we know little of the sporadically named informants, such as their education or experience. The transfer of information was often carried out with no official permission and financial returns. This study examines the stages of a transformation, from the informant’s anonymity to their moderate appreciation and final rehabilitation.

Islam spread to the area of present-day northern Nigeria in the eleventh century and further southward in the nineteenth century. Some scholars claimed that although Islamic traditions appeared hegemonic, they did not completely supplant local music traditions (e.g., Trimingham 1959). Through a musical ethnography of two predominantly Muslim communities in Nigeria, our article interrogates this claim and explores specific ways Muslim musicians and community members contest Islamic orthodoxy and negotiate some form of liberalism. We argue that negotiating liberalism has been crucial to the sustenance of indigenous music traditions in the communities we studied in Nigeria.

This article offers a rereading of Theatre Workshop HaTikva Neighborhood’s activity as a unique troupe in the field of community-based theatre in Israel. There are three interrelated factors that account for this group’s distinctiveness: (1) it functioned as an independent theatre without public subsidies; (2) its repertoire shifted from a politics of distribution to a politics of recognition; (3) it underwent a transition from amateurism to professionalism. This is a rare status in relation to the common model of community-based theatre in Israel. The study explores these three factors within the theatrical and historical-political contexts of the period.