Risk, Failure, Play: What Dance Reveals about Martial Arts Training

Risk, Failure, Play illuminates the many ways in which competitive martial arts differentiate themselves from violence. Presented from the perspective of a dancer and writer, this book takes readers through the politics of everyday life as experienced through training in a range of martial
arts practices such as jeet kune do, Brazilian jiu jitsu, kickboxing, Filipino martial arts, and empowerment self-defense. Author Janet OâShea shows how play gives us the ability to manage difficult realities with intelligence and demonstrates that physical play, with its immediacy and heightened
risk, is particularly effective at accomplishing this task. Risk, Failure, Play also demonstrates the many ways in which physical recreation allows us to manage the complexities of our current social reality. Risk, Failure, Play intertwines personal experience with phenomenology, social psychology,
dance studies, performance studies, as well as theories of play and competition in order to produce insights on pleasure, mastery, vulnerability, pain, agency, individual identity, and society. Ultimately, this book suggests that play allows us to rehearse other ways to live than the ones we see
before us and challenges us to reimagine our social reality.


Author: Janet O'Shea
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Published: 11/01/2018
Pages: 248
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.79lbs
Size: 9.30h x 6.10w x 0.70d
ISBN: 9780190871543

Review Citation(s):
Choice 07/01/2019

About the Author

Janet O'Shea is Professor of World Arts and Cultures/Dance at UCLA. Author of At Home in the World: Bharata Natyam on the Global Stage and the co-editor of the Routledge Dance Studies Reader, 2nd edition, her research focuses on corporeality, interdisciplinary exchange, and the politics of everyday
life. She is a practitioner of Filipino martial arts, jeet kune do, Brazilian jiu jitsu, kickboxing, and empowerment self-defense.

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