Rose Martin is a lecturer in Dance Studies at the University of Auckland. She trained at the New Zealand School of Dance in Wellington and was subsequently a member of the Royal New Zealand Ballet. She has extensive experience in research and teaching in the Middle East and has taught at Cairo Modern Dance Company, El-Funoun Palestinian Popular Dance Troupe, the Jordanian National Dance Center, and the Lebanese American University. She obtained her PhD in 2012 and is the co-author (with Nicholas Rowe and Ralph Buck) of Talking Dance: Contemporary Histories from the Southern Mediterranean (I.B.Tauris, 2013).

‘Rose Martin’s book could not be more timely given the extraordinary social and political challenges we are witnessing in the Middle East (her preferred term is the “Southern Mediterranean”). Yet rarely before have we heard the voices of women in this region trying “to gain control over one’s moving body, over one’s artistic practice and over one’s place as a performing artist and educator”.

Martin provides us with rich and revealing portraits of women struggling with the effects of censorship, borders and occupation. But these narratives offer, too, a glimpse into struggles around freedom, choice, transformation and creative inspiration. The women’s voices express the dynamism and diversity of a part of the world too often viewed through the monochromatic lenses of the exotic, the romantic, or purely through that of fear and control.

This is a book that should have a wide audience for all those concerned not just with the lives of dancers and artistic expression but with the way such expression is interwoven with questions of political, social and cultural power. And in a part of our world that increasingly demands our attention and understanding as informed global citizens. The book powerfully speaks and moves us as women, as artists and as human beings in our inter­connected world.’

Sherry B.Shapiro, Professor Emerita, Meredith College, USA