This work refuses to let bodies be seen as merely vehicles for the expression of something else. This collection of essays explores the study of bodily reality - not as a natural or given, but as a substantial, vital constituent of cultural experience. Contributors look at bodies engaged in practices as varied as pageantry, physical education, festivals and exhibitions, tourism, and social and theatrical dance. They succeed in bringing these bodies to life with all the political, gendered, racial and aesthetic resonances of which bodily motion is capable. Dance is used in this volume as a theoretical framework to assist the reader in understanding the body's permanent transience, and in the task of transposing its movement into words and choreography into theory. These essays work to resurrect bodies in all their cultural significance. They move bodies across disciplinary boundaries, and encourage a rethinking of knowledge categories by illuminating the body's role in the production of narrative, the construction of collectivity, and the articulation of the unconcious.