where is the best place(on the net) to get information on dance reflecting cultural/political issues in today containing references to development of ballet within dance history? for higher degree standard work? I'm findind it hard to get in depth information.

I doubt you'll find any hard sources online for that sort of topic. It would be best to search a library for information like that.

For a topic that specific, net sources probably wont be good enough... net sources arent usually acceptable for research essays anyway.

can you recommend any books i could order to buy or loan froma library? I live in a small town and the library here does not have any information on dance as a a subject...just performing arts and drama as a grouped subject.

Here is are my lists of books and online essays.
Some of these essays you can get off the web, woohoo!

http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=eae8129.0403111041.1b065024%40posting.google.com&output=gplain

http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&frame=right&th=1e438f6084fefd07&seekm=eae8129

I would suggest anything by Ann Cooper Albright. Her book as well as her readers. However, ACA can be quite dense for someone who's not used to academic type of writing. Do you know what phenomenology is? Essentialism? If you don't, then forget it...

Try some of the things in these readinglists I gave you and see what you can read *and understand*. For a beginner, I think it's much more important to use something that you can understand completely, than to argue for a point using essays/books that barely make any sense except for a few nice paragraphs here and there.

I think you might like this one:

http://users.fmg.uva.nl/aaalten/whatever_happened_to_Olga_de_Haas.html

Anna Aalten is a very prestigious dance scholar here in the Netherlands. I graduated from the same Uni she works for.

Hope this helps!

Tex.

thanks for this...I have recently finished essays on phenomonology so hopefully I will be able to take some understanding from it. If anyone has any further advice on research books that might be of use to me it would be greatly appreciated.

Anyone know a good website to help me write an essay on the advantages & disadvantages of notation... I'm kind of stuck...

any help will be appreciated!!
cheers

You might try Ann Hutchison Guest's 1989 book Choreographics, which covers the advantages and disadvantages of thirteen specific types of notation.

Think

Julia Sutton has a lot of writings about early dance, Renaissance and Baroque. Also Wendy Hilton and Ingrid Brainard.

For notation, check out the Dance Notation Bureau in New York, and the Performing Arts Collection in the New York Public Library.