Everyone who has seen the opening ceremonies of the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games can understand the power of dance and mass movement in the service of politics. Anthony Shay discusses how dance and mass movement are used as a tool by political regimes as a means of showing symbolic mass support for the regime. Such regimes demand spectacle to demonstrate their role as a protector of the ethnic and national identities of their subjects, represented by the dancers. While examples of such public performances and huge festivals are familiar in Nazi Germany, the former Soviet Union, and today's North Korea, this book looks at the less known examples of the Dominican Republic, Iran, Croatia and Uzbekistan, and Spain under Franco. Book jacket.