Oxford Handbook of Improvisation in Dance

From the dance floor of a tango club to group therapy classes, from ballet to community theatre, improvised dance is everywhere. For some dance artists, improvisation is one of many approaches within the choreographic process. For others, it is a performance form in its own right. And while it has long been practiced, it is only within the last twenty years that dance improvisation has become a topic of critical inquiry. With The Oxford Handbook of Improvisation in Dance, dancer, teacher, and editor Vida L. Midgelow provides a cutting-edge volume on dance improvisation in all its facets.

Expanding beyond conventional dance frameworks, this handbook looks at the ways that dance improvisation practices reflect our ability to adapt, communicate, and respond to our environment. Throughout the handbook, case studies from a variety of disciplines showcase the role of individual agency and collective relationships in improvisation, not just to dancers but to people of all backgrounds and abilities. In doing so, chapters celebrate all forms of improvisation, and unravel the ways that this kind of movement informs understandings of history, socio-cultural conditions, lived experience, cognition, and technologies.

List of contents

• Introduction. Improvising Dance: A Way of Going About Things


• Vida L Midgelow


• Section 1: Life worlds and Ethics


• 1. Life Practices


• Ann Cooper Albright


• 2. Ethico-aesthetic practice of improvising: relations through motion


• Fiona Bannon


• 3. Reflections on dance improvisation and its dynamic interrelationship with everyday movement


• Libby Worth


• 4. A Philosophy of the Improvisational Body


• Sondra Fraleigh


• 5. Chance encounters, Nietzschean philosophy and the question of improvisation Philipa Rothfield


• 6. Moving in medias res: Towards a phenomenological hermeneutics of dance improvisation


• Nigel Stewart


• Section 2: Attunement and Perception


• 7. I notice that I'm noticing...


• Sally Doughty


• 8. Embodied Consciousness in Improvised Performance


• Nalina Wait


• 9. 'Mass may be the single most important sensation': Perceptual Philosophies in Dance Improvisation


• Malaka Sacro-Thomas


• 10. Rethinking Improvisation from a Daoist perspective of Qi-energy


• I-Ying Wu


• 11. Exploring Uncertainties of Language in Dance Improvisation


• Louise McDowall


• Section 3: Habit, Freedom and Resistance


• 12. Improvisation and Habit


• Gary Peters


• 13. Unpredictable Maneuvers: Eva Karczag's Improvised Strategies for Thwarting Institutional Agendas


• Doran George


• 14. Movements of freedom: performing popular liberty in the early cancan


• Claire Parfitt-Brown


• 15. Valorizing Uncertainty: Chance, Totalitarianism and Soviet Ballet


• Janice Ross


• 16. The Emancipation of Improvisation


• Larry Lavender


• Section 4: Memory and Transmission


• 17. Improvisation and Argentinean Tango: On playing with body memories


• Susanne Ravn


• 18. Dancing Life


• Norah Zuniga Shaw


• 19. What Remains


• Robert Bingham and Stephanie Hanna


• 20. Improvisational Practices in Jazz Dance Battles


• Jane Carr and Irven Lewis


• 21. Twelve Days in Tarbena: an evolutionary approach to moving through silence and sound to speech in Ruth Zaporah's Action Theater training


• Robert Vesty


• 22. Intention and Surrender


• Stephanie Skura


• Section 5: Agency and Transformation


• 23. Transcending Boundaries: Improvisation and disability in dance


• Sarah Whatley


• 24. Artful humanising conversations: Improvisation in Early Years dance


• Kerry Chappell and Lizzie Swinford


• 25. Instinctive Connections: Improvisa

  About the author

  Vida L Midgelow is Professor in Dance and Choregraphic Practices at Middlesex University. Her interests, that encompass somatics, improvisation, and practice-as-research, have become increasingly methodological in focus leading to publications such as Improvisation as paradigm for Phenomenology (2018); "Some Fleshy Thinking: Improvisation, Experience, Perception" (2015) and "Creative Articulations Process" (2015). She is the Director of the Erasmus Plus funded Artistic Doctorates in Europe Project and co-editor of the hybrid peer reviewed journal Choreographic Practices.

  Summary

  This handbook offers new arguments about the ways that dance improvisation informs understandings of history, socio-cultural conditions, lived experience, and technologies.

  Additional text

  Most contributors are from the US, the UK, and Continental Europe, and they range from young scholars to scholars with years of experience. This range makes the volume useful for a broad audience. The fairly consistent and approachable length of each essay (15-20 pages) will encourage comparative readings. Well-sourced references accompany each piece, and a helpful index is included. ... Highly recommended

  Report

  Most contributors are from the US, the UK, and Continental Europe, and they range from young scholars to scholars with years of experience. This range makes the volume useful for a broad audience. The fairly consistent and approachable length of each essay (15-20 pages) will encourage comparative readings. Well-sourced references accompany each piece, and a helpful index is included. ... Highly recommended CHOICE

Product details

• Authors: Vida L (Middlesex University) Midgelow, Vida L. Midgelow, Vida L. (Professor in Dance and Choreogr Midgelow
• Assisted by: Vida L Midgelow (Editor), Vida L. Midgelow (Editor), Midgelow Vida L. (Editor)
• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Languages: English
• Product format: Hardback
• Released: 30.04.2019
• EAN: 9780199396986
• ISBN: 978-0-19-939698-6
• No. of pages: 848
• Series: Oxford Handbooks; Oxford Handbooks
• Subjects: Humanities, art, music > Art > Theatre, ballet; Non-fiction book > Music, film, theatre; PERFORMING ARTS / Dance / Classical & Ballet, Ballet, Classical style