Choreography Books

Book SynopsisChoreography is the highly creative process of interpreting and coordinating movement, music and space in performance. By tracing different facets of development and exploring the essential artistic and practical skills of the choreographer, this book offers unique insights for apprentice dance makers. With key concepts and ideas expressed through an accessible writing style, the creative tasks and frameworks offered will develop new curiosity, understanding, skill and confidence. The chapters cover the key areas of engagement including what is a choreographer?; getting started; improvisation and ideas; context, stage geometry and atmosphere; movement as dance in time and space; solo, duet, trio and group choreography and finally, structure and the 'choreographic eye'. This is an ideal companion for dancers and dance students wanting to express their ideas through choreography and develop their skills to effectively articulate them in performance.Trade ReviewThis book which reflects the wealth of experience, observations and learnings generously shared by Kate Flatt is a book I highly recommend to anyone wanting to create and seeking an expert lens into the craft. -- Vidya Patel, Choreographer, Sadler's Wells Young Associate 2020/22 * Choreographer, Sadler's Wells Young Associate 2020/22 *

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Book SynopsisA transdisciplinary approach to practice-as-research, complete with its own elaborate theory of practice and a set of four multi-year-performance research projects through which the theory plays out. Its methodology is at times ethnographic as Henry Daniel deftly inserts himself and his Caribbean West African ancestry into a series of complex cortical and geographic maps, which become choreographic in every sense of the term. The central argument in the book is based on a claim that human beings are cognitively embodied through their own lived experiences of movement through space and time; the spaces we inhabit and the practices we engage in are documented through cortical and cartographic maps. In short, as we inhabit and move through spaces our brains organise our experiences into unique cortical and spatial maps, which eventually determine how we see and deal with, i.e., ‘become’ subjects in a world that we also help create. The argument is that through performance, as a re-cognising and re-membering of these movements, we can claim the knowledge that is in the body as well as in the spaces through which it travels. To demonstrate how the brain organises our experiences of the world according to cartographic (graphically mapping procedures) and cortical (motor, sensory and visual functions) mapping and exploring the impact of this mapping to choreographic practice, considering how maps might be disrupted or altered by change of circumstances. This is illustrated through scientific, creative and reflective approaches to exploring neurological process of embodied experiences, as well as the analysis of projects that have utilized this practice thus far. Audience will include Dance and Performance Studies Scholars; Dancers and Choreographers; Undergraduate and Advanced Students; ResearchersTrade Review'Daniel explores performance practice research as a transdisciplinary context for describing the embodied experience of liminality as expressed in the volume's subtitle. Through a complex scaffolding of philosophy, cultural studies, cartography, and neuroscience, he considers subject formation as enacted through performance, positioned here as a survival response. Reviewing a body of creative works produced across 20 years, the author argues for "worlding" as an extended performance event. Part autoethnography, part review of emergent discourses of embodied knowledge, the text bristles with anecdotal analyses of successive performance projects. [...] Well-chosen images and a companion web-based archive of performances enhance this retrospective self-appraisal of multiyear performance projects. Overall, Daniel illustrates in a personal way how the self emerges dynamically by "performing its way through" various environmental, political, and socioeconomic frameworks that colonizing processes impose. Recommended' -- T. F. DeFrantz, CHOICETable of ContentsList of Figures Acknowledgements Prologue ACT 1 1. Autoethnography as a Methodological and Ideological Starting Point - A beginning of sorts - Will the artist please stand up? - Introducing the map - Microcosm vs. macrocosm - Mediating difference - Choreographic organization 2. The Hypothesis Explained - Theory, perception, process and practice - Implications - Embodiment and disembodiment - Science, art, culture and the transdisciplinary mandate - Self-knowing - Movement, language and non-discursive thinking - Mirroring - Preliminary conclusions 3. Further Presuppositions and Explorations in Search of a Theory of Practice - Revisiting the hypothesis - Shango Meets Ogun - Performing disembodiment - Futurist Equation - The futurist/humanist condition - Re-cognizing/re-membering - The lived machine - Performing consciousness - Scales and dimensions, movement and sound - Further conclusions ACT 2 4. Transnet - Performing art, performing science, transdisciplinary approaches to performance - Significant contributions - Choreography as transdisciplinary Practice-as-Research 5. New Performance Maps - The Touched Project: Organization, control and emergence in choreographed performance systems - Touched - t2 - t2_echo - Imprint - Imprint II - Embodied choreographic knowing 6. Going West to Find East - Choreographing from the underside - Haikai, Encounters and Here Be Dragons (Stage I Creative Preview) - Barca: el otro lado - A barca: Reaching back to go forward - ambos lados - Isabella’s Dream ACT 3 7. Contemporary Nomads - Nomadism - nómadas - nómadas 2018_excerpts - On Home - Multiple presences: Movement through space/time holes - The real and the virtual, reality and the dream - Performing the self: Movement as an unfolding and initiating of thought An Epilogue: Fitting [Out-fitting] In - Who is he fooling and what is he really doing there? - Who am I and why am I here? - Fitting [Out-fitting] In - So, what’s your background? - Where are you from? I mean, where are you really from? - Oh! You’re a Professor? What do you teach? - What’s ahead? - Finale Appendix A: Artisitic Works by the Author - Multi-year research projects referenced - Short-term stand-alone works mentioned Appendix B - Map A - Map B - Map C Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisChoreographies of 21st Century Wars is the first book to analyze the interface between choreography and contemporary warfare, a pertinent inquiry since choreography has long been linked to war and military training. Authors from a range of disciplines reconceptualize choreography in the face of this century's never ending wars.Trade ReviewChoreogrphies of 21st Century Wars helps readers to contemplate the potential of choreography as construct and practice to grapple with the complexities and ineffable experience of a world dominated by war. Offering critical insights about the disconnection between our understanding and the realities of war, Choreographies encourages dancer-artists and scholars to explore the potential of choreography to illuminate how we shall live and dance in this world. Living in a state where the Korean War has not yet ended, I appreciate the rigorous analyses of this anthology that helps me to realize and critically comprehend the very real choreographies of war. * Dance Chronicle *Table of ContentsPreface ; Introduction: Contemporary Choreographies of Wars, Gay Morris and Jens Richard Giersdorf ; Chapter 1: Access Denied and Sumud: Making a Dance of Asymmetric Warfare, Nicholas Rowe ; Chapter 2: Questioning the Truth: Rachid Ouramdane's Investigation of Torture in Des Temoins Ordinaires/Ordinary Witnesses, Alessandra Nicifero ; Chapter 3: "There's a Soldier in All of Us": Choreographing Virtual Recruitment, Derek A. Burrill ; Chapter 4: African Refugees Asunder in South Africa: Performing the Fallout of Violence in Every Day, Every Year, I am Walking, Sarah Davies Cordova ; Chapter 5: From Temple to Battlefield: Bharata Natyam in the Sri Lankan Civil War, Janet O'Shea ; Chapter 6: Choreographing Masculinity in Contemporary Israeli Culture, Yehuda Sharim ; Chapter 7: Affective Temporalities: Dance, Media, and the War on Terror, Harmony Bench ; Chapter 8: Specter of War, Spectacle of Peace: The Lowering of Flag Ceremony at Wagah and Hussainiwala Borders, Neelima Jeychandran ; Chapter 9: A Choreographer's Statement, Bill T. Jones ; Chapter 10: Dancing in the Spring: Dance, Hegemony and Change, Rosemary Martin ; Chapter 11: War and P.E.A.C.E, Maaike Bleeker & Janez Jansa ; Chapter 12: The Body is the Frontline, Rosie Kay and Dee Reynolds ; Chapter 13: Geo-Choreography and Necropolitics: Faustin Linyekula's Studios Kabako, Democratic Republic of Congo, Ariel Osterweis ; Chapter 14: Re: moving bodies in the Mexico-USA drug, border, cold, and terror wars ; Ruth Hellier-Tinoco ; Chapter 15: After Cranach: War, Representation and the Body in William Forsythe's Three Atmospheric Studies, Gerald Siegmund ; Chapter 16: The Role of Choreography in Civil Society under Siege: William Forsythe's Three Atmospheric Studies, Mark Franko ; Contributors ; Index

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Book SynopsisNOW A MAJOR FILM BY RALPH FIENNES, THE WHITE CROW''A gripping account of an extraordinary life'' Daily Telegraph Born on a train in Stalin''s Russia, Rudolf Nureyev was ballet''s first pop icon. No other dancer of our time has generated the same excitement - both on and off stage.Nureyev''s achievements and conquests became legendary: he rose out of Tatar peasant poverty to become the Kirov''s thrilling maverick star; slept with his beloved mentor''s wife; defected to the West in 1961; sparked Rudimania across the globe; established the most rhapsodic partnership in dance history with the middle-aged Margot Fonteyn; reinvented male technique; gatecrashed modern dance; moulded new stars; and staged Russia''s unknown ballet masterpieces in the West. He and his life were simply astonishing.''Magnificent, a triumph. Captures every facet of this extraordinary man'' Mail on Sunday''The definitive study of a manTrade ReviewMagnificent, compulsively readable * Guardian *A gripping account of an extraordinary life * Daily Telegraph *Magnificent, a triumph. Captures every facet of this extraordinary man * Mail on Sunday *Undoubtedly the definitive biography. Rudolf Nureyev, superstar, emerges in all his terribly flawed glory * Sunday Telegraph *The definitive study of a man who, in his combination of aesthetic grace and psychological grime, can truly be called a sacred monster * Observer *Julie Kavanagh writes with flair and abundance * The Sunday Times *

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Book SynopsisContributors to this volume address such topics as the role of the 1960s Asian American movement in creating Japanese American taiko groups, and the experience of internment during World War II influencing butoh dance in Canada. The volume includes first-person narratives, interviews, ethnography, cultural studies, and performance studies.Trade ReviewA methodologically diverse and eclectic approach to Asian American dance studies, where dance is both method and content. These essays illuminate the ways that dance shapes, troubles, and pushes against the contours of what counts as Asian American cultural production.""- Priya Srinivasan, author of Sweating Saris""Confirms the vibrant and diverse presence of contemporary Asian American dance on the stage and in the world. This fresh new scholarship inspires us all to consider the strategies and achievements of generations of artists and researchers working at the intersection of Asian American studies and dance studies. An absolute must for anyone concerned with the future of dance scholarship.""- Thomas F. DeFrantz, editor of Dancing Many Drums""A methodologically diverse and eclectic approach to Asian American dance studies, where dance is both method and content. These essays illuminate the ways that dance shapes, troubles, and pushes against the contours of what counts as Asian American cultural production."" - Priya Srinivasan, author of Sweating Saris""Confirms the vibrant and diverse presence of contemporary Asian American dance on the stage and in the world. This fresh new scholarship inspires us all to consider the strategies and achievements of generations of artists and researchers working at the intersection of Asian American studies and dance studies. An absolute must for anyone concerned with the future of dance scholarship."" - Thomas F. DeFrantz, editor of Dancing Many DrumsTable of Contents Preface and Acknowledgments Introduction Yutian Wong Part I: Dancing Citizenship 1. A New Taiko Folk Dance: San Jose Taiko and Asian American Movements Angela K. Ahlgren 2. We Should Bring Our Muzukashii Roko Kawai 3. Asian Canadian Dance: Cross-Cultural Currents in Vancouver's Kokoro Dance and Co.ERASGA Dance Eury Colin Chang 4. ""Started in the Streets . . ."": Reality TV, Neoliberalism and the Performance of Asian American Entrepreneurship on America's Best Dance Crew, Season 1 Brian Su-Jen Chung Part II: Choreographing Aesthetics 5. Mediated Meditations: Choreographies of Shen Wei and Kun-Yang Lin Ellen V. P. Gerdes 6. An Asian American Land: Eiko & Koma Choreograph Cultural Politics Rosemary Candelario 7. Ambivalent Selves: The Asian Female Body in Contemporary American Dance Maura Nguyen Donohue Afterword Yutian Wong and Denise Uyehara Bibliography Contributors Index

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Book SynopsisWidely regarded as the foremost choreographer of contemporary ballet, George Balanchine was a major inspiration in the world of dance. This book presents a technical explanation of the stylistic approaches that he taught in New York City between 1940 and 1960.Trade ReviewPresents us with far more than any other ballet technique books - a rare look into Balanchine's studio from its earliest days to the time of his company's pinnacle years. A major contribution to the preservation of the Balanchine legacy. - Tamara Tomic-Vajagic, correspondent, Orchestra Dance Magazine ""The most compelling aspect of the book for me was the detail of the classes that George Balanchine taught! It's all there! This book is invaluable for all dancers! "" - Vida Brown Olinick, former ballet mistress, New York City Ballet

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Book SynopsisIn this memoir of a roller coaster career on the New York stage, former actor and dancer Bettijane Sills offers a highly personal look at the art and practice of George Balanchine, one of ballet's greatest choreographers, and the inner workings of his world-renowned company during its golden years.

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Book SynopsisRide along with choreographer Allison Orr and her civic collaborators as they reflect on their dances togetherIn 2001, Allison Orr made a dance with 13 City of Austin firefighters. Over the next 20 years, her unique practice of collaborating with city employees flowered into civic storytelling through movement at public pools, tableaus of power line workers shimmying up 40'' poles in front of 5000 people, and intricate choreography of trash trucks on a misty tarmac. Part memoir, part guide, the artist reflects on her major collaborations and shares interviews with people she''s made dances with over the past two decades. Power line workers, sanitation workers, and firefighters reflect on their memories of performing with Forklift and the lasting impact those dances made. Alongside larger conversations in the arts, Orr offers a look at how to create community-based art projects, how the creative process can bring people together to address civic issues, and the beauty of choreographing

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Book SynopsisAward-winning choreographer shares insights and methods for making real art in the real world

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Book SynopsisRethinks choreography as dance on paper. Parson draws her dances into new graphic structures calling attention to the visual facts of the materiality of each dance work she has made.

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Book SynopsisMolissa Fenley, one of the most influential artists of postmodern dance, has had a lasting impact on performance. This is a vivid and probing portrait of Fenley's four-decade career, written by her fellow artists. It offers several scholarly analyses of the choreographer's work, and is, above all, a vibrant record from the field.

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Book SynopsisContemporary dance, visual art, and academic research produced innovative exhibition/performance exploring perspectives of the body.

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Book Synopsis''When directors understand the value of a movement director they remove any sense of hierarchy within the room and place movement directors firmly by their side for they are and should be their co-pilot, navigating and creating the world of the play.' Joan IyiolaMovement directors work with the physical, living bodies at the heart of theatre productions, creating movement languages with actors and directors. Through a series of in-depth interviews with leading theatre practitioners, Ayse Tashkiran charts the growth of the movement director in contemporary theatre. The voices of Jane Gibson, Sue Lefton, Kate Flatt, Toby Sedgwick, Siân Williams, Struan Leslie, Ellen Kane, Peter Darling, Steven Hoggett, Ann Yee, Imogen Knight and Shelley Maxwell explore processes of creativity, collaboration and innovation for the moving body in performance.The conversations open up:Growth of movement direction through the 20th centuryNew insights into embodied theatre practiceDiverse movemTrade ReviewTashkiran has collected interviews with fellow movement directors for years. She is a great interviewer and a careful listener, instinctively taking a back seat and giving space and time to her interviewee, only intercepting to dig a little deeper or tease out more clarification … [the book] brims with different personalities, unfinished thoughts and stream-of-consciousness monologues – the struggles of people who habitually work with bodies to find the right word. The book allows us to sneak a peek directly into the rehearsal room and the very practical physical craft that happens there. * Springback Magazine *Opens up discussions on key aspects of the creative process, how to make a name for yourself and what it is truly like to work with bodies of all backgrounds … Tashkiran’s own passion and experiences set out the foundations for this highly informative and insightful book, which is highly recommended for all those who have a desire to choreograph, movement direct or simply have a curiosity for how a production gets moving. * One Magazine *Table of ContentsForewords Maria Aberg and Joan Iyiola Preface Acknowledgements 1. Introduction 2. Early practitioners and practices 3. Themes 4. Jane Gibson 5. Sue Lefton 6. Kate Flatt 7. Toby Sedgwick 8. Siân Williams 9. Struan Leslie 10. Ellen Kane 11. Peter Darling 12. Steven Hoggett 13. Ann Yee 14. Imogen Knight 15. Shelley Maxwell 16. Future voices with Diane Alison-Mitchell, Polly Bennett, Lucy Cullingford, Ioli Filippakopoulou, Natasha Harrison, Chi-San Howard, Vicki Igbokwe, Jennifer Jackson, Ingrid Mackinnon, Rebecca Meltzer, Coral Messam, Anna Morrissey, Sue Mythen, Sacha Plaige 17. Beyond the room: Contexts and structures

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Book SynopsisThis is a book about falling as a means of reconfiguring our relationship with living and dying. Dancer, choreographer, educator and therapist Emilyn Claid draws inspiration from her personal and professional experiences to explore alternative approaches to being present in the world. Contemporary movement based performers ground their practices in understanding the interplay of gravity and the body. Somatic intentional falling provides them a creative resource for developing both self and environmental support. The physical, metaphorical and psychological impact of these practices informs the theories and perspectives presented in this book. As falling can be dangerous and painful, encouraging people to do so willingly might be considered a provocative premise. Western culture generally resists falling because it provokes fear and represents failure. Out of this tension a paradox emerges: falling, we are both powerless subjects and agents of change, a dynamic distinction that enliveTrade ReviewThis book is significant because it creates the space for more diverse considerations of falling—a space to reflect on previous experiences while opening readers’ eyes to possibilities yet to catch their attention. * Dance Chronicle *Falls in the time of concurrent disasters are metaphors, material and the means whereby we recalibrate what it means to be alive. Emilyn Claid’s immensely readable writing offers readers a vertiginous ride and an encounter with limits. Inviting moving off the page, her call to incorporate the experiential, the reflective and the psycho-somatic through revitalising our attention to how to fall freely, badly, carefully and madly invigorates dance and performance scholarship through sensuous and dynamic critical engagement. Emilyn’s compelling kinesthetic story is woven through her history of dance’s relationships with gravity, making this an illuminating and deeply moving biography of the fall. * Carol Brown, University of Melbourne, Australia *This writing pulls us into a multitude of rewarding and revealing falls. Slowly, carefully, and somatically as we sink into Emilyn’s unravelling of dance’s conflicting histories of resisting and relinquishing to gravity, and vertiginously as we tumble between decades of memories that elaborate the politics and pleasures of collapse. * Martin Hargreaves, London Contemporary Dance School, UK *Part historical account, part philosophical inquiry, part cultural critique, Falling through Dance and Life investigates falls both physical and metaphorical, intentional and accidental, humorous and tragic, to illustrate the significance of encounters with gravity along the lines of gender, race, sexuality, class, nationhood, and economics. Covering ground ranging from modern dance to circus to personal and national trauma, Claid provides an engaging account of the possibilities and enduring perils of falling. * Janet O'Shea, UCLA, USA *This honest and thought-provoking book portrays Emilyn’s lived experiences as a dancer, choreographer, academic and psychotherapist interweaving vivid descriptions of dance with moving personal experiences. The practical exercises which illumine her approach to falling are interspersed with themes including ageing and dying, diversity and inclusion and support and shame. We are encouraged to explore our embodied relationships and experiences of falling physically, psychologically and metaphorically as a resource for building resilience, living with uncertainty and as a source of vitality and presence. * Lynda Oborne, Psychotherapist UKCP *Table of Contents1. Introduction Structure and Content Falling-through Dance A Practice of Falling Conceptual Falls The Contextual Fabric Back Stories 2. Falling Apart 3. Falling Out 4. Falling Away 5. Falling About References

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Book SynopsisWhat does a musical theatre choreographer actually do? They just ''make up the steps'', right? This book firstly debunks the misunderstandings around what musical theatre choreographers actually do, demonstrating their need to have an in-depth understanding of storytelling, music theory, performance practices and plot structure in order to create movement that enhances and enlivens the musical. Secondly, it equips the musical theatre choreographer with all the tools needed to create nuanced, informed and inspired movement for productions, through structured activities that build specific skills (such as ''notating the script'' and ''scoring the score'').Traditionally, this training has been something of a series of secrets, passed from mentor to apprentice. The author demystifies the process to make the previously undisclosed tricks of the trade accessible to all choreographers, everywhere. Covering the entire process of choreographing a musical from the first script reading to Table of ContentsINTRODUCTION a. Tradition: An Art Form Passed Down b. Within These Pages: How to Utilize the Text PART 1: THE ART 1. CHAPTER 1: Where to Start 1.1. The Musical Theatre Choreographer 1.2. The Evolution of Dance on Broadway 1.2.1. The African, Caribbean, and East Indian Influence 1.2.2. The European Influence 1.2.3. The Director/Choreographer and the Concept Musical 1.2.4. Contemporary Musical Theatre Choreographers 1.3. Choreographing in a New Era of Musical Theatre 2. CHAPTER 2: Research 2.1. The World of the Piece 2.1.1. Historical Context 2.1.2. Culture 2.1.3. Visual Landscape 2.1.4. Words, Words, Words 2.2. The Life of the Piece 2.2.1. Listening 2.2.2. Style 2.2.3. Movement Vocabulary 2.3. The People of the Piece 2.3.1. The Role of the Ensemble 2.4. The History of the Piece 2.4.1. Source Material 2.4.2. The Creators 2.4.3. Previous Productions 2.5. Revivals: Making Something Old New Again 2.5.1. Copyright and Licensing 2.6. ACTIVITY: Visual Lookbook 2.7. ACTIVITY: Movement Reel 3. CHAPTER 3: Storytelling Through Movement 3.1. The Musical Structure 3.2. Roles of Choreography in the Musical 3.3. Script Analysis: Creating a Movement Arc 3.4. Movement Events 3.5. ACTIVITY: Movement Roadmap 4. CHAPTER 4: Interpreting the Score 4.1. The Basics 4.1.1. Meter and Rhythm 4.1.2. Time Signatures 4.1.3. Staves and Clefs 4.1.4. Key Signatures 4.1.5. Expressions, Articulations, and Dynamic Markings 4.1.6. Other Important Markings 4.1.7. Musical Passages and Transitions 4.2. Music Through a Dance Lens 4.2.1. What you Hear Versus What You See 4.2.2. Musical Changes, Counting, and Cutting 4.2.3. Physical Interpretation 4.3. ACTIVITY: Discovering the Cut 4.4. ACTIVITY: Drawing the Musical Phrases 4.5. ACTIVITY: Scoring the Score 5. CHAPTER 5: Musical Staging 5.1. Earning the Song 5.2. Music as Action 5.3. Stage Moods 5.4. Partners 5.5. Movement While Singing 5.5.1. Motion 5.5.2. Crosses: When and How 5.5.3. Gestures 5.5.4. Stillness 5.5.5. Stylization 5.5.6. Physical Comedy 5.6. The Mini-Build 5.7. Sample Staging Outline: Solo 5.8. Sample Staging Outline: Duet 5.9. ACTIVITY: Notating in the Script 6. CHAPTER 6: Production Numbers 6.1. Beat Breakdown 6.2. How to Create a Build 6.2.1. Types of Builds 6.2.2. Groupings 6.2.3. Eliciting Applause 6.2.4. Buttons 6.3. Nuts and Bolts 6.3.1. Focus 6.3.2. Level and Direction 6.3.3. Repetition and Visual Variation 6.3.4. Individual Versus Unison 6.3.5. Balance: Symmetrical Versus Asymmetrical 6.4. Formations 6.4.1. Lines 6.4.2. Curves 6.4.3. Other Formations 6.4.4. Multiple Formations 6.5. Movement Patterns 6.6. Diagrams 6.7. ACTIVITY: Analyzing the Build 6.8. ACTIVITY: Building the Build 7. CHAPTER 7: Creating Steps 7.1. Process 7.1.1. The Five Parts of Dance 7.1.2. Intention 7.1.3. Style 7.1.4. Economy 7.2. Creation 7.2.1. Research 7.2.2. Abstraction 7.2.3. Physical Metaphor 7.2.4. Dance Journaling 7.2.5. Movement Prompts 7.2.6. Efforts 7.2.7. Objectives and Drives 7.3. Fundamentals 7.3.1. Initiation and Framing 7.3.2. Shapes and Transitions 7.3.3. Choreographing the Eyes 7.3.4. Rhythm, Speed, and Syncopation 7.3.5. Contrast, Isolation, and Accent 7.3.6. Pauses, Freezes, and Sounds 7.3.7. Dancers as Objects 7.3.8. Crowd Movements 7.4. Utilizing the Design 7.5. Notation 7.6. ACTIVITY: Steps Notation 8. CHAPTER 8: Adapting to Various Spaces 8.1. Types of Spaces 8.2. Site Specific Theatre 8.3. Benefits and Challenges 8.4. Tricks of the Trade 8.5. Formations 8.6. Movement Patterns 8.7. Creating Focus 8.8. Musical Staging 8.9. Storytelling 8.10. ACTIVITY: From Proscenium to the Round PART 2: THE PRACTICE 9. CHAPTER 9: Assembling Your Team 9.1. Members of the Choreographic Team 9.1.1. Dance Captain 9.1.2. Assistant Choreographer 9.1.3. Associate Choreographer 9.2. Pre-Production 9.3. Auditions 9.3.1. Audition Breakdown 9.3.2. Dance Calls 9.3.3. Audition Combination 9.3.4. In the Room 9.3.5. Making the Cut 9.4. ACTIVITY: The Dance Audition Combination 10. CHAPTER 10: Collaboration 10.1. Design and Production Meetings 10.1.1. Creative Discussions 10.1.2. Design Meetings 10.1.3. Break Out Meetings 10.1.4. Production Meetings 10.2. Collaborating with the Director and Music Director 10.2.1. The Director 10.2.2. The Music Director 10.2.3. The Dance Arranger 10.3. Collaborating with the Design Team 10.3.1. The Set Designer 10.3.2. The Costume Designer 10.3.3. The Lighting Designer 10.3.4. The Sound Designer 10.4. The Stage Manager 10.5. The Director/Choreographer 10.6. ACTIVITY: Question Lists 11. CHAPTER 11: Rehearsals 11.1. Types of Rehearsals 11.1.1. Staging Rehearsals 11.1.2. Cleaning Rehearsals 11.1.3. Run-Throughs 11.1.4. Spacing Onstage 11.1.5. Sitzprobe and Wandelprobe 11.1.6. Technical Rehearsals 11.1.7. Previews 11.2. Running Rehearsals: How to Lead 11.2.1. Working with Performers 11.2.2. Giving Notes 11.3. ACTIVITY: Rehearsal Timeline 12. CHAPTER 12: All the Other Things 12.1. Transitions 12.2. Contact and Intimacy 12.3. Improvisation 12.4. Child Performers 12.5. Special Skills 12.6. Curtain Call 12.7. Photo Call 12.8. Rehearsing Understudies and Swings 12.9. Accessibility 12.10. Activity: Tracking Transitions 13. CHAPTER 13: Nice Work If You Can Get It 13.1. Finding Work 13.2. Creating Your Own Work 13.3. Displaying Your Work 13.4. ACTIVITY: Choreography Reel APPENDIX: Suggested Reading

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Book SynopsisLes Ballets C de la B was founded by Alain Platel in 1984. Since then it has become a company that enjoys great success at home and abroad. Over the years, Platel has developed a unique choreographic oeuvre. His motto, This dance is for the world and the world is for everyone', reveals a deep social and political commitment. Through the three topics of emotions, gestures and politics, this book unravels the choreopolitics of Platel's Les Ballets C de la B. His choreopolitics go beyond conveying a (political) message because rather than defending one opinion, Platel is more concerned about the exposure of the complexity within the debate itself. Highly respected scholars from different fields contribute to this book to provide an interdisciplinary perspective on the intense emotions, the damaged narratives, and the precarious bodies in Platel's choreographic oeuvre.Table of ContentsIntroduction: The Choreographic Work of Alain Platel in Context (Christel Stalpaert, Ghent University, Belgium; Guy Cools, Ghent University, Belgium; and Hildegard De Vuyst, Les Ballets C de la B, Belgium) 1. Collaborative Dramaturgy: An Experiment in Democracy (Katalin Trencsenyi, Freelance Dramaturg, UK) Part I: Emotions 2. Alain Platel is a Barbarian: Perceiving Emotions as Forms of Intelligent Awareness (Hildegard De Vuyst, Les Ballets C de la B, Belgium) 3. Desire amongst the Dodgems: The Scene of Seduction (Adrian Kear, Aberystwyth University, UK) 4. Platel’s Quest for Embodied Salvation: A Musical Perspective on Choeurs (Francis Maes, Ghent University, Belgium) 5. Poetics of Fight in Nicht Schlafen (Claire Besuelle, École Doctorale Sciences de l'homme et de la Société, France) Part II: Gestures 6. How to Witness the Hyper-Sensitive Through the Virtuosic: “I Have Never Seen Anybody Who Can Participate So Intensely While Standing Aside” (Guy Cools, Ghent University, Belgium) 7. Choreic Gesture: Virtuosic Angularity and Alterkinetic Dance in Platel’s Out of Context: For Pina (2010) (Kélina Gotman, King’s College, London, UK) 8. Being Alone Together: The ‘Disturbance of Violent Relatedness’ in La Tristeza Complice, Pitié and Tauberbach (Ann Cooper Albright, Oberlin College and Conservatory, USA) 9. Staging the Precarious: Vulnerability and Sexual Identity in Gardenia (Miriam Dreysse, Universität Hildesheim, Germany) 10. Schizophrenia and Resistance: On Tauberbach (Jeroen Donckers, Independent Psychotherapist, Belgium) Part III: Politics 11. Catastrophe as Political Gesture: On Gestus and Hieroglyphs in Bernadetje (Erwin Jans, Dramaturg, Toneelhuis, Belgium) 12. Tauberbach: A Diagrammatical Reading (Piet Defraeye, University of Alberta, Canada) 13. Mourning a Europe in Crisis: En Avant, Marche! (Lourdes Orozco, University of Leeds, UK) 14. Troubled Pasts, Differential Futures: Platel’s Choreopolitics with Les Ballets C de la B (Christel Stalpaert, Ghent University, Belgium) Conclusion: A Genealogical Perspective on Les Ballets C de la B’s Influences and Offspring (Christel Stalpaert, Ghent University, Belgium; Guy Cools, Ghent University, Belgium; and Hildegard De Vuyst, Les Ballets C de la B, Belgium) Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisTony and Olivier Award-winning Bob Avian's dazzling life story, Dancing Man, is candid, witty, sometimes shocking, and always entertaining. Here at last is the ultimate up-close and personal insider's view from a front row seat at the creation of the biggest, brightest, and best Broadway musicals of the past fifty years.

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Book Synopsis

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Book SynopsisThere are many skills one needs to produce a piece of dance. Bruce describes the basic foundation or ingredients of his version of Dance Theatre as: Movement, Drama, Sound and Vision. A choreographer has to study all of them to the best of their ability and learn how to combine them. There is no definitive method of choreography. Any choreographer who has a voice has learnt and executed it in their way. Choreographers pick up things here and there from what they see, who they work with, and assemble a craft themselves. So much of what they do as artists is intuition and instinct. Creativity cannot be tamed and fully understood or concluded. Artists are dealing with imagination.

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Book SynopsisCentering on contemporary synaesthetic and multimodal works, Through the Prism of the Senses examines new theory and practice in body-based arts and contemporary performance.

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Book SynopsisIn this sparkling, innovative, fully-illustrated work, world-renowned choreographer Annie-B Parson translates the components of dance-time, proximity, space, motion and tone- into text. As we follow Parson through her days-at home, reading, and on her walks down the street-and in and out of conversations on everything from Homer's Odyssey to feminist art to social protest, she helps us see how everyday movement creates the wider world. Dance, it turns out, is everything and everywhere.With the insight and verve of a soloist, Parson shows us how art-making is a part of our everyday lives and our political life as we move, together and apart, through space.Trade ReviewA gorgeous meditation on dance, visual art, and literature, as well as living, loving, and mourning. Parsons brings to the page the starling quality of her introspective, astounding, and lyrical stage work, urging us to look more closely at those small and large moments that steer us through the dance of life. -- Edwidge Danticat, author of Create Dangerously"Bodies in space". I have heard Annie-B use this phrase dozens of times. It occurs to me this phrase refers to choreography and dance, but is also a transposable life philosophy...Of all the ways to move a body in space, through space, Annie-B creates the stage to have the most beautiful and beguiling ones be seen. -- St. VincentI'm a long time fan of Annie-B's work. I see in it the quotidian made extraordinary...the familiar made foreign. -- David ByrneParson's path is one that continues to push the boundaries of dance -- Dan Meyer * Playbill *The choreographer who democratized dance. * Financial Times *In this quiet, minute and understatedly virtuosic text, Annie-B Parson walks us through the intricate dances of pedestrianism and domesticity. Gently but firmly pressing back against linear heroic narratives that have tended to efface the practices of women artists, she braids together strands of beauty, resistance and reverie, slyly pulling her readers into an exquisite, inclusive choreography of living. -- Barbara Browning, author of The GiftTraipsing from The Odyssey to Trisha Brown, Hilma af Klint to Anne Carson, Parson braids together ideas through words and illustrations as she touches on the connections between protest, ritual and spectacle, how the pandemic asked pedestrians to rechoreograph their relationship to other bodies in space, Zoom and Tik Tok as creative forms, and more. -- Courtnney Escoyne * Dance Magazine *Parson reframes banal encounters into beautiful, crystalline observations. -- Ava Wong Davies * Elephant *The Choreography of Everyday Life is many things: a pandemic diary, a discourse of Greek tragedy, and a tribute to Parson's many inspirations, from Trisha Brown to Hilma af Klint. Mostly though, it's a leisurely walk through a brilliant mind. This book weaves together personal and theoretical reflections with evocative images from famous works of art and Parson's own casual snapshots. The result will be oddly familiar to any follower of her company Big Dance Theater. It's a delightful clash of high art and low culture, sparklingly intelligent yet warmly conversational. -- Andy Boyd * The New Books Network *A thoughtful addition to a dance library collection. * Library Journal *Annie-B has choreographed for Davids (Bowie and Byrne), St. Vincent, Spike Lee, and Lorde, among others - giving movement to artists for whom movement is as essential to their work and melodies. Now, she's exploring how dance functions in everyday life, both in her own and on a societal level. In this illustrated work, Parson distills movement into text, exploring movement in feminist art to protests * Nylon *This small but perfectly formed book gathers in the sacred and the profane, the virtual and visceral, poetical and political * Morning Star *Award-winning choreographer Annie-B Parson uses this slim but potent volume to show readers how the movements of day-to-day life function as choreography in the same way dancers on a stage execute choreography as a group. Reading this book made me look at the mundane activities of my everyday life with fresh eyes. If dance is everything and everywhere, as Parson asserts, then all our small movements add to something much bigger than any one individual. It's an interesting idea for our current moment, where connection seems more necessary than ever but increasingly rare. -- David Vogel * Buzzfeed *Parson's insights are a welcome reminder of the political value of dance, which has long served as a powerful aid to protest, its expressive beauty lending eloquence to public demonstrations of outrage or sorrow. -- Charlie Tyson * The Atlantic *Parson's prose made me nostalgic...voraciously pinballing between art forms, always in search of the perfect verb. * The Washington Post *To Annie-B Parson, choreography isn't confined to the studio and the stage; rather, practically everything around us abounds with movement that's worth paying attention to. In her new, aptly titled book, The Choreography of Everyday Life, an inventive, observant, and witty ode to her relationship with dance and movement over the course of her lifetime, she delves into exactly that belief. -- Andrew Zuckerman * Time Sensitive *This small and precious book can tell us the oldest and most profound story of how the body experiences space, inhabits it and is inhabited by it...the title to read this season. -- Sara Marzullo * Harper's Bazaar *'If the universe is meaningless, so is the statement that it is so,' Alan Watts wrote as he contemplated our search for meaning. 'The meaning and purpose of dancing is the dance.' The metaphor comes alive with uncommon vitality in The Choreography of Everyday Life by choreographer Annie-B Parson, who has shaped living artworks by cultural icons ranging from David Bowie and David Byrne to Mikhail Baryshnikov and the Martha Graham Dance Company. -- Maria Popova * The Marginalian *A small glimpse into the creative mind of an acclaimed contemporary artist of our time. * Dance Teacher *The book itself is a careful choreography. The spacing, brackets, punctuation, and images denote pauses, pairings, emphases, and visual cues. Verbs grow muscles, and metaphors become great choreographic tools. And though Parson appears to be an avid fan of Trisha Brown's rejection of fanfare, there remains a healthy dose of drama throughout. -- Wendy Perron * Notable Dance Books of 2022 *The Choreography of the Everyday is an extraordinary project. There's a scrap-book quality, visually and thematically. The pages are sprinkled with her photographs, her drawings, her post-its, or diagrams, or images of an ancient stele with dancing figures on it. -- Maggie LangeThere is an aliveness to the book, threads pulling together and apart, weaving back to front, front to back, moving from thousands of years ago to the present. It connects me to the book, the author, and into a larger world - where we see choreography all around us. * thINKingDANCE *Table of ContentsNo chapters -- one continual text

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Book Synopsis

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Book Synopsis

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Book Synopsis

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Book SynopsisA NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER One of the world’s legendary artists and bestselling author of The Creative Habit shares her secrets—from insight to action—for harnessing vitality, finding purpose as you age, and expanding one’s possibilities over the course of a lifetime in her newest New York Times bestseller Keep It Moving.At seventy-eight, Twyla Tharp is revered not only for the dances she makes—but for her astounding regime of exercise and nonstop engagement. She is famed for religiously hitting the gym each morning at daybreak, and utilizing that energy to propel her breakneck schedule as a teacher, writer, creator, and lecturer. This book grew out of the question she was asked most frequently: “How do you keep working?” Keep It Moving is a series of no-nonsense mediations on how to live with purpose as time passes. From the details of how she stays motivated to the stages of her evolving fitness routine, Tharp models how fulfillment depends not on fortune—but on attitude, possible for anyone willing to try and keep trying. Culling anecdotes from Twyla’s life and the lives of other luminaries, each chapter is accompanied by a small exercise that will help anyone develop a more hopeful and energetic approach to the everyday. Twyla will tell you what the beauty-fitness-wellness industry won’t: chasing youth is a losing proposition. Instead, Keep It Moving focuses you on what’s here and where you’re going—the book for anyone who wishes to maintain their prime for life.

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Book SynopsisThis choreographed book is dedicated to the phenomenon of the bare body in contemporary performance. This work of artistic research draws on philosophical, biopolitical, and ethical discourses relevant to the appearance of bare bodies in choreography, setting a framework for a reflexive movement between affect and ethics, sensuous address and response. Acts of exposure and concealment are culturally situated and anchored, and are examined for their methodological and nanopolitical significance. The concepts of anarchic responsibility and choreo-ethics lead to a reevaluation of contact, relationship, and solidarity. Choreography is thus understood as a complex field of revelatory experiences based on ecologies of aesthetic perception and ethico-political agency.

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Book SynopsisBody – art – performance – philosophy This anthology is dedicated to the theme of bodies – in transition, on thresholds, and at the edges of life. They are discussed in terms of their artistic, political, and existential dimensions. The focus of this artistic-philosophical consideration of the intersection of performance practices and life practices is on processes of emergence, survival, and decay, tracing the emergence of bio- and necropolitics. The book looks at performative (life) cycles and their temporal dimension, emphasizing the moment of dwelling at a threshold or transition, thus spinning a relational textual web. Mariella Greil brings together contributions from the fields of performance, activism, psychoanalysis, and contemporary dance, connecting content and form in a unique way. Following on from the publication Being in Contact: Encountering a Bare Body (2021) A multilayered book with a transparent dust jacket, recycled and transparent paper, inserts, and open thread stitching With contributions by Fiona Bannon, Ashon Crawley, Gurur Ertem, Rebecca Hilton, Pavlos Kountouriotis, and others

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Book SynopsisIn the global context of the Great Acceleration, things and people have been on the move more than ever before. Moritz Frischkorn takes a fresh look at recent performing arts practices that deal with everyday objects on and beyond the stage. Contrasting these practices with the business field of logistics, he examines the aesthetic and ethical concerns of moving things. Drawing on concepts from performance as well as black studies and philosophy, and based on an artistic-research methodology, the book formulates a notion of more-than-human choreography as an ecologically informed, infinitely indebted practice of living within the material world.

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Book Synopsis"Vandekeybus brought into focus a whole new genre of modern dance... Combat rolls, breakneck sprints and savagely wrestled duets became the defining vocabulary of a new generation." The Guardian In 2016, Wim Vandekeybus' company Ultima Vez celebrates its 30th birthday. Never before has his oeuvre been recorded in a book. Until now. This extraordinary book is a visual trip through the most powerful images from his repertoire, a quest for the ideas and themes that inspire him. It also contains unpublished texts, notes and scripts from his shows and films. A number of compagnons de route, such as David Byrne, Mauro Pawlowski, and Peter Verhelst, offer a personal textual contribution. Text in English, French, and Dutch.

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Book Synopsis

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