Search results for ""Author Miranda Tufnell""

Celebrated dance artist and body therapist Miranda Tufnell takes us on a moving and inspiring exploration of the field of dance and health. For 14 years she worked in a GP surgery in Cumbria and the book opens with a vivid account of an arts project that she and her collaborators ran there for people with long-term health conditions. This is a book about the body and movement, about imagination and health. It gathers many stories, voices and activities from artists, patients and health practitioners. The arts have long played a role in medicine and there is a substantial body of evidence for the potency of arts practice in strengthening our resources and capacity for wellbeing. While the work is sourced in the body and movement, it is not only written for people with a dance background. Listening creatively to the body strengthens our body intelligence and ability to look after ourselves effectively. Practitioners from many backgrounds come into this field and will find something of interest. This book sets out to inspire rather than to teach, to offer windows into practice, and to convey something of what it is like to work in this field.

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This is a handbook for working in the creative arts, with an emphasis on imagination and receptivity: to our bodies, surroundings, materials, and to what we create. It puts particular emphasis upon the sensing, feeling, moving body as a basis for any imaginative activity. It describes sources and strategies for working in and between various forms of expression, including: moving, making things with materials and writing. It stresses the importance of intuitive, instinctive ways of knowing, perceiving and creating. It is a useful resource for anyone studying or teaching in the arts, or working creatively with others: therapeutically, educationally, or in a community context. It is written to inspire rather than to instruct, to be used in small amounts to stimulate a working process, rather than to be read through from cover to cover. The authors' previous book, 'Body Space Image', was about improvised movement, experimental performance and creating performance settings. This book turns to the question of imagination in our lives and how this is awakened and nourished through attention to the present, feeling world of the body and to whatever appears as we make. In this way we enter into the poetics of our experience.

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When it was first published in 1990, 'Body Space Image' was acclaimed as the first book of its kind - a remarkable guide to improvisation, using a narrative of discovery that "set the mind loose from the rut of everyday perception". It was groundbreaking in the way it addressed improvised movement, experimental performance and how to create performance settings. Thirty years later, 'Body, Space, Image' still stands out from anything published in the interim - largely because of the way it combines a unique collection of images (from dance, theatre and painting) and statements by working artists. The authors start with the individual's movement itself as the basis of improvisation, then broaden their perspective to include groups working together and the physical setting of performance - space, light, sound and objects. 'Body Space Image' explores ways of working and ways of thinking about performance that have inspired beginners and experienced artists alike. It is a manual intended to stimulate rather than a comprehensive system of working and, in it, word and image combine to celebrate and record one of the most exacting art forms. Previously published by Dance Books, this is a very slightly revised new edition from Triarchy Press

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