Description
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.
Table of Contents
Introduction. Improvising Dance: A Way of Going About ThingsVida L MidgelowSection 1: Life worlds and Ethics 1. Life PracticesAnn Cooper Albright2. Ethico-aesthetic practice of improvising: relations through motionFiona Bannon3. Reflections on dance improvisation and its dynamic interrelationship with everyday movementLibby Worth4. A Philosophy of the Improvisational BodySondra Fraleigh5. Chance encounters, Nietzschean philosophy and the question of improvisation Philipa Rothfield6. Moving in medias res: Towards a phenomenological hermeneutics of dance improvisationNigel StewartSection 2: Attunement and Perception7. I notice that I'm noticingELSally Doughty8. Embodied Consciousness in Improvised PerformanceNalina Wait9. 'Mass may be the single most important sensation': Perceptual Philosophies in Dance ImprovisationMalaka Sacro-Thomas10. Rethinking Improvisation from a Daoist perspective of Qi-energyI-Ying Wu11. Exploring Uncertainties of Language in Dance ImprovisationLouise McDowallSection 3: Habit, Freedom and Resistance12. Improvisation and HabitGary Peters13. Unpredictable Maneuvers: Eva Karczag's Improvised Strategies for Thwarting Institutional AgendasDoran George14. Movements of freedom: performing popular liberty in the early cancanClaire Parfitt-Brown15. Valorizing Uncertainty: Chance, Totalitarianism and Soviet BalletJanice Ross16. The Emancipation of ImprovisationLarry LavenderSection 4: Memory and Transmission17. Improvisation and Argentinean Tango: On playing with body memoriesSusanne Ravn18. Dancing LifeNorah Zuniga Shaw19. What RemainsRobert Bingham & Stephanie Hanna20. Improvisational Practices in Jazz Dance BattlesJane Carr and Irven Lewis21. Twelve Days in Tarbena: an evolutionary approach to moving through silence and sound to speech in Ruth Zaporah's Action Theater trainingRobert Vesty22. Intention and SurrenderStephanie SkuraSection 5: Agency and Transformation23. Transcending Boundaries: Improvisation and disability in danceSarah Whatley24. Artful humanising conversations: Improvisation in Early Years danceKerry Chappell and Lizzie Swinford25. Instinctive Connections: Improvisation as a research methodology in health and care settingsLisa Dowler26. Somatic Sensing and Creaturely Knowing in the University Improvisation ClassAli East27. Improvising Happiness: Belly Dance's Evolution through ImprovisationBarbara Sellers YoungSection 6: Interconnectivity, emergence and technologies28. Dancing the Interface: Improvisation in Zones of Virtual ExchangeThomas DeFrantz29. Programmed Improvisation Inspied from Autonomous HumanoidsAmy LaVeirs30. Contact Improvisation and Embodied Social CognitionApril Flakne31. Modelling Improvisation as Emergence: A Critical Investigation of the Practice of CognitionColleen Dunagan, Roxane Fenton, and Evan Dorn32. Towards a cognitive theory of joint improvisation: The case of tango argentinoMicheal KimmelSection 7: Ecology and Environments33. Improvisation and the Earth: Dancing in the Moment as Ecological PracticeTamara Ashley34. Dancing the Land: An Emerging GeopoeticsMelinda Buckwalter35. Scoring and Siting: Improvisatory Approaches to Site-Specific DanceVictoria Hunter36. The Dancer, the Philosopher and the TrampHilary Elliot37. Audience Improvisation and Immersive Experiences: the sensuous world of the body in the work of Lundahl & SeitlJosephine MachonSection 8: Techniques, Strategies and Histories38. Lost in the Footlights: The Secret Life of Improvisation in Contemporary American Concert DanceKent De Spain39. In the Moment: Improvisation in Traditional DanceAnthony Shay40. Playing with the Beat: Choreomusical Improvisation in Rhythm Tap DanceAllison Robbins & Christopher J. Wells41. Moving Sound: New Relationships between Contemporary Dance and Music in ImprovisationAnna Sanchez Colberg & Dimitris Karalis42. Mens Agilis Corpore AgiliIvar Hagendoorn43. Embodiology®: A Hybrid Neo-African Improvisation-as-Performance Practice distinguished by Dynamic RhythmSheron Wray
