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.
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 noticingEL 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 & 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: Improvisation as a research methodology in health and care settings Lisa Dowler 26. Somatic Sensing and Creaturely Knowing in the University Improvisation Class Ali East 27. Improvising Happiness: Belly Dance's Evolution through Improvisation Barbara Sellers Young Section 6: Interconnectivity, emergence and technologies 28. Dancing the Interface: Improvisation in Zones of Virtual Exchange Thomas DeFrantz 29. Programmed Improvisation Inspied from Autonomous Humanoids Amy LaVeirs 30. Contact Improvisation and Embodied Social Cognition April Flakne 31. Modelling Improvisation as Emergence: A Critical Investigation of the Practice of Cognition Colleen Dunagan, Roxane Fenton, and Evan Dorn 32. Towards a cognitive theory of joint improvisation: The case of tango argentino Micheal Kimmel Section 7: Ecology and Environments 33. Improvisation and the Earth: Dancing in the Moment as Ecological Practice Tamara Ashley 34. Dancing the Land: An Emerging Geopoetics Melinda Buckwalter 35. Scoring and Siting: Improvisatory Approaches to Site-Specific Dance Victoria Hunter 36. The Dancer, the Philosopher and the Tramp Hilary Elliot 37. Audience Improvisation and Immersive Experiences: the sensuous world of the body in the work of Lundahl & Seitl Josephine Machon Section 8: Techniques, Strategies and Histories 38. Lost in the Footlights: The Secret Life of Improvisation in Contemporary American Concert Dance Kent De Spain 39. In the Moment: Improvisation in Traditional Dance Anthony Shay 40. Playing with the Beat: Choreomusical Improvisation in Rhythm Tap Dance Allison Robbins & Christopher J. Wells 41. Moving Sound: New Relationships between Contemporary Dance and Music in Improvisation Anna Sanchez Colberg & Dimitris Karalis 42. Mens Agilis Corpore Agili Ivar Hagendoorn 43. Embodiology (R): A Hybrid Neo-African Improvisation-as-Performance Practice distinguished by Dynamic Rhythm Sheron Wray
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