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 Improvisationin 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 thatthis kind of movement informs understandings of history, socio-cultural conditions, lived experience, cognition, and technologies.

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

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 theErasmus Plus funded Artistic Doctorates in Europe Project and co-editor of the hybrid peer reviewed journal Choreographic Practices.