The Oxford Handbook of Improvisation in Dance (Oxford Handbooks)

This handbook offers new arguments about the ways that dance improvisation informs understandings of history, socio-cultural conditions, lived experience, and technologies. Cover The Oxford Handbook of Improvisation in Dance Copyright Contents Acknowledgements List of Contributors Introduction—​Improvising Dance: A Way of Going about Things Part I Life Worlds and Ethics 1. Life Practices 2. Ethico-​aesthetic Practice of Improvising: Relations through Motion 3. Improvisation in Dance and the Movement of Everyday Life 4. A Philosophy of the Improvisational Body 5. Chance Encounters, Nietzschean Philosophy, and the Question of Improvisation 6. Moving In Medias Res: Towards a Phenomenological Hermeneutics of Dance Improvisation Part II Attunement and Perception 7. I Notice That I’m Noticing . . . 8. Embodied Consciousness 9. ‘Mass May Be the Single Most Important Sensation’: Perceptual Philosophies in Dance Improvisation 10. Rethinking Improvisation from a Daoist Perspective of Qi-​Energy 11. Exploring Uncertainties of Language in Dance Improvisation Part III Habit, Freedom, and Resistance 12. Improvisation and Habit 13. Unpredictable Manoeuvres: Eva Karczag’s Improvised Strategies for Thwarting Institutional Agendas 14. Movements of Freedom: Performing Popular Liberty in the Early Cancan 15. Valorizing Uncertainty: Chance, Totalitarianism, and Soviet Ballet 16. The Emancipation of Improvisation Part IV Memory and Transmission 17. Improvisation in Argentinean Tango: On Playing with Body Memories 18. Dancing Life 19. Dancing Keystrokes, Excavating Memory 20. Improvisational Practices in Jazz Dance Battles 21. Ten Days in Tarbena: An Evolutionary Approach to Moving through Silence and Sound to Speech 22. Intention and Surrender Part V Agency and Transformation 23. Transcending Boundaries: Improvisation and Disability in Dance 24. Artful Humanizing Conversations: Improvisation in Early Years Dance 25. Instinctive Connections: Improvisation as a Research Methodology in Health and Care Settings 26. Somatic Sensing and Creaturely Knowing in the University Improvisation Class 27. Improvising Happiness: Belly Dance’s Evolution through Improvisation Part VI Interconnectivity, Emergence, and Technologies 28. Dancing the Interface: Improvisation in Zones of Virtual Exchange 29. Programmed Improvisation Inspired from Autonomous Humanoids 30. Contact Improvisation and Embodied Social Cognition 31. Modelling Improvisation as Emergence: A Critical Investigation of the Practice of Cognition 32. A Cognitive Theory of Joint Improvisation: The Case of Tango Argentino Part VII Ecology and Environments 33. Improvisation and the Earth: Dancing in the Moment as Ecological Practice 34. Dancing the Land: An Emerging Geopoetics 35. Scoring and Siting: Improvisatory Approaches to Site-​Specific Dance-​Making 36. The Dancer, the Philosopher, and the Tramp 37. Audience Improvisation and Immersive Experiences: The Sensuous World of the Body in the Work of Lundahl & Seitl Part VIII Techniques, Strategies, and Histories 38. Lost in the Footlights: The Secret Life of Improvisation in Contemporary American Concert Dance 39. In the Moment: Improvisation in Traditional Dance 40. Playing with the Beat: Choreomusical Improvisation in Rhythm Tap Dance 41. Moving Sound: New Relationships between Contemporary Dance and Music in Improvisation 42. An Agile Mind in an Agile Body 43. Embodiology: A Hybrid Neo-​African Improvisation-​as-​Performance Practice Distinguished by Dynamic Rhythm Index 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. - Edited by Vida L. Midgelow, Professor in Dance and Choreographic Practices, Middlesex University 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. - from the publisher's website