For over twenty years Jack Anderson has been writing about dance performances. His essays and reviews have appeared in daily newspapers, specialist monthlies, and critical quarterlies. For the last ten years he has been a dance critic for the New York Times. In Choreography Observed, Jack Anderson has selected writings that focus most directly on choreographers and choreography in order to illuminate the delights and problems of dance and to reveal the nature of this nonverbal but intensely expressive art form. His essays and reviews deal with individual choreographers from Bournonville, Petipa, and Fokine to Balanchine, Paul Taylor, Meredith Monk, and Pina Bausch; individual works are also discussed in detail, such as Nijinsky's Afternoon of a Faun,Antony Tudor's Pillar of Fire, Alvin Ailey's Flowers, and Kei Takei's Light. Other pieces focus on the Baroque dance revival, contemporary multimedia dance theatre, choreography for men, the complex relationship between ballet and modern dance, and how—and how not—to revive the classics. No other book—especially no other selection from the work of a single critic—has dealt with choreography in such an original and focused way. Anderson brings his trained eye and wide experience in the arts to bear on dance while stressing the primacy of the choreographer as auteur. By refusing to get bogged down in highly technical terminology, he makes his insights available to a wide range of readers interested in expanding their understanding of this ever more popular art form.

In Choreography Observed, Jack Anderson has selected writings that focus most directly on choreographers and choreography in order to illuminate the delights and problems of dance and to reveal the nature of this nonverbal but intensely expressive art form.

Do you want to . . . • create a rich and vibrant classroom environment? • stimulate your students’ minds in multiple ways? • transform your teaching through incorporating the arts in your mathematics and science curriculums? Then Dance Integration: 36 Dance Lesson Plans for Science and Mathematics is just the book for you! The dance lesson plans in this groundbreaking book infuse creativity in mathematics and science content. Students will gain a wealth of critical knowledge, deepen their critical-thinking skills, and learn to collaborate and communicate effectively. Written for K-5 teachers who are looking for creative ways to teach the standards, Dance Integration will help you bring your mathematics and science content to life as you guide your students to create original choreography in mathematics and science and perform it for one another. In doing so, you will help spark new ideas for your students out of those two curriculums —no more same-old same-old! And in the freshness of these new ideas, students will increase comfort in performing in front of one another and discussing performances while deepening their understanding of the core content through their kinesthetic experiences. The creative-thinking skills that you will teach through these lesson plans and the innovative learning that dance provides are what set this book apart from all others in the field. Dance Integration was extensively field-tested by authors Karen Kaufmann and Jordan Dehline. The book contains these features: • Instructions on developing modules integrating mathematics and science • Ready-to-use lesson plans that classroom teachers, physical education teachers, dance educators, and dance specialists can use in teaching integrated content in mathematics and science • Tried-and-true methods for connecting to 21st-century learning standards and integrating dance into K-5 curriculums This book, which will help you assess learning equally in dance, science, and mathematics, is organized in three parts: • Part I introduces the role of dance in education; defines dance integration; and describes the uses, benefits, and effects of dance when used in tandem with another content area. • Part II offers dance and mathematics lessons that parallel the common core standards for mathematics. • Part III presents dance and science learning activities in physical science, life science, earth and space sciences, investigation, experimentation, and technology. Each lesson plan includes a warm-up, a developmental progression of activities, and formative and summative assessments and reflections. The progressions help students explore, experiment, create, and perform their understanding of the content. The plans are written in a conversational narrative and include additional notes for teachers. Each lesson explores an essential question relevant to the discipline and may be taught in sequence or as a stand-alone lesson. Yes, Dance Integration will help you meet important standards: • Common Core State Standards for Mathematics • Next Generation Science Standards • Standards for Learning and Teaching Dance in the Arts More important, this book provides you with a personal aesthetic realm in your classroom that is not part of any other school experience. It will help you bring joy and excitement into your classroom. And it will help you awaken a community of active and eager learners. Isn’t that what education is all about?

Does a dance communicate ? What ? How ? Are all dances meaningful ? Do spectators see what a choreographer sees ? "The strands of the dance medium like locks of hair plait into one meaningful whole. The interlock is all." The interlock is what this book explores from the choreographer and performers' perspective with every genre in contemporary dance theatre in mind. Written for practical people in dance, the text is organised in 32 short chapters each addressing a question on the way in which choreographers might or might not engage with their audiences in dance theatre works. The topics include an introduction to communication theory and the way in which the interlocking network between performers, movement material, sound, and performance can carry meaning. The book is written from choreographers' and performers' perspectives, with 46 dance works cited from a wide range of genres. The text is unusually presented - as closely as possible to how we speak to each other - with key words in bold type for ease of reference. Valerie Preston-Dunlop is an internationally recognised lecturer, teacher, and author on dance. She is currently Adviser for Postgraduate Studies and Research at the Trinity Laban Centre in London.

The human imagination manifests in countless different forms. We imagine the possible and the impossible. How do we do this so effortlessly? Why did the capacity for imagination evolve and manifest with undeniably manifold complexity uniquely in human beings? This handbook reflects on such questions by collecting perspectives on imagination from leading experts. It showcases a rich and detailed analysis on how the imagination is understood across several disciplines of study, including anthropology, archaeology, medicine, neuroscience, psychology, philosophy, and the arts. An integrated theoretical-empirical-applied picture of the field is presented, which stands to inform researchers, students, and practitioners about the issues of relevance across the board when considering the imagination. With each chapter, the nature of human imagination is examined - what it entails, how it evolved, and why it singularly defines us as a species.

DIVWork links dance and the aesthetics of everyday movement to ideas about social order./div

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW, LOS ANGELES TIMES, SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE, AND PUBLISHERS WEEKLY For more than four hundred years, the art of ballet has stood at the center of Western civilization. Its traditions serve as a record of our past. Lavishly illustrated and beautifully told, Apollo’s Angels—the first cultural history of ballet ever written—is a groundbreaking work. From ballet’s origins in the Renaissance and the codification of its basic steps and positions under France’s Louis XIV (himself an avid dancer), the art form wound its way through the courts of Europe, from Paris and Milan to Vienna and St. Petersburg. In the twentieth century, émigré dancers taught their art to a generation in the United States and in Western Europe, setting off a new and radical transformation of dance. Jennifer Homans, a historian, critic, and former professional ballerina, wields a knowledge of dance born of dedicated practice. Her admiration and love for the ballet, as Entertainment Weekly notes, brings “a dancer’s grace and sure-footed agility to the page.”