Cho Norie, twenty-seven and originally from Taiwan, is working an office job in Tokyo. While her colleagues worry about the economy, life-insurance policies, marriage, and children, she is forced to keep her unconventional life hidden--including her sexuality and the violent attack that prompted her move to Japan. There is also her unusual fascination with death: she knows from personal experience how devastating death can be, but for her it is also creative fuel. Solo Dance depicts the painful coming of age of a gay person in Taiwan and corporate Japan. This striking debut is an intimate and powerful account of a search for hope after trauma.

More Dance Improvisations builds on the success of its predecessor, Dance Improvisations, and offers 78 brand-new activities that have been tested and refined by author Justine Reeve, a veteran dance instructor and choreographer. This text offers a wealth of creative ideas that instructors can use to help their dancers explore and experience movement. The 78 improvisation tasks and exercises support all portions of a dance class, from improvisation lessons, warm-ups, and games that stimulate creativity to choreographic tasks for creating movement material. These new activities will provide an invaluable source of creative ideas for all dancers, including those who are exploring their own professional practice. More Dance Improvisations offers expert instruction in planning, teaching, and assessing students’ improvisations; a choreographic toolkit and glossary of dance and choreographic terms; step-by-step instruction and teaching tips that will save instructors preparation time; and extensions of each improv to aid further exploration and development of the improvisation skills. Instructors can use the improvs for individual lessons or in developing an entire lesson plan. “The improvisation tasks and exercises will encourage dancers’ imaginative responses to a varied selection of stimuli, whether alone or in groups,” says author Justine Reeve. “These improvisations will give dancers the keys to unlock ideas that they will find useful on their choreographic journey.” After an introductory chapter that covers many important topics on conducting safe and effective practices and workshops and on how to use the book, the text moves into its first set of improvisations: warm-up games. These games develop quick thinking, group thinking, movement communication, and an awareness of the needs and movements of others. The next two chapters explore solo and duo improvisations as well as group creative tasks. Each improvisation task has a brief description, an image, numbered tasks for clarity, a teaching tip, and ideas to take the task further or develop the dance idea as appropriate. Chapter 5 explores how the physical and aural setting can lead to creating interesting and considered dance. Chapter 6 encourages dancers to use movements, phrases, and sequences created in previous tasks to develop and structure the movement material into something new. “These games, tasks, ideas, stimuli, and developments are here to give instructors and students a little push to find creative vision, explore movement, and discover how these ideas can be developed, adapted, and structured,” says Reeve. “Instructors will find new ways to help their dancers create original movements through both individual and group activities, and students will gain inspiration through using these improvisations.” More Dance Improvisations promotes creativity that leads to innovative breakthroughs for students from middle school through college. It is the perfect resource to help dancers enjoy their exploration of movement and dance as they gain greater awareness of the capabilities they possess.

“Ancient Greek dance” traditionally evokes images of stately choruses or lively Dionysiac revels – communal acts of performance. This is the first book to look beyond the chorus to the diverse and complex representation of solo dancers in Archaic and Classical Greek literature. It argues that dancing alone signifies transgression and vulnerability in the Greek cultural imagination, as isolation from the chorus marks the separation of the individual from a range of communal social structures. It also demonstrates that the solo dancer is a powerful figure for literary exploration and experimentation, highlighting the importance of the singular dancing body in the articulation of poetic, narrative, and generic interests across Greek literature. Taking a comparative approach and engaging with current work in dance and performance studies, this book reveals the profound literary and cultural importance of the unruly solo dancer in the ancient Greek world.

This book is a collection of essays that capture the artistic voices at play during a staging process. Situating familiar practices such as reimagining, reenactment and recreation alongside the related and often intersecting processes of transmission, translation and transformation, it features deep insights into selected dances from directors, performers, and close associates of choreographers. The breadth of practice on offer illustrates the capacity of dance as a medium to adapt successfully to diverse approaches and, further, that there is a growing appetite amongst audiences for seeing dances from the near and far past. This study spans a century, from Rudolf Laban’s Dancing Drumstick (1913) to Robert Cohan’s Sigh (2015), and examines works by Mary Wigman, Madge Atkinson (Natural Movement), Doris Humphrey, Martha Graham, Yvonne Rainer and Rosemary Butcher, an eclectic mix that crosses time and borders.

An inquiry into improvisation as practiced by Richard Bull and his contemporaries.

Now that the political and economic plight of European Roma and the popularity of their music are objects of international attention, Romani Routes provides a timely and insightful view into Romani communities both in their home countries and in the diaspora. Over the past two decades, a steady stream of recordings, videos, feature films, festivals, and concerts has presented the music of Balkan Gypsies, or Roma, to Western audiences, who have greeted them with exceptional enthusiasm. Yet, as author Carol Silverman notes, Roma are revered as musicians and reviled as people. In this book, Silverman introduces readers to the people and cultures who produce this music, offering a sensitive and incisive analysis of how Romani musicians address the challenges of discrimination. Focusing on southeastern Europe then moving to the diaspora, her book examines the music within Romani communities, the lives and careers of outstanding musicians, and the marketing of music in the electronic media and "world music" concert circuit. Silverman touches on the way that the Roma exemplify many qualities--adaptability, cultural hybridity, transnationalism--that are taken to characterize late modern experience. And rather than just celebrating these qualities, she presents the musicians as complicated, pragmatic individuals who work creatively within the many constraints that inform their lives.