Composing while Dancing: An Improviser’s Companion examines the world of improvisational dance and the varied approaches to this art form. By introducing the improvisational strategies of twenty-six top contemporary artists of movement improvisation, Melinda Buckwalter offers a practical primer to the dance form. Each chapter focuses on an important aspect of improvisation including spatial relations, the eyes, and the dancing image. Included are sample practices from the artists profiled, exercises for further research, and a glossary of terms. Buckwalter gathers history, methods, interviews, and biographies in one book to showcase the many facets of improvisational dance and create an invaluable reference for dancers and dance educators.

After an extraordinary career in dance - as a performer, choreographer, and teacher - Daniel Nagrin has now written an extraordinary book.  In it he explores the roots of his aesthetic philosophy, influenced by Stanislavski, Helen Tamiris, Joseph Chaikin and the Open Theatre, and his work on and off Broadway as an actor and dancer.

Dance and the Specific Image includes over one hundred improvisational structures that Nagrin created with his new company, the Workgroup, and has taught in dance classes and workshops all over the United States.  Designed primarily for dancers, many can be adapted for actors and even musicians.

In the 1960s, at a time when many modern dancers were working with movement as abstraction, Nagrin turned instead toward movement as metaphor.  His passionate belief that dance must speak of people led him to found the Workgroup, a small company of dancers who, in the early 1970s, devoted themselves to the practice and performance of improvisation.

Nagrin invites the reader into the mind of a dancer totally absorbed in his art, one who writes with wisdom and authority about what it means to be an artist.

Dance Improvisations is a book for teachers of dance and acting, choreographers, directors, and dance therapists.  Systematically offering a complete range of ways to explore dance, it can be used as a syllabus or as a reference for groups of all ages and all levels of experience.

The first chapter in Dance Improvisations introduces ways for a group to practice working together and for the dancers to gain an effective awareness of each other.  These preliminaries are followed by a body of improvisational problems, organized into three main areas: Space, Time, and Movement Invention.  Each area is presented as a series of topics.  Each topic progresses from individual exploration to more formally structured group improvisations, with emphasis on learning to work as a group toward common structural goals.

This book is the first in its field to go beyond the pursuit of physical inventiveness to nurture the development of structural intuition.  Joyce Morgenroth has succeeded in presenting improvisation in a way that is rational and methodical as well as inventive and personal - in the conviction that improvisation at its best is comprised of both form and fancy.

There is an ever-increasing number of books on improvisation, ones that richly recount experiences in the heat of the creative moment, theorize on the essence of improvisation, and offer convincing arguments for improvisation’s impact across a wide range of human activity. This book is nothing like that. In a provocative and at times moving experiment, Gary Peters takes a different approach, turning the philosophy of improvisation upside-down and inside-out.
           
Guided by Kant, Hegel, Heidegger, and especially Deleuze—and exploring a range of artists from Hendrix to Borges—Peters illuminates new fundamentals about what, as an experience, improvisation truly is. As he shows, improvisation isn’t so much a genre, idiom, style, or technique—it’s a predicament we are thrown into, one we find ourselves in. The predicament, he shows, is a complex entwinement of choice and decision. The performativity of choice during improvisation may happen “in the moment,” but it is already determined by an a priori mode of decision. In this way, improvisation happens both within and around the actual moment, negotiating a simultaneous past, present, and future. Examining these and other often ignored dimensions of spontaneous creativity, Peters proposes a consistently challenging and rigorously argued new perspective on improvisation across an extraordinary range of disciplines. 
 

Dance improvisation, the intriguing phenomenon of the creative process alive in the moving body, exists powerfully, sublimely - lending insight, solving problems, allowing moments of transcendence, diversion, and delight.  Flourishing especially since the postmodern movement of the 1960s, it has come into its own in the performing arts.  While there are many books containing ideas for developing improvisations, few have tackled the difficult questions: “What is dance improvisation?”  “How does it work?” or “What is its body of knowledge?”

The Moment of Movement goes beyond lists of improvisations and into the heart of improvising.  As in their previous book, The Intimate Act of Choreography, the authors pursue both the philosophical and the practical.  They begin by examining the creative process as it applies to movement and especially the kinesthetic way in which the body knows and uses movement.  They answer the often unstated and pertinent questions of the novice; investigate the particular skills and traits needed by the leader; consider ways of working with specific populations; and provide challenging material for advanced movers.  They discuss the use of music, and the specific situation of improvisation in performance.  For leaders who want to design their own improvisations, they trace the evolution of an idea into an actual content and structure.  They also address the controversial issue of the legitimacy of improvisation in an academic curriculum.  A final chapter presents hundreds of improvs and improv ideas, grouped into units and cross-referenced.

The Moment of Movement is not tied to any one point of view.  The authors’ presentation of a broad range of material is flexible enough for use by choreographers, directors, educators, and therapists.  In its perceptive investigation of the experiential and conceptual aspects of dance improvisation, this book articulates the ephemeral.