The only scholarly book in English dedicated to recent European contemporary dance, Exhausting Dance: Performance and the Politics of Movement examines the work of key contemporary choreographers who have transformed the dance scene since the early 1990s in Europe and the US. Through their vivid and explicit dialogue with performance art, visual arts and critical theory from the past thirty years, this new generation of choreographers challenge our understanding of dance by exhausting the concept of movement. Their work demands to be read as performed extensions of the radical politics implied in performance art, in post-structuralist and critical theory, in post-colonial theory, and in critical race studies. In this far-ranging and exceptional study, Andre Lepecki brilliantly analyzes the work of the choreographers: * Jerome Bel (France) * Juan Dominguez (Spain) * Trisha Brown (US) * La Ribot (Spain) * Xavier Le Roy (France-Germany) * Vera Mantero (Portugal) and visual and performance artists: * Bruce Nauman (US) * William Pope.L (US). This book offers a significant and radical revision of the way we think about dance, arguing for the necessity of a renewed engagement between dance studies and experimental artistic and philosophical practices.

The only scholarly book in English dedicated to recent European contemporary dance, Exhausting Dance: Performance and the Politics of Movement examines the work of key contemporary choreographers who have transformed the dance scene since the early 1990s in Europe and the US. Through their vivid and explicit dialogue with performance art, visual arts and critical theory from the past thirty years, this new generation of choreographers challenge our understanding of dance by exhausting the concept of movement. Their work demands to be read as performed extensions of the radical politics implied in performance art, in post-structuralist and critical theory, in post-colonial theory, and in critical race studies. In this far-ranging and exceptional study, Andre Lepecki brilliantly analyzes the work of the choreographers: * Jerome Bel (France) * Juan Dominguez (Spain) * Trisha Brown (US) * La Ribot (Spain) * Xavier Le Roy (France-Germany) * Vera Mantero (Portugal) and visual and performance artists: * Bruce Nauman (US) * William Pope.L (US). This book offers a significant and radical revision of the way we think about dance, arguing for the necessity of a renewed engagement between dance studies and experimental artistic and philosophical practices.

Ungoverning Dance examines recent contemporary dance in continental Europe. Placing this in the context of neoliberalism and austerity, it argues that dancers are developing an ethico-aesthetic approach that uses dance practices as sites of resistance against dominant ideologies. It attests to the persistence of alternative ways of thinking and living.

'Planes of Composition' focuses on how contemporary choreographic strategies initiate new modes of understanding the moving body in its multiple performances: racial, kinetic, political, ethical, and theoretical.

Writing at the dynamic intersection of dance and performance studies.

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.

In the past decade, Vancouver dance has received tremendous acclaim nationally and internationally, as witnessed by the success of choreographer Crystal Pite and a rejuvenated Ballet BC. But this is only part of a vibrant and diverse story of contemporary movement practices in the city. In My Vancouver Dance History Peter Dickinson crafts an embodied narrative that focuses on his critical and creative collaborations with nine Vancouver-based dance artists and companies. Mixing interview excerpts with fieldwork descriptions of studio research and performance analysis, Dickinson draws on ten years of close observation to delve into the individual histories of select members of this community, while also relating the cumulative story of Vancouver dance production and performance as it has unfolded in the past decade. The voices of other invested participants interpolate this rich history, and chapters are interspersed with a series of "movement intervals" that reflect key moments in Dickinson's history as a spectator, scholar, and collaborator. In innovative ways, Dickinson suggests that when we pay attention to the larger social topography of dance practice - the sites that give rise to it, the labour that goes into it, and the professional friendships it engenders - we can properly understand dance's contributions to civic life.