The Oxford Handbook of Improvisation in Dance

Vida L Midgelow is Professor in Dance and Choregraphic Practices at Middlesex University. Her interests, that encompass somatics, improvisation, and practice-as-research, have become increasingly methodological in focus leading to publications such as Improvisation as paradigm for Phenomenology (2018); "Some Fleshy Thinking: Improvisation, Experience, Perception" (2015) and "Creative Articulations Process" (2015). She is the Director of the Erasmus Plus funded Artistic Doctorates in Europe Project and co-editor of the hybrid peer reviewed journal Choreographic Practices.

Introduction. Improvising Dance: A Way of Going About Things
Vida L Midgelow

Section 1: Life worlds and Ethics

1. Life Practices
Ann Cooper Albright

2. Ethico-aesthetic practice of improvising: relations through motion
Fiona Bannon

3. Reflections on dance improvisation and its dynamic interrelationship with everyday movement
Libby Worth

4. A Philosophy of the Improvisational Body
Sondra Fraleigh

5. Chance encounters, Nietzschean philosophy and the question of improvisation Philipa Rothfield

6. Moving in medias res: Towards a phenomenological hermeneutics of dance improvisation
Nigel Stewart


Section 2: Attunement and Perception

7. I notice that I'm noticingEL
Sally Doughty

8. Embodied Consciousness in Improvised Performance
Nalina Wait

9. 'Mass may be the single most important sensation': Perceptual Philosophies in Dance Improvisation
Malaka Sacro-Thomas

10. Rethinking Improvisation from a Daoist perspective of Qi-energy
I-Ying Wu

11. Exploring Uncertainties of Language in Dance Improvisation
Louise McDowall


Section 3: Habit, Freedom and Resistance

12. Improvisation and Habit
Gary Peters

13. Unpredictable Maneuvers: Eva Karczag's Improvised Strategies for Thwarting Institutional Agendas
Doran George

14. Movements of freedom: performing popular liberty in the early cancan
Claire Parfitt-Brown

15. Valorizing Uncertainty: Chance, Totalitarianism and Soviet Ballet
Janice Ross

16. The Emancipation of Improvisation
Larry Lavender


Section 4: Memory and Transmission

17. Improvisation and Argentinean Tango: On playing with body memories
Susanne Ravn

18. Dancing Life
Norah Zuniga Shaw

19. What Remains
Robert Bingham & Stephanie Hanna

20. Improvisational Practices in Jazz Dance Battles
Jane Carr and Irven Lewis

21. Twelve Days in Tarbena: an evolutionary approach to moving through silence and sound to speech in Ruth Zaporah's Action Theater training
Robert Vesty

22. Intention and Surrender
Stephanie Skura


Section 5: Agency and Transformation

23. Transcending Boundaries: Improvisation and disability in dance
Sarah Whatley

24. Artful humanising conversations: Improvisation in Early Years dance
Kerry Chappell and Lizzie Swinford

25. Instinctive Connections: Improvisation as a research methodology in health and care settings
Lisa Dowler

26. Somatic Sensing and Creaturely Knowing in the University Improvisation Class
Ali East

27. Improvising Happiness: Belly Dance's Evolution through Improvisation
Barbara Sellers Young


Section 6: Interconnectivity, emergence and technologies

28. Dancing the Interface: Improvisation in Zones of Virtual Exchange
Thomas DeFrantz

29. Programmed Improvisation Inspied from Autonomous Humanoids
Amy LaVeirs

30. Contact Improvisation and Embodied Social Cognition
April Flakne

31. Modelling Improvisation as Emergence: A Critical Investigation of the Practice of Cognition
Colleen Dunagan, Roxane Fenton, and Evan Dorn

32. Towards a cognitive theory of joint improvisation: The case of tango argentino
Micheal Kimmel


Section 7: Ecology and Environments

33. Improvisation and the Earth: Dancing in the Moment as Ecological Practice
Tamara Ashley

34. Dancing the Land: An Emerging Geopoetics
Melinda Buckwalter

35. Scoring and Siting: Improvisatory Approaches to Site-Specific Dance
Victoria Hunter

36. The Dancer, the Philosopher and the Tramp
Hilary Elliot

37. Audience Improvisation and Immersive Experiences: the sensuous world of the body in the work of Lundahl & Seitl
Josephine Machon


Section 8: Techniques, Strategies and Histories

38. Lost in the Footlights: The Secret Life of Improvisation in Contemporary American Concert Dance
Kent De Spain

39. In the Moment: Improvisation in Traditional Dance
Anthony Shay

40. Playing with the Beat: Choreomusical Improvisation in Rhythm Tap Dance
Allison Robbins & Christopher J. Wells

41. Moving Sound: New Relationships between Contemporary Dance and Music in Improvisation
Anna Sanchez Colberg & Dimitris Karalis

42. Mens Agilis Corpore Agili
Ivar Hagendoorn

43. Embodiology®: A Hybrid Neo-African Improvisation-as-Performance Practice distinguished by Dynamic Rhythm
Sheron Wray