Dance Improvisations - by Joyce Morgenroth (Paperback)

About the Book

Dance Improvisations is a book for teachers of dance and acting, choreographers, directors, and dance therapists. Methodical, yet inventive, this book offers highly structured techniques for developing dancers' ability to work together.

Book Synopsis

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.

Review Quotes

Dance Improvisations is significant to the dance world not only as a teaching text, but as a statement of the importance of the evanescent process of improvisation.-- "Journal of Physical Education, Recreation & Dance"

About the Author

Joyce Morgenroth has studied at the School of American Ballet and with Merce Cunningham, Dan Wagoner, and Viola Farber. She has appeared as a guest artist at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, Smith College, and Dartmoth College.