Book Reviews

Nia Love, Vincent Thomas, Miko Doi-Smith, Paloma McGregor, Will Bond, Leah Cox, Elisa García Radcliffe, and Ruby Morales in Wicked Bodies at Arizona State University, Gammage (2022). Organized in three staggered lines atop individual black stools, (three dancers, two dancers, three dancers), the performers each assume a “superman” position on their stomachs, back muscles taught as arms and legs lift off. The dancers wear an array of costumes (billowing pants, structured blazer, expansive gauzy skirt, a polka dot jumper) in shades of black, white, fuchsia, and red. Collectively, they cast their gaze stage left, the direction of their “flight” as haze descends over the top ⅔ of the stage height.
Photo: Tim Trumble
  • Book Reviews, thINKpieces

A witch, some kitsch, and a theory walk into a book

Jennifer Passios

On Liz Lerman’s "Shape and Momentum"

Three dancers, all clad in black cotton outfits, sit on the floor while leaning one arm up and over their bodies. Their spines curve to the side.
Photo: Gonzalo Mejia, University of Miami
  • Book Reviews

Reckoning with Power in the Classroom

Megan Mizanty

Nicole Perry’s publication urges critical reflection for movement educators

Sage Ni'Ja Whitson, a queer transgender Black person with long black-brown locs faces the camera with a soft, powerful smile. They wear a round-brimmed brown hat, a triple-ringed silver septum piercing, and a black jacket. One hand with vein-like tattoos is held in a loose fist near their sternum, while the other is wrapped loosely around their stomach. They stand in front of a leafy green backdrop.
Photo: Ryan Landell
  • Book Reviews

In Visible Darkness: A Non-binary Book

ankita

Sage Ni’Ja Whitson builds Black trans portals into darkness.

Green-toned book cover featuring the silhouette of a forest and leaping figure with the title “Ways to Move: Black Insurgent Grammars by Jonathan González” on the right, and poetic text on the left reading: “i want to be with you in the ways with you of vertigo seas,” “i want to be with you in the ways with you of smashing monuments,” and “i want to be with you in the ways with you of these lonely trees.”
Photo: Courtesy of Jonathan González and Ugly Duckling Presse
  • Book Reviews

On Language Learning

Emilee Lord

A reading of Ways to Move: Black Insurgent Grammars by Jonathan González

A flat image of the front cover of "Resistance and Support: CI @ 50" appears centered on a dark maroon background. From top to bottom, the cover descends through sunset – muted burnt orange, carrot, creamsicle, golden rod, pale yellow, into a black and white photo of two dancers partnering in the ocean. One dancer is on his ass in the water. The other stands, both knees bent, reaching out for her comrade in the waves. They hold hands at the wrists, arms fully extended. The title “Resistance and Support,” each word on its own line, spans the top third of the cover page in a burgundy, serif font. Below, the subtitle “CI @ 50” slants in smaller white italics. The text “EDITED BY: Ann Cooper Albright,” back to the burgundy with no italics, sits about one thumbs width above the dancers in the ocean.
Photo: Courtesy of Ann Cooper Albright, includes photo by Lasse Lychnell
  • Book Reviews

Zooming Out and Weighing In

Jennifer Passios

Thirty-three writers shape Contact Improvisation’s next chapter.

Lauren Morrow, author of Little Movements, stares directly into the camera. She wears a white button-down, and her hair is in long black braids.
Photo: Kate Enman
  • Book Reviews

You Deserve It: Creative “Freedom” in a Dance Novel

Megan Mizanty

Lauren Morrow’s debut novel hits close to many dancers’ experiences

A black and white still of a scene from Daniel Stein’s Inclined to Agree, 1986. A muscular Stein lunges his bent left leg upstage, bending his torso to his left, wearing dress slacks , movement shoes and shirtless. He is stepping on two bunches of taught chords that run diagonally from his right ankle up to the rafters where more chords of varying lengths hang with weights attached . An empty door frame hangs from chords just upstage of Stein, it tilts towards him on a steep incline.
Photo: Daniel Stein
  • Book Reviews

B.F.F. (Before the Fringe Festival: A Moving History)

Walter Bilderback

A reflection on the 2023 memoir of Michael Pedretti of Movement Theatre International, pre-Philadelphia Fringe Festival.

n a soft, blurry black and white photo, dancer Mary Wigman performs in Idolatry (Götzendienst), part of the solo cycle from Ecstatic Dances as revised for her first solo tour in 1919. She wears opaque black tights, shoeless, and a thick fringed black dress that covers her entire torso. It’s difficult to tell, but the shadowy form looks to be throwing her head back. Photograph Courtesy of the Mary Wigman Archive, Academy of Arts, Berlin.
Photo: Hugo Erfurth
  • Book Reviews

The Rear-View Mirror: Hindsight from a Dance Scholar

Megan Mizanty

How does the lens switch as time passes? Susan Manning's essays are collected in Dancing on the Fault Lines of History.

Fanned out in a circle on a white surface are 12 booklets in a range of colors. Here and there are sections of text covered or obscured by other booklets. In the center of this circle is the title piece in a wash of brown darker at the bottom and lightening toward the top. The vague image of pine tree tops on its surface. It reads, Dance across the top and History(s) across the bottom with the subtitle Imagination as a Form of Study in the center. Underneath in smaller letters it reads edited by Thomas F. DeFrantz and Annie-B Parson.
Photo: Jack Lazar
  • Book Reviews

To Us/Because of Us

Emilee Lord

Dance is a Weed

A woman in a black leather coat, jeans and a black bowler hat squats down. Her long hair is blown across her face obscuring it and her hand moves up to brush it away. The name Clare Croft appears in black letters in the top left corner. In large white letters, the bottom of the photo reads: Jill Johnston.
Photo by Phyllis Birkby
  • Book Reviews

Interrupting the Paper Daughter

Emilee Lord

Reading writing on a writer dancing