Format: Paperback
        
        
        
        
            Pages: 352
          
                              
            ISBN: 9780819565518
          
                              
            Pub Date: September 2002
          
                                                            
                                          Imprint: Wesleyan University Press
                                    
                              
            Illustrations: 35 illus.
          
                    
                Price:
      
                £21.50
            
  
          
          
          
                          In stock
                      
        
          Description:
      
      
        During an improvised performance, both dancers and audience members reflect on how the dance is being made. They ask themselves: What will happen next? What choices will each dancer make? And how will these decisions contribute to the overall effect and significance of the performance?  Trained as a jazz pianist, Richard Bull did not uphold the opposition often found in dance between improvisation and composition. Instead, he believed that dancers, like jazz musicians, could craft a piece spontaneously in performance. Analyzing performances by Bull and many of his contemporaries, Susan Foster argues that their diverse practices embody distinctive values representative of different artistic communities, yet they all share a capacity to reflect on their own making, in a sense, describing themselves.