Each December, one of my favorite activities is to compile this annual list of dance and somatic books. I hope a few titles pique your interest for personal reading or to use in a college course. Please share additional titles in the Comments section as well.
I love the range in this year’s new titles - from Betti Franceschi’s gorgeous coffee table book Ageless Dancers of images of dancers 62 to 101, to Artists on Creative Administration sharing a much needed offering for arts administrators, to Wendy Jones’ Choreographing the Curriculum: Design a Dance Program with the Creative Process at Its Core, one of the few books out there spotlighting a high school dance program. Plus, Dance History(s): Imagination as a Form of Study, is an awesome set of 12 booklets to re-imagine dance history through 12 living artists’ viewpoints.
I just described a few, but please check out the full list of 23 titles. Hyperlinks below are primarily connected with the publishers to be able to read a full description of each book.
I love an audiobook option as well. Two of the dance history titles can be enjoyed in this format.
-Jill Randall, Blog Director
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Ageless Dancers by Betti Franceschi
Artists on Creative Administration: A Workbook from the National Center for Choreography edited by Tonya Lockyer
Ballet Somatics by Deidre Neal
Choreographing the Curriculum: Design a Dance Program with the Creative Process at Its Core by Wendy Jones
Choreographing Your Dance Career by Janaea Rose Lyn
Dance History(s): Imagination as a Form of Study edited by Thomas F. DeFrantz and Annie-B Parson
Dance Your Way Home: A Journey Through the Dancefloor by Emma Warren
Dancers: Choreographers in Dialogue by Ingo Schaefer
Dancing the Afrofuture: Hula, Hip-Hop, and the Dunham Legacy by Halifu Osumare
Edges of Ailey edited by Adrienne Edwards
Errand Into the Maze: The Life and Works of Martha Graham by Deborah Jowitt (available as an audiobook)
The Essential Jill Johnston Reader edited by Clare Croft
Geographies of Us: Ecosomatic Essays and Practice Pages edited by Sondra Fraleigh and Shannon Rose Riley
Jill Johnston in Motion: Dance, Writing, and Lesbian Life by Clare Croft
Passionate Work: Choreographing a Career by Ruth Horowitz
Performing the Greek Crisis: Navigating National Identity in the Age of Austerity by Natalie Zervou
Pilobolus: A Story of Dance and Life by Robert Pranzatelli
A Sense of Shifting: Queer Artists Reshaping Dance by Coco Romack and Yael Malka
Simone Forti: Improvising a Life by Ann Cooper Albright
The Simonsen Legacy by Jeanne Donohue
Skin Colored Pointes: Interviews with Women of Color in Ballet by Nyama McCarthy-Brown
The Swans of Harlem: Five Black Ballerinas, Fifty Years of Sisterhood, and Their Reclamation of a Groundbreaking History by Karen Valby (available as an audiobook)
You, the Choreographer: Creating and Crafting Dance by Vladimir Angelov
Related posts:
New Dance Books in 2023
New Dance Books in 2022
New Dance Books in 2021
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