Books about Choreographer from Amazon.com

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Price: $15.26 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Text instruction can go only so far in teaching how to create dances. Dance Composition Basics picks up where other textbooks leave off, with a bound-in DVD that features professional choreographers and dancers in action.

Designed for beginning college-level dance composition courses and dance educators at the middle and high school levels, this textbook and DVD package highlights selected portions of original dance compositions by two noted choreographers. The works of Alonzo King (Chants and Dreamer) and Dwight Rhoden (Verge) are recorded and analyzed to sequence the choreographic process. Students are able to witness a progression that takes them from conceiving and refining an idea to improvising and solving movement problems to shaping and performing dances.

The methods featured in Dance Composition Basics can be applied to a variety of dance styles including ballet, modern, and jazz. Each of the 27 lessons serves as a starting point that encourages novice dancers to embark on their own attempts at choreography with more confidence.

Structured to present concepts from simple to complex, the chapters cover the body, space, time, energy, and choreographic devices. Each chapter is divided into lessons based on the dance element or concept highlighted. The lessons challenge students to create solo, duet, trio, and group works. Each lesson includes the following components:

• One choreographic concept
• Video documentation of the choreographic concept
• Vocabulary words
• Introductory statement
• Warm-up
• Structured improvisations
• Creative choreographic problems
• Questions for discussion
• Assessment rubrics

  The DVD supplements the written instruction in a progression that no textbook alone could achieve. It shows dancers as they solve movement problems, and it shows choreographers as they mold their works from conception to stage performance. DVD footage also captures the decision-making and problem-solving tactics used by each choreographer. With these concrete examples, students can form a basis of comparison when completing their own assignments.

  Dance Composition Basics is a practical introduction to the methods and tools used in composing dances that engages students in the process—the preferred method of learning and teaching dance composition today. Through real-world examples, this text and DVD package demonstrates the direct relationship of the activities learned in the dance composition class to the current practices used by professional choreographers..
  Price: $35.10 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Speaking of Dance: Twelve Contemporary Choreographers on Their Craft juxtaposes the choreographic processes of some of America's most engaging -- and revolutionary -- choreographers Based on personal interviews, the book's narratives reveal, among others, Merce Cunningham's unquenchable fascination with movement, Meredith Monk's spiritual quest, Bill T. Jones's desire to change the world, Trisha Brown's engagement with structure, and Mark Morris' profound musicality. Morgenroth shows how the ideas, craft, and passion that go into their work have led these choreographers to disrupt set forms and expectations: dancing on the sides of buildings, in city streets, in rivers and lakes; moving to music, sounds, speech, and silence; costumed in ordinary clothes, shredded leotards, or nothing at all. The history of dance in the making is revealed through the stories of these intelligent, articulate, and witty dancemakers. Put away your old dance composition primers and see how these choreographers can open your eyes and minds to what dance can be.
· Profiled Choreographers: Merce Cunningham; Anna Halprin; David Gordon; Trisha Brown; Lucinda Childs; Meredith Monk; Elizabeth Streb; Eiko Otake; Bill T. Jones; Ann Carlson; Mark Morris; John Jasperse.
Price: $23.88 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Martha Graham (1894-1991) referred to her dancers as "acrobats of God," but in truth it was she who seemed divinely inspired. Graham was a dancer, choreographer, and teacher for more than 70 years, and during that time she changed the landscape of dance forever. An unlikely candidate for a dance diva, she was shorter and more muscular than the principal ballet dancers of her time and she didn't start dancing until age 22--a flower long past her bloom in the eyes of most choreographers. Nonetheless, Graham managed to turn the dance world on its tutu with her innovative approach to movement and teaching and her clear understanding that feelings are not always graceful, but always intense.

Russell Freedman, who won the Newbery Medal in 1988 for Lincoln: A Photobiography and Newbery Honors for The Wright Brothers: How They Invented the Airplane (1992) and Eleanor Roosevelt: A Life of Discovery (1994), has once again crafted a beautiful, intriguing biography. He traces Graham's remarkable life from a childhood filled with imaginative play, to her decision to attend dance school instead of college, through her departure from the Broadway Follies to pursue her own dance style, and onward through her late life, when she continued teaching and creating distinctive performance pieces. The fascinating biography is complemented by exquisite black-and-white photographs that reveal Graham's sense of beauty and her remarkable ability to translate pure, raw emotions into expressive movement. Freedman's lovely tribute makes us fully believe Graham when she says, "I did not choose to be a dancer, I was chosen." (Young Adult/Adult) --Brangien Davis.
Price: $10.04 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Widely known as the creator of the air-step in Lindy Hop, a choreographer and Tony award winner, Frankie Manning recalls how his first tentative steps as a teenager at Harlem's Savoy Ballroom eventually led him to a career as chief choreographer and lead dancer for Whitey's Lindy Hoppers, who appeared on Broadway stages, Hollywood films, and stages around the world. He brings the Swing Era to life with recollections of the headliners as well as the dozens of uncelebrated dancers who helped to make the Lindy an international sensation.
With collaborator, Cynthia Millman, Manning traces the evolution of swing dancing from those early days in Harlem through the post-War War II period until it was eclipsed by rock and roll, then disco. Never one to sit on the sidelines, Manning ended his 35-year hiatus from dancing during the early years of the swing revival, and he has been performing and teaching ever since. This wonderful memoir will be a revelation to the new generations of Lindy Hoppers as well as dance historians..
Price: $19.10 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Simple guidelines for the business of "making up dances!" Choreographers do not make dances out of words. They compose them in the vocabulary of movement Dr. Ellfeldt has long demonstrated her command of that vocabulary in her own dance compositions. Now, in A Primer for Choreographers, she has undertaken the difficult task of explaining its alphabet to beginning students. Beginning with a brief definition of dance, this book supplies young dancers not with an easy explanation of the process of choreography, but with some tools for finding their own processes. It is a primer, a beginner's book, which identifies the alphabet and the rules of grammar and spelling of dance. It is not a how-to book, for no one is sure how to succeed as a choreographer--except by really trying..
Price: $18.95 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Covering today's most important modern, ballet, contemporary and post-modern choreographers in Europe and North America, this unique guide is a valuable quick reference for students and critics, dancers and general readers in love with dance.

Each entry includes a biographical section, a chronological list of works, a detailed bibliography and a critical essay. In entries on choreographers such as Richard Alston, Pina Bausch, Laurie Booth, Christopher Bruce, Jonathan Burrows, Michael Clarke, Merce Cunningham, Anna Theresa De Keersmaeker, Eiko and Koma, William Forsythe,Jiri Kylain, Mark Morris, Twyla Tharp and other leading figures, readers can easily locate each choreographer's style and influence within the development of contemporary theatre dance, and swiftly discern the essential facts in his or her career..
Price: $24.66 [Notify me when price goes down.]

José was a boy with a song in his heart and a dance in his step. Born in Mexico in 1908, he came into the world kicking like a steer, and grew up to love to draw, play the piano, and dream. José's dreaming took him to faraway places. He dreamed of bullfighters and the sounds of the cancan dancers that he saw with his father. Dance lit a fire in José's soul.

With his heart to guide him, José left his family and went to New York to dance. He learned to flow and float and fly through space with steps like a Mexican breeze. When José danced, his spirit soared. From New York to lands afar, José Limón became known as the man who gave the world his own kind of dance.

¡OLÉ! ¡OLÉ! ¡OLÉ!

Susanna Reich's lyrical text and Raúl Colón's shimmering artwork tell the story of a boy who was determined to make a difference in the world, and did. José! Born to Dance will inspire picture book readers to follow their hearts and live their dreams..
Price: $6.71 [Notify me when price goes down.]