Ann Cooper Albright - Böcker

How to Land: Finding Ground in an Unstable World presents a new look at embodiment that treats gravity as the organizing force for thinking and moving through our twenty-first century world. Author Ann Cooper Albright argues that a renewed attention to gravity as both a metaphoric sensibility and a physical experience can help transform moments of personal disorientation into an opportunity to reflect on the important relationship between individual resiliency and communal responsibility. Long one of the nation's preeminent thinkers in dance improvisation, Albright asks how dancers are affected by repeated images of falling bodies, bombed-out buildings, and displaced peoples, as well as recurring evocations of global economies and governments in discursive free fall or dissolution. What kind of fear gets lodged in connective tissue when there is an underlying anxiety that certain aspects of our world are in danger of falling apart? To answer this question, she draws on analyses of perception from cognitive studies, tracing the discussions of meaning, body and language through the work of Mark Johnson, Thomas Csordas, and George Lakoff, among others. In addition, she follows the past decade of debate in contemporary media concerning the implications of the weightless and two-dimensional social media exchanges on structures of attention and learning, as well as their effect on the personal growth and socialization of a generation of young adults. Each chapter interweaves discussions of movement actions with their cultural implications, documenting specific bodily experiences and then tracing their ideological ripples out through the world.

How to Land: Finding Ground in an Unstable World presents a new look at embodiment that treats gravity as the organizing force for thinking and moving through our twenty-first century world. Author Ann Cooper Albright argues that a renewed attention to gravity as both a metaphoric sensibility and a physical experience can help transform moments of personal disorientation into an opportunity to reflect on the important relationship between individual resiliency and communal responsibility. Long one of the nation's preeminent thinkers in dance improvisation, Albright asks how dancers are affected by repeated images of falling bodies, bombed-out buildings, and displaced peoples, as well as recurring evocations of global economies and governments in discursive free fall or dissolution. What kind of fear gets lodged in connective tissue when there is an underlying anxiety that certain aspects of our world are in danger of falling apart? To answer this question, she draws on analyses of perception from cognitive studies, tracing the discussions of meaning, body and language through the work of Mark Johnson, Thomas Csordas, and George Lakoff, among others. In addition, she follows the past decade of debate in contemporary media concerning the implications of the weightless and two-dimensional social media exchanges on structures of attention and learning, as well as their effect on the personal growth and socialization of a generation of young adults. Each chapter interweaves discussions of movement actions with their cultural implications, documenting specific bodily experiences and then tracing their ideological ripples out through the world.

Resistance and Support: Contact Improvisation @ 50 is a ground-breaking anthology that collects twenty original writings that elucidate critically important somatic and political perspectives on Contact Improvisation (CI). This form of partner dancing that was started in the United States in 1972, has spread into a vibrant global community in the twenty-first century. Resistance and Support is edited and includes an introduction by veteran CI practitioner and dance studies scholar Ann Cooper Albright. For much of its existence in the twentieth century, Contact Improvisation prided itself on its democratic and egalitarian roots. Jams are open to newcomers, women learned to lift men, and dancing roles were not conventionally gendered in the traditional sense of partnered dancing such as tango or ballroom. These conventions meant that questions of social power were often ignored within the jams and festivals where Contact Improvisation thrives. This thoughtful collection engages issues of inclusion and access through insightful essays written by people whose life experiences are shaped by this extraordinary form of kinaesthetic communication. Chapters trace the stories of CI in China and Taiwan, India, Mexico, Brazil, as well as those in the U.S., Canada, and Europe. Some discuss the somatic training that provides a movement basis for the improvisational exchanges between dancers. Others foreground the feminist and queer perspectives on the evolving twenty-first century practice of the form. Several elaborate on the healing, spiritual, or therapeutic aspects of CI, while others explore the mixed ability approaches to the form popularized by Alito Alessi's Dance Ability pedagogy. Like Critical Mass: CI @ 50, the international conference and festival honoring CI's 50th anniversary from which these writings emerged, these essays both celebrate the expansive possibilities and critique some of the exclusionary conventions of this ever-evolving form of communal dance.

New in paperback edition of the first critical biography of this visionary artist written by a dance scholar.Simone Forti, groundbreaking improvisor, has spent a lifetime weaving together the movement of her mind with the movement of her body to create a unique oeuvre situated at the intersection of dancing and art practices. Her seminal Dance Constructions from the 1960s crafted a new approach to dance composition and helped inspire the investigations of Judson Dance Theater. In the 1970s, Forti's explorations of animal movements expanded that legacy to launch improvisation as a valuable artform in its own right. From her early forays into vocal accompaniment to her News Animations, Forti has long integrated gesture and text into compelling performances that consistently stretched the boundaries of dance to layer abstract movement with story-telling and political commentary. Her "Land Portraits" series brought an immersive ecological experience to New York City stages in the 1980s, and she is a beloved teacher and mentor whose Body, Mind, World workshops have inspired dancers around the world. In this beautifully written book, author Ann Cooper Albright braids archival research, extensive interviews, and detailed movement analyses of Forti's performances to provide the first kinesthetically-informed and critically-nuanced history of Forti's multifaceted and extensive career.