A Choreographer's Handbook

Jonathan Burrows

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2010
• ISBN:
  9781136974571
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Performing Arts

On choreography: "Choreography is a negotiation with the patterns your body is thinking"

On rules: "Try breaking the rules on a need to break the rules basis"

A Choreographer's Handbook invites the reader to investigate how and why to make a dance performance. In an inspiring and unusually empowering sequence of stories, ideas and paradoxes, internationally renowned dancer, choreographer and teacher Jonathan Burrows explains how it's possible to navigate a course through this complex process.

It is a stunning reflection on a personal practice and professional journey, and draws upon five years' of workshop discussions, led by Burrows.

Burrows' open and honest prose gives the reader access to a range of exercises, meditations, principles and ideas on choreography that allow artists and dance-makers to find their own aesthetic process.

It is a book for anyone interested in making performance, at whatever level and in whichever style.

Index

abstract dance, 135–137

accepting what comes easily, 6, 44, 61, 114

administrating the work, 56, 173–175, 178–179

Aggiss, Liz (choreographer), 116, 168, 193

Agon (George Balanchine), 70

artists:

dramaturgy supporting, 47;

longevity, 174–175;

and networking, 173–175;

as people who subvert, 64;

see also dancers

Astaire, Fred, Steps in Time, 35

atmosphere, 180, 183

audience, 9, 31, 44, 47, 48, 64, 91, 95, 96, 108, 123, 143, 159–167, 161, 177, 196, 203;

and abstract dance, 135, 137;

and beginnings, 79, 80;

and confrontation, 161;

contract with. See contract with audience;

and facing the front, 160, 161;

and failure, 163–164;

and human-scale, 203;

job of, 58, 108;

and marketing, 177;

and self-expression, 35;

and subject, 30, 32;

and text, 186, 187;

and title, 196;

and virtuosity, 68, 76

authenticity, 67

awkwardness, technique, 70

Bach, Johann Sebastian, 140

Balanchine, George (choreographer), 70

ballet, 110, 111, 112, 124, 194, 207

baroque churches, 159

Baudelaire, Charles (writer), On The Essence of Laughter, 162

Bausch, Pina (choreographer), 159, 175

beat, 125, 126, 127

Beckett, Samuel (writer), 9

beginnings, 3, 50, 79–80

Bel, Jerome (choreographer), 51, 71, 80, 104

Bhagavad Gita, The, 54

bodies, other, 99–101

boredom, 32, 55, 89, 107;

fear of being boring, 92

Both Sitting ...