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Dance and Silence
In Conversation
Dance and Silence
In Conversation
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Description
The age of humans has gotten increasingly loud in terms of literal sound and environmental impact. Recognising silence as a disappearing ontological value, there is grief around our loss, but there is also a greater desire for opportunities to experience silence in its various diverse forms.
This book explores the critical dynamics of silence within choreography, performance and composition, comprising a series of conversations with researchers and practitioners, including choreographer Rosemary Lee, architect Richard Dougherty, architectural historian Pérez-Gómez, Natural Horn player Isaac Shieh, neuroscientist Tony Steffert and drummer and aerialist Jonny Leitch.
These conversations:
- question what has been silenced through the immobilisation of our bodies through movement-saving technologies;
- discover points of convergence through silence in seemingly separate and unrelated physical, conceptual and philosophical spaces;
- examine neglected intelligence and marginalised ways of knowing of gesture and movement
Ultimately, we come to see how dance, embodied modes of inquiry and corporeal-based understandings within socio-cultural and ecological contexts can propose pathways in the absence of sound.
Table of Contents
CURATORIAL INTRODUCTION TO THE INTERSTITIAL PAGES
PREAMBLE
FIRST MOVEMENT
COMING BACK: GEOMETRY AND DANCE – (with Alberto Pérez-Gómez, McGill University, Canada)
Second Movement
Meandering through the gestural shapes of music: Hands and Sound (with Isaac Shieh, Royal Academy of Music, London, UK)
Third Movement
Moving language and territory through signing: Hands and Corporeal Hearing (with co-author Louisa Petts, London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art, and Richard Dougherty, Gallaudet University, Washington DC, USA)
Intermission
Reflections on Outside of Speech
Fourth Movement
How the human body occupies (with Jonny Leitch, Head Over Wheels Aeriel Company, UK)
Fifth Movement
The baseline or 'you try and get some rest' (with Tony Steffert, UK)
Sixth Movement: Recapitulation
Silence as a Landing Place (with Rosemary Lee, Centre for Dance Research, Coventry University, UK)
Concluding Remarks
Contributor Bios
Product details

Published | Jan 22 2026 |
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Format | Hardback |
Edition | 1st |
Extent | 176 |
ISBN | 9781350472082 |
Imprint | Bloomsbury Academic |
Dimensions | 8 x 5 inches |
Series | Dance in Dialogue |
Publisher | Bloomsbury Publishing |
About the contributors
Reviews
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As a study in humble, open, interdisciplinary exploration, this is a sensitive and artful text that aligns content and form to weave together issues of mythic resonance, marginalisation, mapping and art-making. It will appeal especially to dance and music scholars and to those within cultural studies more generally. The form of the text hovers and settles in the reader's understanding; it captures the central themes in its shape. The Minotaur, the authors' trope, acts as the very thread of which we are reminded, taking us in and amongst meanings. The interspersed 'Movement Snacks' invite not only an 'entering into' that renders the reading of the book something akin to an event or happening, they also let the reader consider Leith's Radical Rest from an embodied perspective. This book is timely and expansive, not shying away from thinking related to technology and the body, whilst unabashedly lamenting and politicising the undervaluing of the latter.
Georgie Cockburn, Centre for Dance Research and Community Dance Artist, UK