An innovative exploration of understanding through dance, Dancing across the Page draws on the frameworks of phenomenology, feminism, and postmodernism to offer readers an understanding of performance studies that is grounded in personal narrative and lived experience. Through accounts of contemporary dance making, improvisation, and dance education, Karen Barbour explores a diversity of themes, including power; activism; and cultural, gendered, and personal identity. An intimate yet rigorous investigation of creativity in dance, Dancing across the Page emphasizes embodied knowledge and imagination as a basis for creative action in the world.

Karen Barbour is a senior lecturer in the Faculty of Education at the University of Waikato in New Zealand. She is a member of the World Dance Alliance and the Congress on Research in Dance.

List of Photographs and Figures
Mihi
Acknowledgements

Chapter 1: Being: Introductions
Chapter 2: Becoming: Feminist Choreography and Dance Research
Chapter 3: Dancing Across the Page: Representing Research Through Narrative
Reflexivity
Chapter 4: Dreaming Yourself Anew: Choreographic Strategies in Women’s Solo Contemporary Dance
Chapter 5: Knowing Differently, Living Creatively: Embodied Ways of Knowing
Chapter 6: Standing Strong: Pedagogical Approaches to Affirming Identity
Chapter 7: Improvising: Dance and Everyday Life
Chapter 8: Performing Identity: Tattoos, Dreadlocks and Feminism in Everyday Life
Chapter 9: Imaginings: Reaching for a Vision

References