The concept of this book is ‘dance and ageing’ and is driven by the possibility that everybody in the Western dance community, in particular young dance students, but also readers beyond the parameters of dance, will profit if the voices of senior professional practitioners are heard.



It features dancers from USA, Canada, UK, Europe and Australia, all interviewees are practitioners of stature and prominence who continue to contribute, despite ageism, to the dance industry. They are inspiring role models for younger dancers but also for an ageing demographic in society; it is a celebration of the body and the indomitable urge to create and express.

Conversations with twenty senior professional dancers explore how they sustain performing despite the inground ageism that exists through society and is mirrored within the dance world. This cohort of older dancers, aged between 41 and 107, illuminate inspiring life stories that convey their passion to continue performing, while overcoming the prejudices in an artform that champions youth.



Dance practitioners remaining active and relevant throughout the life stages is an area of growing interest, particularly in community dance, health and wellbeing. This would inspire all dancers to follow in their footsteps, to believe that diversity and inclusion would widen the boundaries within Western dance culture and eradicate bias. Further interest from an older demographic who enjoy watching dance or dance themselves, who would appreciate their representation in a book that reveals the positive attributes ageing can bring. It also has the potential to reach an anti-ageing reader as well as a dance reader. The book has a broad appeal not just within Western dance culture but also where ageing/ageism is a prominent concern within Western society.

This book expands on theories of "theatricality" in French and critical studies, adopting a transdisciplinary approach that reaches beyond performance studies into poetry, media technology, translation, and psychoanalytic theory.



Building on Artaud’s concept of theatre as a "plague"—an unpredictable, cataclysmic, and contagious force that disrupts power structures and knowledge—the book challenges Aristotelian norms of theatre as a medium of "healing" and "teaching." Instead, theatricality emerges as a force of radical disruption, what Artaud called "the return of the repressed," demanding openness to otherness.



The chapters present theatricality as primarily aural rather than visual, inciting "paranoiac listening," invoking unretrievable "primal scenes," and allowing unconscious "psychic" contamination. "Theatricality" is explored through works by Artaud, Genet, Novarina, and Koltès, but also Freud, Barthes, Kristeva, Girard, and Derrida. Each writer challenges the premises of their own artistic genres and fields of study, questioning binary systems like artistic production versus theoretical articulation, the technological versus the natural, and art versus life.



As shown, these binaries underpin mechanisms of repression, sacrificial violence, and the exclusion of the voiceless other. The book assigns a generative function to traditionally maligned notions like unintelligibility, madness, marginality, contagion, and criminality.

A review of dance education research methodologies with examples and exemplars from the field and an important resource for dance students, professionals, and advocates.



The editors recognized the need for a book of this type – one that would not only provide examples of a variety of dance education research projects, but also present a broad look at methodologies. In addition, the book would not only focus on Dance Education research in the U.S, but more broadly with examples of dance research from several different countries. The curated book includes the voices of both seasoned professionals and newer scholars in the field, with examples of dance research from a number of different countries. The contributions represent several countries including Korea, South Africa, United States of America, Jamaica, India, United Kingdom, Brazil, and Slovenia, underscore the global relevance and significance of research in dance education.

This book is divided into 5 parts. The first part focuses on dance education research and methodologies and is divided into three sections. With an introduction by Jill Green, the chapters that follow provide an overview of research types including the more traditional, qualitative, quantitative and mixed, and other methods such as portraiture and a/r/tography.



Part II, introduced by Lynnette Young Overby, includes examples of dance education research that incorporate qualitative, quantitative, and/or mixed methods. Three sections covering dance education research applications in the areas of history and culture, dance teaching and choreography, and community based research follow.



Part III of the Handbook of Dance Education Research provides insight into dance education that takes place in several countries. This part is introduced by Peter Cook, Associate Deputy Chancellor, Southern Cross University, Australia. The collection of chapters within this part of the Handbook of Dance Education Research provides snapshots of research practices from contrasting international areas, and with a variety of approaches and paradigms.



The final Part IV includes chapters focused on Social Justice dance education practice and research. This part is introduced by Alfdaniel Mivule Basibye Mabingo, Makerere University, Uganda. These chapters push the boundaries of dance education research to promote meaning and social change. They provide substantive examples of the impact dance education research can have in response to social and cultural issues.



This book will be a key resource for university students, professors, practitioners and policy makers in organizations and in school systems. It will inspire future dance education researchers to conduct research that is collaborative, impactful, inclusive and diverse– research that will solidify the place of dance as an integral part of each person’s education.

A collection of performance texts ranging from orthodox plays to group-devised texts. The book traces from most recent to earliest Schechner's work as a "writer" and a "wrighter" -- the author of plays and the conceptualizer and leader of teams of artists. The book includes several never before published early texts as well as updated versions of well-known productions such as "Dionysus in 69," "YokastaS," "Makbeth," and "Imagining O." The earliest texts are from the 1950s the most recent from 2014.

This book brings together for the first time Richard’s original plays and adaptations: YokastaS Redux, Dionysus 69, Commune, Oresteia, Prometheus Project, Makbeth, Richard’s Leer, Imagining O, Faust/gastronome, Blessing of the Fleet, Briseis and the Sergeant, Lot's Daughters, and The Last Day of FK. The scripts engage with perennial canonic themes, such as Oedipus and Faust, and topical issues of our times. They embody Richard’s world-famous performance approach. The introduction sets the scripts in intellectual and production context. The book complements Schechner’s other works, Performance Studies (now in its 3rd ed.), Performance Theory, The Grotowski Sourcebook, The Future of Ritual, and his new A New Third World of Performance.

BODIES IN FLIGHT make performance where flesh utters and words move, challenging and re-energizing the relationship between audiences and performers, and audiences and place.



Emerging from rigorous interdisciplinary and collaborative methods, often with new technologies in cutting-edge venues, we insist on the buzz of ideas, on philosophy and poetry, using words and images, movement and stillness, voices and bodies, through which they aim to move audiences emotionally and spiritually. Organized in a highly visual design, this volume is both a history and a workbook with selections of scripts and archival material from 30 years of making devised theatre and performance in the UK and internationally, plus texts by collaborators, arts professionals and scholars exploring the company’s collaborative working method, contextualizing it in the wider performance ecology and culture.



Intended as an inspiration to emerging artists, the volume covers key questions for any maker of contemporary performance: the relationship of choreography and spoken word, the use of new technologies and multi-media, the role of original music and soundscapes, the differences between work presented in a theatre or gallery or sited in non-theatrical places, the persistence of theatre as an art-form in an increasingly digital culture.

In this interview with art historian Maria Elena Buszek, American photographer Kate Simon (b. 1953) discusses her work as a photojournalist documenting the nascent punk and reggae scenes of the 1970s. Simon shares the ‘punky-reggae’, art and literary connections in her long and storied career, and her perspectives on the gender politics that met the growing numbers of women photojournalists and writers who came out of the 1970s music scene.

In this interview with Los Angeles performance artist Johanna Went, the artist talks with art historian Maria Elena Buszek about her path towards both performance art and the punk scene in the 1970s. They discuss the genesis of Went’s often gruesome, largely improvisational performances and lovingly crafted, sculptural costumes that were exhibited in the 2020 exhibition Passion Container at LA gallery The Box, feminist politics and what Went calls the ‘bloodlines’ of the LA punk scene.

This study explored the impact of a fifteen-week course in modern band practice on developing music teachers’ identities as creative music-makers. Modern band is a growing area of the research literature in music education. Composition, improvisation and popular music-making experiences constitute current band activity. The creative identity measure (CIM-measure) evaluates self-perceptions of abilities in these areas. The measure has been used and adopted in various research studies over the past decade. For this study, twelve pre-service music teachers enrolled in the course ‘Creative Performance Chamber Ensemble I’ at School of Music, University of South Florida, USA were assessed on their perceptions of their abilities associated with various creative musical activities. The CIM-in music was used as a pre-and post-assessment of modern band experiences at the beginning and the end of the fifteen-week class. There were significant positive changes between the pre- and post-assessments. Open-ended response items were also collected. Findings suggest that pre-service music teachers increased their confidence levels associated with their abilities to compose, improvise, be involved in ‘new’ music ensembles, and be involved with popular music ensembles as a result of taking this course. They are more likely to plan on teaching their students to do these musical activities in the future as a result of these experiences.

The goal of this research is to determine what activities young actors in the punk scene view as forms of politicality that they either practise themselves or see among other actors in the punk scene in Zagreb. This research focuses on young people because of the marginalized position older people have put them in. Likewise, the attitudes of young people towards politics are sometimes seen as ‘apolitical’, describing mistrust towards politicians or dislike of political parties. Regardless of these (un)conscious barriers that are often placed before young people, we can see their different reactions: from accepting the political disinterest others expect of them to resisting their imposed marginal social status. Accordingly, we were interested in often unrecognized, alternative forms of politicality among young people. We focus on punk as an example of a subculture that revives political activity among young people. Analysing the collected data, we obtained descriptions of 39 practices, activities and political ideas – organized into seven categories – through which participants described their politicality or the politicality of that of other actors in the punk scene in Zagreb. This article will introduce the results of ethnographic research, during which 28 interviews were conducted with participants between 20 and 36 years of age. The field part of this research was conducted in fifteen months.

Review of: If Colors Could Be Heard: Narratives About Racial Identity in Music Education, C. Cayari, J. D. Thompson and R. S. Rajan (eds) (2025)

Bristol: Intellect, 288 pp.,

ISBN 978-1-83595-167-5, h/bk, $124.95

This article addresses the concept of performance opera by artist duo VestAndPage, aiming to investigate how the corporeal and sonic can generate space–time alternatives through unconventional modes of performance-making. They describe performance operas as collaborative, site-specific works that are unrepeatable. To produce them, VestAndPage organized experiential co-creation artist-in-residences to encourage community-building among the performers they invite to collaborate on an opera. During production, body-based performance actions and the sounds of various elements (from everyday noises to sophisticated electronic experimentation) allow aesthetic pitfalls and ruptures to emerge, shaping a performance opera’s immediate experience and contributing to reshaping what might otherwise be considered ‘normal’ reality.

The goal of this article is to provide an account of the difficulty, in the present, of reconstructing a punk event that took place 40 years ago. I will use this undertaking as the basis for reflecting on the larger conceptual stakes (ideas and concepts) that are illustrated by this specific event from the past, the Brockwell Park Festival, London. I played bass at this event in Strawberry Switchblade, a female-led cult post-punk band. A cold case is used here as a metaphor for this reconstruction; the larger conceptual stakes are the ‘mystery’ to be investigated. This in turn enables me to frame my account of that day from the past in terms of how it functions within punk and post-punk culture and scholarship. There was a lot of fun, energy and some ‘aggro’ (i.e. violent or threatening behaviour) at this event. I present an autoethnography, reviews from the time and various first-hand accounts of this particularly tense punk and post-punk event, i.e. my cold case, so that I can examine the significance and the importance of returning to the past and unpicking the memories and myths of subcultural experience. This is followed by a discussion of the larger conceptual stakes: memory, subcultural memory and myth; ‘tribes’; discomfort and uncertainty.

Contextualizing the process behind the making of Jess Dobkin's Wetrospective as a dramaturgy of “curating in the continuous present,” exhibition curator Emelie Chhangur discusses the innovations and stagings of this project as both a performative exhibition and an exhibition that performed the work of the artist. The paper includes curatorial texts, an exhibition walkthrough and a personal account of the almost 4 year journey, what the writer also refers as a durational 1:1 performance with the artist, Jess Dobkin.

In contributing to the audio descriptions for Jess Dobkin's Wetrospective, I approached each artwork with a deep sense of intimacy and creative exploration. Rather than adhering strictly to visual accuracy, I chose to interpret and describe the pieces through the impressions they left on me—emphasizing mood, emotion, and the sensory experience of encountering the works. Inspired by creative writing and poetic practices, this experimental approach allowed me to provide affect-based, intuitive narrations that invite listeners to engage with the artwork on a deeper, more personal level.

This essay examines a drawing by performance artist Jess Dobkin. Created for her 2021 Wetrospective at the Art Gallery of York University, the drawing depicts a female-body-shaped Venn Diagram that contains all the names of the people, artists, places, and groups that Jess has collaborated with in her art practice since 1991. The drawing has a notable crossover of two circles that form a bright pink, pointy-ended oval. This is the vaginal portal of the “Venn woman” at the center of the drawing. Through an analysis of this drawing, this essay considers the nature of collaboration and community-building in both art-making practices, and in life.

The entrance lobby of Jess Dobkin's Wetrospective is riddled with clues to the magical and performative world on the other side. This essay discusses these clues in an attempt to exploring the hospitality and generosity of the artist's practice.

Ah, the pink reminds me of my first favourite colour. Soft and bright as I got excited to meet Jess, an extraterrestrial from the space. Shiny suit as the whimsical energy radiated from the alien. We made a deal, we are going to have a fun party in the archive room with floating objects.

This chapter reflects on the author's relationship to Jess Dobkin and Jess Dobkin's work