Image description: A stack of 6 paperback dance books in front of a white background. The spines are bright yellow, black, navy, and mauve in color.
Each year, this is one of my favorite lists to pull together for Life as a Modern Dancer readers. In addition, I am grateful to write book roundups for Dance Teacher throughout the year. I am an avid reader myself, and also want to get the word out there about these new books, each one a work of art itself.
With each link below, I made a good faith effort to list an independent bookstore or the publisher's website. Thanks for supporting local bookstores and your library whenever you can!
This list primarily highlights modern and contemporary dance, with a few other titles sprinkled in related to hip hop, ballet, and somatics. Please list other new titles in the Comments section below as well. Let's build a comprehensive list together.
Baring Unbearable Sensualities: Hip Hop Dance, Bodies, Race, and Power – by Rosemarie A. Roberts
Dance Education: A Redefinition – by Susan R. Koff
Dance Theatre of Harlem: A History, A Movement, A Celebration – by Judy Tyrus and Paul Novosel
Love Dances: Loss and Mourning in Intercultural Collaboration – by SanSan Kwan
Onstage with Martha Graham – by Stuart Hodes
Physical Listening: A dancer’s interspecies journey – by JoAnna Mendl Shaw
Shifting Cultural Power: Case Studies and Questions in Performance – by Hope Mohr
Swan Dive: The Making of a Rogue Ballerina – by Georgina Pazcoguin
I also want to spotlight Felicia Rose Chavez's book I read this year. While not directly about technique and composition per se, The Anti-Racist Writing Workshop: How to Decolonize the Creative Classroom is a highly relevant book for any dance educator in K-12 and higher ed settings who is doing equity work and reshaping their teaching practices towards anti-racist dance education, culturally relevant teaching, and critical dance pedagogy.
—–
Some from 2020 I missed for the original list:
Dance Teaching Methods and Curriculum Design 2nd Edition – by Gayle Kassing and Danielle Jay-Kirschenbaum
Tandem Dances: Choreographing Immersive Performance – by Julia M. Ritter
Articles I wrote in 2021 about books include:
Stock Up Your Shelf With These 6 New Books on Dance Education (Dance Teacher, February 22, 2021)
Summer Reading List: 6 New Titles for Dance Educators (Dance Teacher, July 28, 2021)a
Related posts:
New Dance Books in 2020
————–
Life as a Modern Dancer 
Leave a comment