The Place of Dance

"This title explores four movement themes: moving, making, collaborating, and living. ... Olsen provides useful ideas, structure, and support for those interested in movement exploration."—Barbara Kundanis, Library Journal

"This book provides contemporary dance makers with a guide for developing personal creative process. Well-chosen black-and-white photos and illustrations support the text."—S.E. Friedler, Choice

"Olsen finds her fresh edge with a holistic vision with which to dance, make dances and move through life."—Desirée Dunbar, Dance International Magazine

"This title explores four movement themes: moving, making, collaborating, and living. Olsen provides useful ideas, structure, and support for those interested in movement exploration."—Barbara Kundanis, Library Journal

"This latest book offers dancers a way to explore their craft at a deeper level in a 31-day somatic guide. For every day, Olsen presents section prompts that push readers to do, to dance, to speak and to present—but also to write. She encourages them to explore a different discipline by placing the dance stories of their lives on paper, and suggests a number of angles from which to do so. Olsen's book could be instructive to women's memoirists as well. She employs global visual images, stories, and practices. Olsen's style serves as an example of how to bring creativity to memoir, even though Olsen herself may not term her book a memoir."—Lanie Tankard, Women's Memoirs

"The Place of Dance is a timely reminder of how available, delicious and essential movement is, for all of us. Andrea Olsen prompts us to go ahead, imagine, and do: sink to the floor, lean back and look at the ceiling, and enjoy the unexpected choreographic moment. This book is for our dancing selves, our collaborative selves, our entrepreneurial selves, and it offers strategies and inspiration to find—and keep—dancing in our lives."—Bebe Miller, choreographer and artistic director, Bebe Miller Company, and professor of dance, Ohio State University

"The Place of Dance is a gift to the world of dance and to the world at large. Anyone who has seen or been involved in a dance of any kind must read this book. It opens doors to the lovely visceral mystery of the art form. It will likely become a teacher's guide as well. Andrea Olsen has created a literate reflective surface from which to envision the body in motion.""—David Dorfman, dance department chair, Connecticut College, and artistic director, David Dorfman Dance

"The authors are visionaries, weaving environmental, evolutionary, and biological science into dance practice in terms that dancers use in their everyday studio work. Embodiment is key, for it is through embodiment that we learn to feel our environment and value our interrelatedness. The Place of Dance shows how to build a sustainable creative practice that includes the whole dancer through an interconnected modeling of the physical.""—Melinda Buckwalter, author of Composing While Dancing: An Improviser's Companion

"The Place of Dance is a timely reminder of how available, delicious and essential movement is, for all of us. Andrea Olsen prompts us to go ahead, imagine, and do: sink to the floor, lean back and look at the ceiling, and enjoy the unexpected choreographic moment. This book is for our dancing selves, our collaborative selves, our entrepreneurial selves, and it offers strategies and inspiration to find—and keep—dancing in our lives."—Bebe Miller, choreographer and artistic director, Bebe Miller Company, and professor of dance, Ohio State University