Explore dance outside the theater with the world's most innovative choreographers

"Kloetzel and Pavlik have created a valuable resource, documenting a wide range of site-specific dance events through a combination of interviews, practitioners' accounts, and stunning images. This volume raises useful questions about the politics of art's interventions into the public realm and gives insight into the pragmatic challenges of making site dance."--Fiona Wilkie, Roehampton University

In recent years, site-specific dance has grown in popularity. In the wake of groundbreaking work by choreographers who left traditional performance spaces for other venues, more and more performances are cropping up on skyscrapers, in alleyways, on trains, on the decks of aircraft carriers, and in a myriad of other unexpected locations worldwide.
In Site Dance, the first anthology to examine site-specific dance, editors Melanie Kloetzel and Carolyn Pavlik explore the work that choreographers create for nontraditional performance spaces and the thinking behind their creative choices. Combining interviews with and essays by some of the most prominent and influential practitioners of site dance, they look at the challenges and rewards of embracing alternative spaces.
The close examinations of the work of artists like Meredith Monk, Joanna Haigood, Stephan Koplowitz, Heidi Duckler, Ann Carlson, and Eiko Otake provide important insights into why choreographers leave the theatre to embrace the challenges of unconventional venues.
Site Dance also includes more than 80 photographs of site-specific performances, revealing how the arts, and movement in particular, can become part of and speak to our everyday lives. Celebrating the often unexpected beauty and juxtapositions created by site dance, the book is essential reading for anyone curious about the way that these choreographers are changing our experience of the world one step at a time.

Melanie Kloetzel is associate professor of dance at the University of Calgary. Carolyn Pavlik is associate professor of dance at Western Michigan University. Both have performed, choreographed, and filmed site dances throughout North America.

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"The first anthology ever to examine site-specific dance performance." "Seeks to raise awareness about the lack of support for this 40-year-old dance genre and push it into the realm of serious art." "Will enjoy seeing the dances come to life through more than 80 black-and-white photographs."
--Dance Teacher

"Even to those unfamiliar with the performance art world, Site Dance does not fall short as an intellectually engaging read. It goes beyond the technicalities and complexities of site dance to remind us to appreciate and be alert to the magic in what surrounds us. Regardless of the context, the reader can glean from Site Dance a new motivation to remember, revitalize, and rethink how we perceive and imagine this time and space we occupy."
--Public Art Review

"Wonderful photographs support the writing and enhance the volume, making it a valuable resource for visual artists as well as dancers."
--Choice Magazine, Vol. 47, No. 11

"Even to those unfamiliar with the performance art world, Site Dance does not fall short as an intellectually engaging read. It goes beyond the technicalities and complexities of site dance to remind us to appreciate and be alert to the magic in what surrounds us. Regardless of the context, the reader can glean from Site Dance a new motivation to remember, revitalize, and rethink how we perceive and imagine this time and space we occupy."
--Dance Chronicle, Vol. 35, No. 1