Description

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An interdisciplinary analysis of how performance-generating systems attract patterns of movement and why that affects dramaturgical agency, cognitive learning, and relational change.

Performance-generating systems are systematic and task-based dramaturgy that generate performance for or with an audience. In dance, such systems differ in ways that matter from more closed choreographed scores and more open forms of structured improvisation. Dancers performing within these systems draw on predefined and limited sources while working on specific tasks within constraining rules. The generating components of the systems provide boundaries that enable the performance to self-organize into iteratively shifting patterns instead of becoming repetitive or chaotic. 

This book identifies the generating components and dynamics of these works and the kinds of dramaturgical agency they enable. It explains how the systems of these creations affect the perception, cognition, and learning of dancers and why that is a central part of how they work. It also examines how the combined dramaturgical and psychological effects of the systems performatively address individual and social conditions of trauma that otherwise tend to remain unchangeable and negatively impact the human capacity to learn, relate, and adapt. The book provides analytical frameworks and practical insights for those who wish to study or apply performance-generating systems in dance within the fields of choreography and dance dramaturgy, dance education, community dance, or dance psychology.

About the Author

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Pil Hansen is associate professor of the performing arts at the University of Calgary in Canada, president of Performance Studies International, and a general editor of the Expanded Dramaturgy book series.

Praise For…

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"Going beyond the typical theoretical constructs of choreography and improvisation, Pil Hansen’s book indulges in the inventive components of creating dance productions utilizing performance generating systems. What could be overly abstract is grounded in concrete definitions that guide the reader toward an understanding of the included theories and possible applications. . . .This text is well suited for a graduate-level dance studies seminar involving practical application of creation methods. . . .In addition to graduate study, Hansen’s book is a wonderful source of thoughtful queries, ideas, and experiential knowledge that would benefit any dance educator guiding students in maintaining and deepening curiosity and explorative actions."
 
— Heather Trommer-Beardslee