Improvisation in Dance and the Movement of Everyday Life

Dance improvisation, as developed in the UK and the US in particular, has become associated with a number of tropes that apparently offer means of best practice. By attending to a few of these, I examine how they might offer insight into dance improvisation. This incorporates research into ways in which improvisation is a part of everyday life, as demonstrated most clearly in examples of infant movement and cognitive development. Taking Henry Montes and Marcus Coates’s dance film A Question of Movement as a case study example, I consider how their innovative way of dancing responses to life questions connects with the infant’s reliance on ‘thinking in movement’, a term offered by Maxine Sheets-Johnstone. Finally, I consider what dancers can learn from people living with chronic dementia-related diseases who forge ways to live in a perpetual present and, conversely, what insight dancers might offer through integration of dance improvisatory processes in caregiving.