This image is the cover for the book Simone Forti

Simone Forti

Simone Forti, groundbreaking improvisor, has spent a lifetime weaving together the movement of her mind with the movement of her body to create a unique oeuvre situated at the intersection of dancing and art practices. Her seminal Dance Constructions from the 1960s crafted a new approach to dance composition and helped inspire the investigations of Judson Dance Theater. In the 1970s, Forti's explorations of animal movements expanded that legacy to launch improvisation as a valuable artform in its own right. From her early forays into vocal accompaniment to her News Animations, Forti has long integrated gesture and text into compelling performances that consistently stretched the boundaries of dance to layer abstract movement with story-telling and political commentary. Her "Land Portraits" series brought an immersive ecological experience to New York City stages in the 1980s, and she is a beloved teacher and mentor whose Body, Mind, World workshops have inspired dancers around the world. In this beautifully written book, author Ann Cooper Albright braids archival research, extensive interviews, and detailed movement analyses of Forti's performances to provide the first kinesthetically-informed and critically-nuanced history of Forti's multifaceted and extensive career.


Publication of this book is funded by the Beatrice Fox Auerbach Foundation Fund at the Hartford Foundation for Public Giving.

Ann Cooper Albright

A dancer and scholar, Ann Cooper Albright is Professor of Dance at Oberlin College. She is the author of How to Land: finding ground in an unstable world which offers ways of thinking about and dealing with the uncertainty of our contemporary lives; Engaging Bodies: The Politics and Poetics of Corporeality; Modern Gestures: Abraham Walkowitz Draws Isadora Duncan Dancing; Traces of Light: Absence and Presence in the Work of Loïe Fuller; and Choreographing Difference the Body and Identity in Contemporary Dance. She is founder and director of Girls in Motion, an award-winning afterschool program at Langston Middle School and co-director of Accelerated Motion: Towards a New Dance Literacy, a digital collection of materials about dance. Albright is also a veteran practitioner of contact Improvisation, has taught workshops internationally, and facilitated Critical Mass: CI @ 50 which brought 300 dancers from across the world to learn, talk, and dance together in celebration of the 50th anniversary of this extraordinary form. The book Encounters with Contact Improvisation, is the product of one of her adventures in writing and dancing with others. Her work has been supported by the NEA, NEH, ACLS, The Guggenheim Foundation, and the Ohio Arts Council.

Wesleyan University Press