Description

In this sparkling, innovative, fully-illustrated work, world-renowned choreographer Annie-B Parson translates the components of dance-time, proximity, space, motion and tone- into text. As we follow Parson through her days-at home, reading, and on her walks down the street-and in and out of conversations on everything from Homer’s Odyssey to feminist art to social protest, she helps us see how everyday movement creates the wider world. Dance, it turns out, is everything and everywhere.

With the insight and verve of a soloist, Parson shows us how art-making is a part of our everyday lives and our political life as we move, together and apart, through space.

Publisher Review

A gorgeous meditation on dance, visual art, and literature, as well as living, loving, and mourning. Parsons brings to the page the starling quality of her introspective, astounding, and lyrical stage work, urging us to look more closely at those small and large moments that steer us through the dance of life. -- Edwidge Danticat, author of Create Dangerously "Bodies in space". I have heard Annie-B use this phrase dozens of times. It occurs to me this phrase refers to choreography and dance, but is also a transposable life philosophy...Of all the ways to move a body in space, through space, Annie-B creates the stage to have the most beautiful and beguiling ones be seen. -- St. Vincent I'm a long time fan of Annie-B's work. I see in it the quotidian made extraordinary...the familiar made foreign. -- David Byrne Parson's path is one that continues to push the boundaries of dance -- Dan Meyer * Playbill * The choreographer who democratized dance. * Financial Times * In this quiet, minute and understatedly virtuosic text, Annie-B Parson walks us through the intricate dances of pedestrianism and domesticity. Gently but firmly pressing back against linear heroic narratives that have tended to efface the practices of women artists, she braids together strands of beauty, resistance and reverie, slyly pulling her readers into an exquisite, inclusive choreography of living. -- Barbara Browning, author of The Gift Traipsing from The Odyssey to Trisha Brown, Hilma af Klint to Anne Carson, Parson braids together ideas through words and illustrations as she touches on the connections between protest, ritual and spectacle, how the pandemic asked pedestrians to rechoreograph their relationship to other bodies in space, Zoom and Tik Tok as creative forms, and more. -- Courtnney Escoyne * Dance Magazine * Parson reframes banal encounters into beautiful, crystalline observations. -- Ava Wong Davies * Elephant * The Choreography of Everyday Life is many things: a pandemic diary, a discourse of Greek tragedy, and a tribute to Parson's many inspirations, from Trisha Brown to Hilma af Klint. Mostly though, it's a leisurely walk through a brilliant mind. This book weaves together personal and theoretical reflections with evocative images from famous works of art and Parson's own casual snapshots. The result will be oddly familiar to any follower of her company Big Dance Theater. It's a delightful clash of high art and low culture, sparklingly intelligent yet warmly conversational. -- Andy Boyd * The New Books Network * A thoughtful addition to a dance library collection. * Library Journal * Annie-B has choreographed for Davids (Bowie and Byrne), St. Vincent, Spike Lee, and Lorde, among others - giving movement to artists for whom movement is as essential to their work and melodies. Now, she's exploring how dance functions in everyday life, both in her own and on a societal level. In this illustrated work, Parson distills movement into text, exploring movement in feminist art to protests * Nylon *