Expanded Choreographies--Choreographic Histories: Trans-Historical Perspectives Beyond Dance and Human Bodies in Motion

From objects to sounds, choreography is expanding beyond dance and human bodies in motion. This book offers one of the rare systematic investigations of expanded choreography as it develops in contemporaneity, and is the first to consider expanded choreography from a trans-historical perspective. Through case studies on different periods of European dance history - ranging from Renaissance dance to William Forsythe’s choreographic objects and from Baroque court ballets to digital choreographies - it traces a journey of choreography as a practice transcending its sole association with dancing, moving, human bodies.

Anna Leon is a dance historian and theorist based in Vienna. She is theory curator at Tanzquartier Wien and postdoctoral fellow at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, where she researches peripheralised dance modernities through a focus on ballet in early 20th century Greece. She holds a BSc from the University of Bristol, an MA from Paris I Panthéon-Sorbonne University and a PhD from the University of Salzburg. Her first book, Expanded Choreographies - Choreographic Histories. Trans-Historical Perspectives Beyond Dance and Human Bodies in Motion was published in 2022 by transcript. She is curatorially engaged in the ongoing projects Radio (non-)conference with Netta Weiser and Choreography+ with Johanna Hilari. She has taught at the Universities of Vienna, Salzburg and Bern as well as SEAD (Salzburg Experimental Academy of Dance) and the Institut Français. She occasionally collaborates, as a dramaturg or historiographic adviser, with choreographers including Julia Schwarzbach, Florentina Holzinger and Netta Weiser.