Not Just Any Body

"This book documents a profession at the verge of a new millennium, querying its own standards and methods, evaluating the risks of change. The voices are, in the main, not those of critics and historians, but of dance practitioners-those in the thick of it. And the dancers who speak so eloquently on these pages testify to the integration of 'the body' - their bodies - with whatever else makes up a dancing-thinking-feeling person." Deborah Jowitt, The Village Voice, New York.

"In years to come, the Not Just Any Body satellite-linked international conference co-convened by the National Ballet School will be looked upon as a turning-point in the attitudes toward dance training." The Toronto Star.

April 2001...The book Not Just Any Body: Advancing Health, Well-being and Excellence in Dance and Dancers includes reflections from 183 contributors from around the world who are active in dance today, providing a stimulating primer of the issues facing the dance world. Not Just Any Body began in 1999 as an historic conference satellite-linked between Toronto and The Hague. Some 850 presenters and delegates from 20 countries participated in the two sites hosted by Canada's National Ballet School and the Holland Dance Festival, while hundreds more joined in via satellite in North America and Europe. The book preserves and extends that historic event which was sponsored by the Theater Instituut Nederland, the Holland Dance Festival, the Dutch Health Care Foundation for Dancers and Canada's National Ballet School.

Featured in the book are ballet dancer Sorella Englund (Denmark) openly describing her lifelong struggles with anorexia; choreographer Jiri Kylian (The Netherlands) exploring the challenge of choreographing dancers to dance with integrity; Jungian analyst Marion Woodman (Canada) discussing her work on dancers' addiction to perfection; Eileen Wanke (Germany) describing the challenge of fitness for professional dancers; Suzie Jary (USA) explaining her Dancers in Transition program in response to the time-limited nature of dance; and dancer Karen Kain (Canada) describing the rituals of preparing to dance.

Chapters include:
• The Dancer's Career (with a focus on the dancer as student, gender, a life in dance and dancers in transition)
• The Dancer as Athlete (with a focus on the crossover between sports and dance)
• Safety in Dance (with a focus on dance companies and successful implementation of prevention and limits to responsibilities)
  choreography and dancing (with a focus on encouraging and developing choreographers, and physical and intellectual preparation for performance)
• The Dance of Perfection (with a focus on healthy dancers, body politics and the dancer as mystic)
• Writing About Dance; and an Afterword by Deborah Jowitt.

For more information about the conference, please visit Not Just Any Body.