Ethical Agility in Dance: Rethinking Technique in British Contemporary Dance boldly proposes a new ethics of embodied knowledge in contemporary dance technique training. Specifically focusing on dance education in the UK, the volume explores core ethical values of contemporary dance, drawing upon a wide spectrum of critical theory including post-colonial, feminist, intercultural and interdisciplinary perspectives. Ethical Agility in Dance Footnote ¹ is a timely publication acknowledging with urgency the current state of dance education, following the impact of funding cuts to the Higher Education arts sectors, the world health crisis, decolonial political activism, and the BLM movement. Amidst a backdrop of shifting global contexts in the “volatile” world of professional dance (1), the volume proposes innovative critical methodologies of dance ethics in direct alignment with dance Technique, to vigorously re-examine twenty-first century dance as a social, inclusive, and democratic process.

“Singularity-Collectivity” relations as described by way of introduction, are inherently fostered by dance education to develop the collective dance ethics. The volume explores new “ethical techniques” posing questions of how technique can be “redefined to enable the collaboration of skills and application of ideas required to face the ethical challenges of twenty first century dancing bodies.” (1). Rooted in Aristotelian classical philosophy of ethics significant to civic development, ethics here is debated in contemporary discourse drawing upon Spinoza (Reference Spinoza1677 [2018]), Deleuze (Reference Deleuze1990), Dewey (Reference Dewey1934), Levinas (Reference Levinas1985), Massumi (Reference Massumi2002), and Braidotti (Reference Braidotti2006; Reference Braidotti2013), among othersFootnote ². Evolving an experiential inter-corporeal ethics, the authors propose relational, collaborative, non-mechanistic alternative approaches for training. “Rather than defining how contemporary dance looks,” they argue that “an ethical imperative in dance today might define its contemporaneity.” (4). In response, the editors Noyale Colin, Catherine Seago and Kathryn Stamp, along with more than 40 contributors consisting of established scholars, educators and creative practitioners in the fields of performing arts, collectively explore “dance training as ethical embodied practice” (16).

The book’s overarching idea, as defined by its authors, is a conceptual framework able to support a multiplicity of perspectives. Ethical agility is a provocation and a proposal for new subjective kinesthetic operations of a dynamic, agile and ethically skilled dancer, one that is self-reflective, socially engaging, and critically thinking, a concept echoed by the book’s various contributors. Rather than suggest a set of “codification of principles” (1), the ethical agility is a prismatic concept of socio-corporeal sensibility and a constellation of ideas resisting any fixed meaning or predefined outcome. Complementing its multi-dimensional vision, the authors aim to contribute towards a holistic ethically conscious dance practice. Along with its varied applications as a generative discursive device, in the authors’ view, ethical agility as a key metaphor takes on dynamic scales interwoven throughout including - for example the universal “in and out” movement, “ambiguities of flux and flow” (16) of dance expression, or the social process “through which dancers attune” (15) to others.

Underpinning such diverse contexts is the idea of “critical concerns and embodied learning [which] is crucial to the development of ethical agility in dance training” (9). Ethical agility interrogates modalities of collaboration, attention, empathy, emergent learning processes, and self-reflective tools, which, from the authors’ perspectives, are paramount to developing a situated approach to ethics within dance technique training. These modalities of practices are broadly encompassed by the authors’ proposal of “relational techniques” (10), a term developed to expand the idea of dance techniques towards ethical concerns of dance practices. Crucial to the methodological framework of the book, the notion of “relational techniques” is developed by assessing the wide-ranging influences of somatic training on dance education (8), the experiential subjective engagements in recent epistemological and aesthetics discourses, and the philosophical implications of dance ethics as an inter-relational social practice located in the embodied knowledge paradigms (11)Footnote ³. It is through this hybrid socio-corporeal critical framework the authors propose a reassessment of the ethical imperatives of contemporary dance technique today, prioritizing the “creative and transformative processes of training.” (11).

Co-editor contributor Catherine Seago, persuasively argues for attentional methods in chapter 2.3, suggesting that “practicing physical agility together can help dancers develop an ethical agility” (129), whereby synchronized attentional practices encourages “values of connectedness for versatility creativity, growth and co-operation within and beyond dance skills”. (132). Crucially, the authors share concern for cohesion and continuity in dance training, for example, Seago goes on to explain the value of discovering through agile attentional practices the “interconnectedness” across “dance’s varied principles, styles and ideologies”. (129). Comparable to Seago’s research outcomes, co-editor Noyale Colin also highlights the necessity for continuity in training, a significant ethical concern throughout the book “due to the challenges that dancers are facing in navigating fragmented and heterogeneous knowledge in late capitalist society.” (12). As a result, the proposed relational techniques are instrumental to support the development of skills in awareness, adaptability, resilience, and consistency in the contemporary context of dance education.

Beyond the social, physical or reflective connotations, ethical agility is also a critical method to deconstruct cannons of virtuosity for alternative, inclusive decolonial processes in dance education. As proposed by co-editor contributor Noyale Colin, ethical agility is “to contrast to the association of technique with virtuosity” (4). For Colin, disrupting the vertical axes of virtuosity as a dominant power structure means that “cultural differences need to be considered when defining the value of virtuosity in dance” (15). Colin gives further leverage to her argument in examining diversity within all modes of inclusive dance, where understanding “difference” and “other” can support dancers to develop their “physical, creative and civic capabilities.” (10). A multitude of examples within the chapter discussions (2.2, 3.2, 3.3, 3.5, 3.7, 4.6) explore themes of equity, such as the ethical challenges of transferring improvisation of African-diasporic and Asian-diasporic and freestyle dance into “predominantly white institutional spaces […] steeped in European aesthetics”. (119). Or elsewhere, decolonization is explored as a “multiple means of contemporaneity – and that no one set is worthier than another.” (303), or that the term “Western contemporary dance” needs to become a culturally inclusive term rather than the “only arbiter of the contemporary.” (225). Ethical agility, so becomes a tool to dissect hierarchies within the hegemony of western aesthetics in dance, the main axes foregrounding many of the arguments for horizontal socio-cultural structures of dance education in this volume.

A multiplicity of modes of inquiry are elaborated in critical theory, dance research and artistic practice. The co-editor authors’ broad curatorial scope of the book is skillfully woven across four sections developed in logical progression from theory to practice, fostering discussions on “individuality and collectivity, rigor and creativity, virtuosity and inclusivity” (1). The Introduction and Concepts (Part I), sets the philosophical contextual tone for ethics in dance with collaborative, inclusive, accessible approaches, reiterating themes in the chapters to follow. Practices (Part II), expands further with examples of dance technique in decolonizing syllabus design, and alternative methods of pedagogy. Following on, Conversations (Part III), offers autobiographical encounters with artists sharing experiences of multi-cultural and interdisciplinary modes of performance exposing values of diversity in dance. Lastly, Manifestos (Part IV), explores pedagogies assembled as poetic narratives less ordinarily found in traditional scholarly prose, affording opportunity for creative process as valuable contribution to dance knowledge.

For the reader, Ethical Agility in Dance is an invitation to participate in a co-creative process to interpret the multiple ethical lenses at play. We are taken on a journey encouraged to explore this non-linear methodology as continuous or intersectional reading, prompted by suggestions within the introduction of the sections. The kaleidoscopic interweaving of multiple narratives deeply defines the richness of the very discursive nature of the text which makes for a challenging yet compelling, thought-provoking experience. For example, Chapter 1.1 (24) on dance training and ethics, may offer a critical lens for chapter 3.9 (256) conversations on community site-specific practices, or indeed chapter 3.2 (197) conversations of attentional practices correlating to the dancer’s agency (204). Furthermore, the authors suggest cross-referencing relational practices of dance ethics in chapter 1.1 (24) with collaborative attentional practices in chapter 2.3 (129), and the manifesto chapter 4.9 (316). Together, these writings articulate the challenges along with the great potentials of ethics in collaborative processes of dance technique training. Intertwining these chapters also encourages the reader to navigate multiple discourses of dance ethics across contrasting modes of research, pedagogy or studio practicesFootnote ⁴. Consequently, the reader becomes a key player within the reading room – actively engaging and contributing their own cross-sectional interpretations of ethics in dance education.

Individual contributors can be heard singularly, their collective voices chime with a palpable sense of solidarity, a call for a paradigm shift towards equity in socially integrated practices of dance education. Pertinent examples are found in chapter 2.2 (111) syllabus design of the University of East London (UEL), BA (Hons) Dance: Urban Practice course, incorporating equity across a culturally diverse range of technique modules (114-15). Chapter 4.4 (289) also reflects on the redesign of the BA (Hons) Contemporary Dance course, London School of Contemporary Dance (LSCD), with key drivers of “access and social injustice, student wellbeing, and professional outcomes” (289), a radical departure from traditional conservatoire technique training towards dance artists capable of understanding how their bodies move “in dialogue with other techniques, traditions and ways of working” (290). Parallels can also be drawn between examples of collaborative learning through “togethering” discussed in chapters 2.6 (171), a pedagogy that values process over product, aiming to overcome the problematic tensions of dance technique training such as “institution vs embodied subjects” or “training vs enquiry” (178). Similarly, these authors strive beyond demonstrative competence as a measured outcome in favor of well-being and self-empowerment through learning, acknowledging the often precarious balance of valuable qualitative learning outcomes in proportion to quantitative assessment standards. Yet the polyphonic open criticality of the work does not claim to resolve differences, its strength is to reveal complexity, tensions or affinities of ethical dance as questions of contemporaneity in techniqueFootnote ⁵. It is precisely why the work stands out as a unique voice in the growing field of current dance ethics, innovating critical contexts for socio-political discourse, exposing the new cultural, social and reflective pedagogies emerging in the UK todayFootnote ⁶.

The volume offers a powerful generational message, aside from pushing back at the economic forces in modern BritainFootnote ⁷, the project signals the recent history of post-modern to British New Dance, and what defines becoming a dancer. The legacy of innovation in British dance, as well as the socially inclusive, alternative or expanded practices emerging in last two to three decades, are increasingly challenged by neoliberal economics, leading many of the authors to question the ethical and artistic values embedded in dance education (51)Footnote ⁸. To ask us to re-consider technique as a question of contemporaneity through an ethical lens, is to re-trace the evolution of dance as a political process towards an “emancipation” of British dance (16). Arguments for the re-balance of power are fleshed out interrogating social practice versus institution, cannon versus diversity, virtuosity versus horizontal non-hierarchy, thinking/investigative dancer versus demonstrative movement learning. In mapping a topology of discourses, four overlapping areas emerge as Intercultural-Decolonial Perspectives, Inclusivity-Accessibility, Pedagogy-Reflective Practices, Togetherness-Collaborative Learning. While this taxonomy is not reflective of the organization of chapters, it is a way of grasping the intricate nuances of the methodologies.

Chapters of inclusive accessible dance (1.3, 3.6, 3.7, 3.8, 4.5) debate the tensions between “contemporary [and] disabled dance body” (299), dominated by “ideal body”. Bespoke methods for “flexible and adaptable techniques” (240-41), representation in leadership (299), or virtuosity as personal goals are put forward. Intercultural-decolonial perspectives (chapters 2.2, 2.4, 3.3, 3.5, 4.4, 4.6, 4.7) suggest inclusive syllabus design (UEL and LSCD) to diversify cultural practices, as well as re-balance knowledge of origins of techniques, for example historical influences of Contact-Improvisation (144-45). Social dance as codified form is questioned through citizenship and ethical teaching practices to challenge cultural appropriation (306). Pedagogy and reflective practices (chapters 1.1, 1.4, 1.5, 2.1, 2.3, 3.2, 3.10, 4.1, 4.2, 4.8) position the argument towards student-centered learning, readdressing the critical focus of technique skills to engage with process rather than a thing of acquisition or mechanical form (102). More so in the context of the bricolage of multiple skills required of the contemporary dancer today in how to manage the range of skills of embodied knowledge. Togetherness in collaborative learning (chapters 1.2, 2.6, 3.1, 3.4, 3.9, 4.3, 4.8) provide for socio-kinesthetic awareness in responsive techniques for tuning in relation to other dance bodies or participatory performance. The ethics of collaboration is argued by many of the authors to enhance social bonding and aesthetic choices as a process of “shared accountability” (28), with focus on empathy, resilience and agency in pedagogy shifting relations towards self-empowerment.

Ethical Agility in Dance to conclude is a brave publication, debating ethics and equity with daring inquisitive probing. As a result, the underlying philosophy in this volume re-articulates the connections of process-product, form-content, theory-practice, collapsing boundaries between dance training as somatic experiential engagement and form creation of movement developed in performance. Thus, bridging the gap between technique and choreographic practice, an ethics of aesthetics emerges. This book is a philosophy in action where technique is the process of individual and social engagement, an Ethics that insists upon the Agile, an empathic, adaptable, flexible human being who can maintain a sense of self and the collective. Written with honesty and rigor this volume is an invaluable resource for students, teachers, researchers, and artist practitioners. A life-affirming contribution towards a singular-collective ‘togethering’ of dance in the twenty-first century arts.