The author draws on many years' experience observing, participating in and researching amateur and professional dancing communities of the ‘global’ city of Los Angeles in order to develop distinct theoretical perspectives on the myriad ways that dance – and specifically dance technique, dance training and dancers' conversations about dance – can actively create urban political and social infrastructures. Rather than attempt a broad survey of dance activity in Los Angeles, Hamera has selected five primary examples of practice that ‘compelled’ her interest through, for instance, ‘the communities they created in their art and in their lives’ (p. 13). These practices range from Pilates, developments of butoh, amateur and semi-professional ballet and Khmer classical dance to Hae Kyung Lee's performances, with each explored in almost essay form; a structure that supports Hamera's engagement with a wide range of intertexts appropriate to each practice. Thought-provoking ‘dialogues’ consequently emerge between intimate descriptions of moments of dance practice, or equally revealing records of conversations and interviews, and a wide framework of interdisciplinary theoretical writing on gender, ethnicity, culture, space and memory. Although each perspective is developed specifically in relation to the dance community studied, increasingly intriguing ‘conversations’ arise across the text.

It is challenging to maintain a fluid relationship between the different registers of writing necessary to traverse personal engagement in practice and in critical texts. Although records of interviews, performances and rehearsals are often detailed and emotionally nuanced, occasionally references to complex theoretical perspectives are so condensed that their connection and relevance to the area researched becomes weakened. However, the negotiation of ‘voice’ sustained throughout the book, acts as a metaphor applicable to Hamera's research methodology and to her achievement in exploring the connections between the microcosmic worlds of dance rehearsal rooms and the city, in which they are both located and actively help to create. This is most obviously shown in her study of the Sems, a couple who came to Los Angeles after surviving the atrocities of the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia. Hamera sensitively explores how, for them, ‘saving Khmer classical dance as a daily legitimation of their survival offered both an explanation and solace and, at least in the time of our acquaintance, delivered neither’ (p. 171).

Acknowledgement of dance technique's failure to fulfil its desired potential typifies the openness of Hamera's approach, in which evaluation of dance form is less important than recognition of its connectedness to the cultural and political discourses that weave through and beyond the city. Hamera might be correct that her choice of examples is ‘idiosyncratic’ (p. 212), but the stimulating analysis emergent from their study reveals how the desire to dance is driven by a range of motivations, which are responsive to the communities encountered and give rise to them.