While ageing often signifies experience in various arts, in Western dance it is associated with deterioration of the body and considered a kind of disability. The essays in this ‘first’ collection on ageing in dance (p. 4), authored by both researchers and artists, explore different responses to this issue and question the categorization of ‘ability’ and ‘disability’ from comparative cultural perspectives, primarily Euro-American and Japanese.

The book consists of four parts. Part 1 considers ageing in the late twentieth century and opens with the essay by Yvonne Rainer, one of the most influential postmodern dance artists. In her early eighties, she writes that her ‘preferred mode of self-expression’ has shifted from dance to ‘existence’ (p. 34), but this does not mean that she idealized virtuosity when she was younger; Ramsay Burt, in his chapter on Rainer's practices, points out that throughout her career she has valued ordinary and unidealized bodies as a ‘democratic’ practice (p. 39). Tamotsu Watanabe compares Western and Japanese dance aesthetics and elaborates on the latter, where aged dancers are valued as the embodiment of beauty that ‘transcends time’ (p. 51). Johannes Odenthal's discussion of Koffi Kôkô, a Beninese dancer who considers the body a ‘memory bank for African culture’ (p. 48), expands the scope of this collection, which otherwise mainly focuses on Euro-American and Japanese contexts.

Part 2 is concerned with dis/ability in Euro-American dance. Ann Cooper Albright brilliantly reconfigures variously disabled bodies as those challenging what she calls ‘the hegemony of the vertical’ (p. 64) and proposes falling down, whether intentionally or not, both within everyday life and in dance, as a way to develop resilience. Jess Curtis and Kaite O'Reilly respectively reflect on their practices working with disabled people and suggest that disability does not belong to a certain group of people; if ageing is a type of impairment, then we will all be disabled at some point. Susanne Foellmer discusses ‘dis/ability as in/capability’ (p. 91) by analysing Marie Chouinard and Romeo Castellucci's works with a focus on the concepts of grotesque and biopolitics.

Essays in Part 3 address ageing and body politics in contemporary dance. Petra Kuppers discusses ageing in relation to nationhood through her community dance projects and explores how ‘we can use our aging bodyminds toward reconciliation, toward a therapy for a world’ (p. 107). Her discussion on disabled bodies that were not allowed to age under the Nazi regime stands out. Kikuyo Toyama finds an affinity between the marginalized space where the elders live, distanced from so-called productive society, and the ‘dance state’ (p. 129) that dancers move into during their performance to distance themselves from their stable social identities. She then insightfully reverses a typical question and speculates on what ‘aging can do for dancing, rather than what dancing can do for aging’ (p. 123). Janice Ross discusses sexuality and ageing in the work of Anna Halprin, who challenged ‘silent “rules” of Western concert dance – that old women don't dance, that elderly females should remain an invisible presence in society’ (p. 141).

Part 4 offers perspectives of interweaving cultures. Two essays in this part are about different forms of dance in different cultural contexts but both discuss two important aspect of aged dancers’ performance; that is, the power of hands and arms. Mark Franko argues that modernist sublime was performed by hands and arms when dancers such as Martha Graham and Merce Cunningham aged, whereby the typical conception of virtuosity was altered. In Nanako Nakajima's chapter, Yoshito Ohno recollects the strong handshake of his late father and butoh legend Kazuo Ohno even at the age of over ninety. Yoshito uses this episode to make the point that dance requires ‘both hardness and softness’ (p. 167).

Spanning across a range of cultures and places, this book offers new perspectives on dancing bodies that have aged through movement. Even when these bodies are unable to move, the embodied experiences still yield insights into dance studies, disability studies and comparative cultural studies.