A Choreographer's Handbook

On choreography: `Choreography is a negotiation with the patterns your body is thinking'

On rules: `Try breaking the rules on a need to break the rules basis'

A Choreographer's Handbook invites the reader to investigate how and why to make a dance performance. In an inspiring and unusually empowering sequence of stories, ideas and paradoxes, internationally renowned dancer, choreographer and teacher Jonathan Burrows explains how it's possible to navigate a course through this complex process

It is a stunning reflection on a personal practice and professional journey, and draws upon five years of workshop discussions, led by Burrows.

Burrows' open and honest prose gives the reader access to a range of exercises, meditations, principles and ideas on choreography that allow artists and dance-makers to find their own aesthetic process

It is a book for anyone interested in making performance, at whatever level and in whichever style

Jonathan Burrows has toured and worked internationally as a dancer and choreographer and is currently a resident artist at Kaaitheater Brussels. In 2002 he was commended by the Foundation for Contemporary Performance Arts in New York for his contribution to contemporary dance, and in 2004 received a New York Dance and Performance `Bessie' for his work `Both Sitting Duet'. He has made commissioned work for many companies, including William Forsythe's Ballett Frankfurt, Sylvie Guillem and The Royal Ballet. He is a visiting member of faculty at P.A.R.T.S. in Brussels and is a Visiting Professor at Hamburg University and Royal Holloway University of London

The hand on the cover was drawn by Matteo Fargion as part of the score for the dance film `Hands', made in 1995for the Arts Council England/BBC