My Body

Through a series of imaginative approaches to movement and performance, choreographer Deborah Hay presents a profound reflection on the ephemeral nature of the self and the body as the locus of artistic consciousness. Using the same uniquely playful poetics of her revolutionary choreography, she delivers one of the most revealing accounts of what art creation entails and the ways in which the body, the center of our aesthetic knowledge of the world, can be regarded as our most informed teacher. The book becomes a way into Hay's choreographic techniques, a gloss on her philosophy of the body (which shares much with Buddhism), and an extraordinary artist's primer.

DEBORAH HAY's choreography, from exquisitely meditative solos to dances for large groups of untrained and trained dancers, explores the nature of experience, perception, and attention in dance, and has received numerous awards. Her previous books are Lamb at the Altar (1994) and Moving Through the Universe in Bare Feet (1975).

SUSAN FOSTER is Professor of Dance History at UC-Riverside and author of Choreography and Narrative (1998) and Reading Dancing (1988).