Performing Arts

  • An Atlas of Es Devlin

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    An Atlas of Es Devlin, the first monograph on artist Es Devlin’s genre-defying practice, is an experiential publication encompassing art, activism, theatre, poetry, music, dance, opera and sculpture.

    Publisher’s note: Our first print run of The Atlas of Es Devlin has sold through in record time and we are currently reprinting. Further copies will become available in December with more stock then due in early 2024.

    Devlin’s protean work is rooted in a life-long practice of reading and drawing. From sketches in the margins of texts, be they poetry, drama, song lyrics, opera libretti, climate reports or endangered species lists, emerge the technically advanced, collectively imagined universes for which she is globally renowned. Fragile miniature paintings, paper cuts and small mechanical cardboard models form the seeds of some of the most iconic, large-scale, multi-disciplinary cultural manifestations in recent times, from public sculptures and installations at Tate Modern, Serpentine, V&A, Barbican, Imperial War Museum and the Lincoln Center, to kinetic stage designs at the Royal Opera House, the Royal Ballet, the Metropolitan Opera, La Scala and the National Theatre, as well as Olympic Ceremonies, Super-Bowl half-time shows, and monumental illuminated stage sculptures for Beyonce, The Weeknd, U2, Rosalìa, Dr Dre and Kendrick Lamar.

    Devlin’s work is at once deeply personal and inherently collective. Over the past decade her art practice has engaged with biodiversity, linguistic diversity and collective AI-generated poetry. She views the audience as a temporary society and encourages profound cognitive shifts by inviting public participation in communal choral works.

    Published in association with a retrospective exhibition opening at Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum in New York in November 2023, An Atlas of Es Devlin is a unique, sculptural volume of over 900 pages, including foldouts, cut-outs, and a range of paper types, mirror and translucencies, with over 700 colour images documenting over 120 projects spanning over 30 years, and a 50,000 word text featuring the artist’s personal commentaries on each art work as well as interviews with her collaborators including Hans Ulrich Obrist, Bono, Benedict Cumberbatch, Pharrell Williams, Carlo Rovelli, Brian Eno, Sam Mendes, Alice Rawsthorn and Abel ‘The Weeknd’ Tesfaye. Each book is boxed and includes a die-cut print from an edition of 5000.

    ‘Es is like superstring theory, at least eleven dimensions.’
    Hans Ulrich Obrist

    ‘Es knows how to bend the mind around corners of our experience.’
    Benedict Cumberbatch

    ‘Es takes our inchoate aspirations and sculpts them into a stage.’
    Bono

    ‘I wish we’d had Es as a psychologist on some of our projects.’
    Brian Eno

    ‘Es’s mind is both forensic and associative. She is able to x-ray a play and then she starts to dream.’
    Lyndsey Turner

    ‘Es is a turning point for anyone she interacts with.’
    Pharrell Williams

    ‘Es creates moments in which we suddenly become aware of life and existing, and time.’
    Carlo Rovelli

    ‘With Es, there’s no “No”. She creates a whole universe.’
    Abel ‘The Weeknd’ Tesfaye

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    £62.80£80.80

    An Atlas of Es Devlin

    £62.80£80.80
  • History of Dance

    History of Dance, Second Edition, examines dance from prehistoric times to the present. It focuses on the dancers and choreographers, the dances, and significant dance works from each time period. For instructors, it offers ancillaries including an instructor guide, test bank, PowerPoint presentation package, and student web resource to reinforce the learning from the text. The student web resource is also available separately for students and instructors. It offers experiential learning activities to help students dig deeper into the history of dance and develop critical thinking and investigative skills. Special features and charts bring facts, events, and timelines to life. Through History of Dance, students will acquire a foundation for understanding and a springboard for studying dance in the 21st century.

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    £66.50
  • Music, Dance and Translation

    How is music affected by its translation, interpretation and adaptation with, through, and by dance? How might notation of dance and music act as a form of translation? How does music influence the creation of dance? How might dance and music be understood to exchange and transfer their content, sense and process during both the creative process and the interpretative process? Bringing together chapters that explore theory and practice, this book questions the process and role translation has to play in the context of music and dance. It provides a range of case studies across this interdisciplinary field, and is not restricted by genre, style or cultural location. As one of very few volumes to explore translation in relation to music and to overtly tackle this topic in terms of dance, it moves the argument from a broad notion of text and translation, to think critically about the sound and movement arts of music and dance, using translation as a model to better understand the collaboration of these art forms.

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    £90.30

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