Choreographing Shakespeare: Dance Adaptations of the Plays and Poems

by Elizabeth Klett

Choreographing Shakespeare presents a hitherto unexplored history of the choreographers and performers who have created dance adaptations of Shakespeare.

This book investigates forty dance works in genres such as ballet, modern dance, and hip-hop, produced between 1940 and 2016 by choreographers in Britain, America, and Europe, all of which use Shakespeare's plays and Sonnets as their source material. By combining scholarly analysis of these productions with practice-based conversations from six contemporary choreographers, Klett offers both breadth of coverage and in-depth analysis of how Shakespeare's poetic language is translated into the usually wordless medium of dance, and shows exactly how these dance adaptations move beyond the Shakespearean texts to engage with musical and choreographic influences.

Ideal for students of Shakespeare and Dance Studies, Choreographing Shakespeare explores how dance adaptations strive to design legible and intelligible stories, while ultimately celebrating the beauty of pure movement.

194 pages, Paperback

Published October 23, 2019

About the author

Elizabeth is an English literature professor by day, and an audiobook narrator by night. She trained as an actor and director at Drew University, and holds a doctorate from the University of Illinois, with expertise in Shakespeare and Renaissance literature. She loves reading (and teaching) fiction, drama, and poetry of all kinds, and particularly delights in creating distinctive voices for literary characters. She is an absolute Anglophile, and has narrated dozens of books in a British accent, despite the fact that she’s originally from New Jersey. Her biggest fan is her five-year-old daughter, who loves hearing her read Dr. Seuss, Mo Willems, and Lewis Carroll, with a reminder to “do the voices, Mommy.”