Dance writer and movement researcher Melinda Buckwalter is the author of Composing While Dancing: An Improviser’s Companion (University of Wisconsin Press), which explores the improvisational strategies of twenty-six pioneering contemporary dance artists. She is co-editor of Contact Quarterly, an artist-made and reader-supported nonprofit journal of dance and improvisation. Over the years she has taught dance in a variety of settings and venues, including in higher education at Cornell University, New York, where she earned her BA in physics; Bennington College, Vermont, where she received her MFA in dance; Wesleyan University, Connecticut; and, most recently, Bates College, Maine. Her courses include dance composition and technique, anatomy and kinesiology, and writing about dance. A co-curator of the SEEDS festival of arts and ecology at Earthdance in Western Massachusetts, Melinda researches and writes about contemporary place- and land-based dance making. As a Fulbright award postgraduate student, received an MA in dance anthropology at the University of Roehampton, London. She is also the proud mother of the dance cartoon strip Mavis and Bunhead, which you can find at melindabuckwalter.wordpress.com along with her points of view on all things dancing. Currently she is a phd in dance candidate at the Texas Woman’s University in Denton, TX. Reach her at melinda.buckwalter at gmail.com.
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