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The Choreography of Everyday Life
A renowned choreographer explores the dance of everyday life and reveals that art-making is as natural as walking down the street
In this sparkling, innovative, fully-illustrated work, world-renowned choreographer Annie-B Parson translates the components of dance - time, proximity, space, motion and tone - into text. As we follow Parson through her days - at home, reading, and on her walks down the street - and in and out of conversations on everything from Homer’s Odyssey to feminist art to social protest, she helps us see how everyday movement creates the wider world. Dance, it turns out, is everything and everywhere.
With the insight and verve of a soloist, Parson shows us how art-making is a part of our everyday lives and our political life as we move, together and apart, through space.
In this sparkling, innovative, fully-illustrated work, world-renowned choreographer Annie-B Parson translates the components of dance - time, proximity, space, motion and tone - into text. As we follow Parson through her days - at home, reading, and on her walks down the street - and in and out of conversations on everything from Homer’s Odyssey to feminist art to social protest, she helps us see how everyday movement creates the wider world. Dance, it turns out, is everything and everywhere.
With the insight and verve of a soloist, Parson shows us how art-making is a part of our everyday lives and our political life as we move, together and apart, through space.
112 pages, Hardcover
First published October 11, 2022
11 people are currently reading
653 people want to read
About the author
Annie-B Parson
6 books5 followersAnnie-B Parson is a choreographer and the artistic director of Big Dance Theater. Parson has also made choreography for rock shows, marching bands, movies, museums, objects, television, augmented reality, opera, ballet, theater, symphony orchestras, string quartets, and a chorus of 1,000 amateur singers. She has made dance and stagings for the work of work of David Byrne, David Bowie, St. Vincent, Mikhail Baryshnikov, Wendy Whelan, Laurie Anderson, Nico Muhly, Jonathan Demme, Salt ‘n Pepa, Esperanza Spalding, David Lang, Anne Carson, Jonsi, and the Martha Graham Dance Co. Her most recent work with David Byrne, American Utopia, was made into a film by Spike Lee.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 43 reviews
February 27, 2023
I read this on a recommendation from a coworker, not knowing what to expect. It was a cohesive, stream of consciousness style about the author's life (and her husband's phone conversations). If you're not super familiar with your art scenes and references, keep google handy to look things up!
The structure of the text is very easy to read little bits at a time, picking up and putting down when you have a few spare moments. The writing style was distinct, showing the author's clear voice, without being overwhelming.
The structure of the text is very easy to read little bits at a time, picking up and putting down when you have a few spare moments. The writing style was distinct, showing the author's clear voice, without being overwhelming.
October 24, 2022
Witty and gentle like a hug!
Annie-B is a choreographer and a skilled writer.
Annie-B is a choreographer and a skilled writer.
May 15, 2023
this is how I see the world!!!!!!!
February 27, 2026
Just read this today in the library. I loved it, I could relate so many different parts in different ways to different things in my life and to each course I am learning this semester. I found this really inspiring and really quick and easy to read. I wanted to read it in relation to my dissertation on phenomenology and feminism but it made me think about everything.
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April 17, 2025found myself wanting to read passages out loud (to my partner or myself or just to whoever might listen), saw myself in parson's way of thinking, in her logic and language and I am always so grateful for books like this, for reading experiences like this.
January 15, 2025
Beautifully written. As a dancer, the autor offers us a new perspective about narrative structures. It was amazing to discover a way to perceive movement in everything, in every moment of our lives. Subtle, delicate, unpretentious.
March 18, 2023
loved this. the format reminded me of john berger’s “ways of seeing” and the prose are like patti smith- an artist using words as their medium. just yes. she is so obviously a choreographer the way she uses timing and symbols and images. it’s beautiful. and she introduced me to some artists i now have to explore. and it’s short so it’s just all around a lovely book.
March 17, 2024
I like hearing artists talk about their art. I get a pair of fresh eyes. Craft seems more meaningful; things are identifiably intentional rather than incidental. This book slightly decrypts the language of dance for me. Each choreographer might have their own dialect, but the gist can be intelligible.
.
Here, Annie-B talks about Odysseus’ return, to find his court overrun by his long-suffering wife’s suitors:
.
”For thousands of years Penelope has been depicted by artists and writers as deliberate, clever, patient, smart, neat, useful, reasonable, essential.
But when I think of Penelope, I imagine a boisterous men’s group dance,
with Penelope in the center,
silently and efficiently dancing a small-scale, repetitive, asymbolic gestural solo
in retrograde.”
.
Sidebar: Why lingers the laggard heel? I’m terrible at dancing (no matter how many Kinect games I played!) but I bridle when enabled people who refuse to dance, even at weddings, say that they’re “more Fred Flintstone than Fred Astaire,” and expect this ancient quip to absolve them. It does not, and it’s all the worse for having such outdated referents. Even saying you’re more Betty White than Betty Boop might be better. More Bea Arthur than Beyoncé? Shaq than Shakira? I’m probably still behind the times. 💃🕺
.
Here, Annie-B talks about Odysseus’ return, to find his court overrun by his long-suffering wife’s suitors:
.
”For thousands of years Penelope has been depicted by artists and writers as deliberate, clever, patient, smart, neat, useful, reasonable, essential.
But when I think of Penelope, I imagine a boisterous men’s group dance,
with Penelope in the center,
silently and efficiently dancing a small-scale, repetitive, asymbolic gestural solo
in retrograde.”
.
Sidebar: Why lingers the laggard heel? I’m terrible at dancing (no matter how many Kinect games I played!) but I bridle when enabled people who refuse to dance, even at weddings, say that they’re “more Fred Flintstone than Fred Astaire,” and expect this ancient quip to absolve them. It does not, and it’s all the worse for having such outdated referents. Even saying you’re more Betty White than Betty Boop might be better. More Bea Arthur than Beyoncé? Shaq than Shakira? I’m probably still behind the times. 💃🕺
August 18, 2024
i picked up this book to get inspirations for my essay assignment.
it's a pretty quicky read - finished it on a sunday morning with jazz playing in my background.
i like the way that the author writes her prose and connects her ideas and experiences of her everyday life - as a choreographer, a wife, a metropolitan, a reader, a writer. it incorporates elements around her without sounding preposterous.
perhaps we simply have too different lives to live. although i find her writing beautiful, coherent, and graceful, i find it difficult to relate. especially in her talks about dance. i started approaching dance during covid-19. with myself entrenched with hip hop street dance and choreography, i cant help but find her terms and descriptions of dance foreign and exotic. it made me remember the times i felt excluded while trying out institutionalised dance styles during high school (e.g. ballet, contemporary dance, chinese dance). i wouldn't say it feels good.
some quotes i enjoyed:
"some metaphors are more real than the people you see walking down the street.
I didn't come up with that line, the Portuguese poet Fernando Pessoa wrote it..."
"These days instead of entering the live theatrical space, we can stay in our huts and asymmetrically watch a dance alone on our computer, rending the visceral into the virtual. But I am not sure, when you take away the liveness, without a physical sharing of kinetic energy between audience and performer, I am not sure it's dance anymore, but I don't know what to call it. Like nature, dance is a dynamic process, and now as it is organically changing into something non-live, it's taking on new poetics."
it's a pretty quicky read - finished it on a sunday morning with jazz playing in my background.
i like the way that the author writes her prose and connects her ideas and experiences of her everyday life - as a choreographer, a wife, a metropolitan, a reader, a writer. it incorporates elements around her without sounding preposterous.
perhaps we simply have too different lives to live. although i find her writing beautiful, coherent, and graceful, i find it difficult to relate. especially in her talks about dance. i started approaching dance during covid-19. with myself entrenched with hip hop street dance and choreography, i cant help but find her terms and descriptions of dance foreign and exotic. it made me remember the times i felt excluded while trying out institutionalised dance styles during high school (e.g. ballet, contemporary dance, chinese dance). i wouldn't say it feels good.
some quotes i enjoyed:
"some metaphors are more real than the people you see walking down the street.
I didn't come up with that line, the Portuguese poet Fernando Pessoa wrote it..."
"These days instead of entering the live theatrical space, we can stay in our huts and asymmetrically watch a dance alone on our computer, rending the visceral into the virtual. But I am not sure, when you take away the liveness, without a physical sharing of kinetic energy between audience and performer, I am not sure it's dance anymore, but I don't know what to call it. Like nature, dance is a dynamic process, and now as it is organically changing into something non-live, it's taking on new poetics."
March 31, 2026
pauses, spirals, folk art, tears, kinespheres, dances.
“we are space-makers, we are natural choreographers as we craft our paths and proximities. all day long we tacitly and spontaneously make decisions about how much space we need between one another; we place chairs, tables, and bodies in physical relationships that we find emotionally and somatically appropriate for our desires. we stand apart from strangers, but close to those we love or want to love. we are always negotiating these… issues of distance… and nearness.” (78-79)
i’m also interested in the ways in which we are not equally able to negotiate these spatial relations, some of us have constraints, some of us find ourselves close to strangers and far from those we love, by no act of our own free will, or by way of some complicated, politically charged composition of factors that we only have so much control over. we follow and resist the choreographies at hand, we make our own choreographies, we’re forced back into dominant choreographies, we run wild away, spontaneously moving alongside the constraints that try to kill us, we try to save our lives. we find ourselves in somatically inappropriate physical relationships in space, and sometimes we like it, sometimes we do nothing about it, sometimes we do whatever we can to hold on to those asymmetrical relations between chairs, tables, and bodies. we negotiate and are negotiated by these issues of distance and nearness. we don’t always move by way of geometric array or fibonacci spiral; sometimes it’s a mess of pushing and being pushed around and wanting to be pushed but not quite moving, not quite yet. sometimes it’s a mess.
“we are space-makers, we are natural choreographers as we craft our paths and proximities. all day long we tacitly and spontaneously make decisions about how much space we need between one another; we place chairs, tables, and bodies in physical relationships that we find emotionally and somatically appropriate for our desires. we stand apart from strangers, but close to those we love or want to love. we are always negotiating these… issues of distance… and nearness.” (78-79)
i’m also interested in the ways in which we are not equally able to negotiate these spatial relations, some of us have constraints, some of us find ourselves close to strangers and far from those we love, by no act of our own free will, or by way of some complicated, politically charged composition of factors that we only have so much control over. we follow and resist the choreographies at hand, we make our own choreographies, we’re forced back into dominant choreographies, we run wild away, spontaneously moving alongside the constraints that try to kill us, we try to save our lives. we find ourselves in somatically inappropriate physical relationships in space, and sometimes we like it, sometimes we do nothing about it, sometimes we do whatever we can to hold on to those asymmetrical relations between chairs, tables, and bodies. we negotiate and are negotiated by these issues of distance and nearness. we don’t always move by way of geometric array or fibonacci spiral; sometimes it’s a mess of pushing and being pushed around and wanting to be pushed but not quite moving, not quite yet. sometimes it’s a mess.
January 14, 2025
“We are essentially a body in space with other bodies, expressing how we feel through our dances.” Annie-B Parson’s The Choreography of Everyday Life is a strange, alive little book, an excursion into the ways that movement, dance, routine, all intersect with the smallest and the biggest aspects of our daily existence, from our conversations and thoughts to walking behind dog-walkers in the street. Coursing through this is a discussion of Homer’s Odyssey and some intersecting aspects of Ancient Greek culture, literature, and history — it’s no surprise that my beloved Anne Carson is such a felt presence throughout the book. Parson touches on a wide variety of other ideas, from kinesphere to the triangle of reading, protest and celebration as choreographic, some motions of pandemic life coming to feel like dance, and even this fleeting reference to my great obsession: “Wasn’t there a dance of death in medieval times? Wasn’t it an ecstatic dance?” Parson’s choreography was fondly familiar to me, from her work first on 17c at the Old Vic and, a bit later, on David Byrne’s transcendent American Utopia; engaging with this side of her process was captivating. Above all her zealous love of dance is just irresistible: “The material, the stuff of dance, is the body, and turning that into something transactional has always struck me as contradictory, because when people first danced, it was essentially a community in physical agreement executing poeticized, ritual actions in a circle.”
August 22, 2023
such a brilliant piece. i never knew where the next paragraph would take me. even though some transitions were confusing to me at points, they never stopped being poetic. this book belongs to a very specific time in our history, because it translates a feeling that happened during covid quarantine times. while we were in the heat of it all, that feeling didn’t really see an end and so it was felt very intensely. it’s interesting to be able to read it now, with a perspective outside of it. perhaps if i had read this last year i wouldn’t have enjoyed as much.
it was pleasant at the end to realize that this whole book is about one thing~~ a conversation that happened throughout many phone calls by two people that are very familiar with each other. (even though she doesn’t say that in her writing, phone calls are just another organic choreography of our everyday lives. small or large kinesphere tho?)
it was pleasant at the end to realize that this whole book is about one thing~~ a conversation that happened throughout many phone calls by two people that are very familiar with each other. (even though she doesn’t say that in her writing, phone calls are just another organic choreography of our everyday lives. small or large kinesphere tho?)
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October 18, 2022Annie-B Parson, an acclaimed choreographer best known for her genre-bending work combining dance with theater, "offers an exuberant, if lightly sketched, conception of human life as a collective dance, winding and unspooling in endless variations as we move through time and space. For her, dance is not a rarefied form. It is more like the natural, everyday motion of strolling down the street, which, after all, involves considerations of line, space, and tempo. City life, especially, requires dancelike coordination: Strangers streaming down the sidewalk must find a “group rhythm.” — Charlie Tyson
https://www.theatlantic.com/culture/a...
https://www.theatlantic.com/culture/a...
February 21, 2023
Explores public space, Greek myth, the Hebrew old testament, philosophy, and underneath it all choreography. Exciting concepts compressed into graceful dances across kitchen floors - I loved the idea of communal ecstatic dance Vs dancing for viewers - but perhaps too graceful; Annie-B does not deeply analyse the poetic arguments she puts forth. Perhaps that's not the point - but I could hope but feel some blindness to peoples' 'everyday lives' in service to the beauty of the argument. For such a grand title, I expected more (but am I happy I received less?...)
All in all - brilliant, rhythmic prose that clarified ideas around dance for me in a dead natural way; great references to check out and learn from; perhaps too centred on one person's quotidian, and blind to the politics of that.
All in all - brilliant, rhythmic prose that clarified ideas around dance for me in a dead natural way; great references to check out and learn from; perhaps too centred on one person's quotidian, and blind to the politics of that.
March 29, 2025
I think my rating for this book is heavily influenced by it being a “right place right time” read, as I read it shortly after watching a show choreographed by the author.
The book is very stream of consciousness, and does not abide by many grammatical rules. As such, it feels like a conversation with the reader. We get to hear about ordinary interactions with family and friends, musings, and realisations the author has about everyday life and how it relates to / inspires choreography. She highlights people whose work she respects, and often references Ancient Greek work, which she has a particular love of.
Had I picked this up at any other time it would have been too abstract and steeped in metaphor for me.
The book is very stream of consciousness, and does not abide by many grammatical rules. As such, it feels like a conversation with the reader. We get to hear about ordinary interactions with family and friends, musings, and realisations the author has about everyday life and how it relates to / inspires choreography. She highlights people whose work she respects, and often references Ancient Greek work, which she has a particular love of.
Had I picked this up at any other time it would have been too abstract and steeped in metaphor for me.
October 26, 2022
Interesting that I picked today, Yom Kippur, to read this book. I have always loved Annie B Parson's Choreography. But this book, well, it's out there. It's more random thoughts or stream of consciousness thinking than anything. I did love the Photo of Meg Harper, who I was fortunate enough to study with, and I love what she said about Trisha Brown and her compositional form ABCBA...retrograde. But, everything else, I'm sorry to say, went over my head. I guess it was meant to. Doug Dunn changing a whole piece based on time...Loved that!, and got it!
Keep dancing Annie, you are brilliant! Thank you to Netgalley and Verso Books for the epub.
Keep dancing Annie, you are brilliant! Thank you to Netgalley and Verso Books for the epub.
November 2, 2024
A beautiful, fascinating and short book.
The ideas not necessarily the writing are the strength here. But it reads with an incredible rhythm.
About bodies in space. The everyday rendered divine. The divine rendered everyday. The historical rendered standing right next to you.
More than just about movement/dance it’s about being. Fascinating to be given the thoughts of a choreographer in this realm. Consideration of the way we all move through the world by someone who is such an expert and can clearly articulate subtleties.
The way one can move their body in the public sphere. The choreography that everyone knows. Or establishes with one another.
The ideas not necessarily the writing are the strength here. But it reads with an incredible rhythm.
About bodies in space. The everyday rendered divine. The divine rendered everyday. The historical rendered standing right next to you.
More than just about movement/dance it’s about being. Fascinating to be given the thoughts of a choreographer in this realm. Consideration of the way we all move through the world by someone who is such an expert and can clearly articulate subtleties.
The way one can move their body in the public sphere. The choreography that everyone knows. Or establishes with one another.
May 11, 2024
3.75 stars
it took a me minute to get into the lyrical, stream-of-consciousness writing style parson presented. but when i did, so pretty! so sweet! so musical!
the author translated dance into words and the sentences read like dancing! it was a very flittery, glittery, flowery reading experience and i enjoyed it at some parts and had to reread to keep up at others.
it’s a really pretty work that feels like an excerpt of some musings in the author’s journal. i’m not mad at it, but i think this will be something i reread again to consume all the details.
it took a me minute to get into the lyrical, stream-of-consciousness writing style parson presented. but when i did, so pretty! so sweet! so musical!
the author translated dance into words and the sentences read like dancing! it was a very flittery, glittery, flowery reading experience and i enjoyed it at some parts and had to reread to keep up at others.
it’s a really pretty work that feels like an excerpt of some musings in the author’s journal. i’m not mad at it, but i think this will be something i reread again to consume all the details.
June 25, 2025
This slim, well-designed volume was among the first handful of books I read in 2023, and I have been recommending it to everyone I know, dancers and non-dancers alike. It is brilliant, deep, interdisciplinary, generative, and -- as a "covid book" written during and after the lockdown -- reparative and restorative. Parson, who is perhaps most well-known among general audiences for her work choreographing David Byrne's most recent world tour, makes a passionate and convincing argument that dance, along with the interpretation of movement, are essential human activities.
March 14, 2023
This book it’s more like a notebook from a choreographer. I didn't know the work of Annie B-Parson, but I was really pleased to read something written by a choreographer, from her perspective. First, the title of the book is about the unconscious presence of creation and choreography in our everyday actions.
Since I'm an art lover, appreciation from the art perspective it's very important to me. I think every expression of art should be looking at and inspiring other art. So the references to Louise Bourgeois, Hilma Af Klint, and of course Trisha Brown were very important to me.
If you are interested in viewing life from a choreographer's perspective this is the book for you. Not a story or tale, just life the way it is.
Since I'm an art lover, appreciation from the art perspective it's very important to me. I think every expression of art should be looking at and inspiring other art. So the references to Louise Bourgeois, Hilma Af Klint, and of course Trisha Brown were very important to me.
If you are interested in viewing life from a choreographer's perspective this is the book for you. Not a story or tale, just life the way it is.
November 14, 2023
I picked up this little one at the recommendation of my thesis advisor when I was hitting a creative block. It is, in her words, a charming read. While Parson's voice and style of meandering belong to a singular mind, I find that -- as someone who also ponders about the intrinsic relationship between movement and language -- many of her figural imaginings make perfect sense. The text is not so much challenging as it is stimulating. It gets you thinking about moments and abstractions that we all encounter at some points in our lives, whether you call yourself a "dancer" or a Odyssey fanatic.
September 13, 2024
I found this novel at a second hand bookstore and I'm so grateful to have revived my love for browsing books myself. This is a wonderfully poetic exploration of life as performance; as choreography. Pulling references from visual arts, music, popular culture, and literature, Parson peers into the metaphor that is our existence. This is deifnitely a book for my esoteric girlies who have a thing for the abstract.
September 29, 2024
I don't really know how to categorize this book but I also understand it completely. The flow of thoughts is how we think through a day--how you can make meaning and see things come together and apart. Like for moments everything makes sense and then you're confused again by all the complexity. I relate to how Parson deeply sees everything around her and I'm glad she made this book so I can feel less alone about that.
December 24, 2022
I feel like I just read a dance. Choreographer Annie-B Parson poetically and lyrically elevates the everyday - a conversation between father and son, social media, covid lockdown - into choreography. Hear her describe the letter as choreography between sender and recipient. Beautiful. The book itself all rhythm and motion. Really creative format for conveying what she wanted to convey.
November 5, 2024
i love dance , i love choreo , i love creative process and weird stuff. this book was kinda hard to follow and very broken up but a cute friend of mine who isn’t a dancer gave it to me after she read it so that was nice. it was broken up and kinda like random thoughts and conversations so the lack of cohesiveness kinda confused me but maybe im just dumb and need to read it again.
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December 18, 2025Picked this up while browsing the second floor of the library, looking for something short to read. This novella features beautiful language and an interesting braided structure. For the hour or two it took me to read this, I saw the world through the eyes of a master choreographer - and now I am fathoming that dance is everywhere.
December 14, 2022
The title says it all! I love the title, it’s a way of seeing the world no? A little too much about the Odyssey and the Bible in here but I love her quiet examinations of the everyday. Short read, last quarter is the best and picks up halfway through.
May 15, 2023
A tiny little slip of a book, but it contained a whole new (to me) world of thinking about space and movement and making meaning and interrogating how we relate to each other. Felt like a guest lecture at uni in the best possible way.
September 4, 2025
A remarkable book about so many things and I cannot recommend it enough. A short and breezy read about so many things. A balancing act by way of magic trick whereby I felt the density of my grad school reading list filtered through drinks with a friend.
December 25, 2022
Charming and idiosyncratic.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 43 reviews