Conducting is not simply the act of marking beats; it is the much more rich art of communicating emotion, character, and mood through movement to a large group of performers in order to inspire them to create music together. Baton Basics is based on the premise that the most effective and musical forms of conducting are about conveying energy, and that doing so is a fundamentally physical activity. In Baton Basics, conductor Diane Wittry offers a unique approach to teaching conducting through familiar gestures: weight, resistance, and energy, combined with size, beat placement. The end goal is the ability to communicate a better concept of musical sound to the musicians. Wittry demonstrates how conductors can communicate through gestures, by training the muscles of their fingers, hands, wrists, forearms, and full arms. She also provides techniques for releasing body tension, improving posture, and developing a deeper sense of calm on the podium through overall body and breathing exercises. Additionally, she guides the reader on an exploration of the concepts and diagrams of the Musin and Saito conducting methods, and providing innovative suggestions on how to best incorporate these other styles into his or her own technique.
Featuring many detailed drawings and access to over 60 video examples on the companion website, Baton Basics guides conductors away from simply marking beat patterns, and towards a nuanced and phrased musicality that can be communicated to a group of musicians. Baton Basics is a key foundational text for the student and experienced conductor alike, and is must for anyone interested in improving and expanding their vocabulary of conducting gestures.

Functional Awareness: Anatomy in Action for Dancers is where anatomy meets artistry. Each chapter provides explorations in embodied anatomy in an engaging manner with the use of images, storytelling, and experiential exercises. It is an accessible introduction to the relationship between daily movement habits, dance training and anatomy. The information is founded on over 30,000 hours of experience teaching and training dancers to generate efficient exertion and appropriate recuperation. Functional Awareness: Anatomy in Action for Dancers employs somatic practices along with explorations in experiential anatomy to awaken the body-mind connection and improve movement function. The book applies the Functional Awareness (R) approach to improve dance technique and provide skills to enable the dancer to move with balance and grace in the classroom, on stage, and in daily life.

Using examples from architecture, film, literature, and the visual arts, this wide-ranging book examines the place and significance of New York City in the urban imaginary between 1890 and 1940. In particular, Imagining New York City considers how and why certain city spaces - such as the skyline, the sidewalk, the slum, and the subway - have come to emblematize key aspects of the modern urban condition. In so doing, the book also considers the ways in which cultural developments in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries set the stage for more recent responses to a variety of urban challenges facing the city, such as post-disaster recovery, the renewal of urban infrastructure, and the remaking of public space.

The number one bestseller and Sunday Times Humour Book of the Year by national treasure Bob Mortimer.'The most life-affirming, joyful read of the year' - Sunday Times 'Winningly heartfelt' - The Guardian 'A triumph' - Daily Mail Bob Mortimer's life was trundling along happily until suddenly in 2015 he was diagnosed with a heart condition that required immediate surgery and forced him to cancel an upcoming tour. The episode unnerved him, but forced him to reflect on his life so far. This is the framework for his hilarious and moving memoir, And Away... Although his childhood in Middlesbrough was normal on the surface, it was tinged by the loss of his dad, and his own various misadventures (now infamous from his appearances on Would I Lie to You?), from burning down the family home to starting a short-lived punk band called Dog Dirt. As an adult, he trained as a solicitor and moved to London. Though he was doing pretty well (the South London Press once crowned him 'The Cockroach King' after a successful verdict), a chance encounter in a pub in the 1980s with a young comedian going by the name Vic Reeves set his life on a different track. And now, six years on, the heart condition that once threatened his career has instead led to new success on BBC2's Gone Fishing. Warm, profound, and irrepressibly funny, And Away... is Bob's full life story (with a few lies thrown in for good measure.)

This truly global and visually stunning  compendium showcases some of the most breath-taking pieces of street art and graffiti from around the world. Since its genesis on the East Coast of the United States in the late 1960s, street art has travelled to nearly every corner of the globe, morphing into highly ornate and vibrant new styles. This unique atlas is the first truly geographical survey of urban art, revised and updated in 2023 to include new voices, increased female representation and cities emerging as street art hubs. Featuring specially commissioned works from major graffiti and street art practitioners, it offers you an insider’s view of the urban landscape as the artists themselves experience it. Organized geographically, by continent and by city – from New York, Los Angeles and Montreal in North America, through Mexico City and Buenos Aires in Latin America, to London, Berlin and Madrid in Europe, Sydney and Auckland in the Pacific, as well as brand new chapters covering Africa and Asia – it profiles more than 100 of today’s most important artists and features over 700 astonishing artworks. This beautifully illustrated book, produced with the help of many of the artists it features, dispels the idea of such art as a thoughtless defacement of pristine surfaces, and instead celebrates it as a contemporary and highly creative inscription upon the skin of the built environment.

Combined for the first time here are Maus I: A Survivor's Tale and Maus II - the complete story of Vladek Spiegelman and his wife, living and surviving in Hitler's Europe. By addressing the horror of the Holocaust through cartoons, the author captures the everyday reality of fear and is able to explore the guilt, relief and extraordinary sensation of survival - and how the children of survivors are in their own way affected by the trials of their parents. A contemporary classic of immeasurable significance. 

In 1834, Sir John Herschel, perhaps the most celebrated astronomer of his time, arrived at the Cape of Good Hope to spend four years observing the southern sky.

Among his many other talents he was an accomplished artist, skilled in the use of an optical device known as a camera lucida. During these four years Herschel produced more than a hundred exquisite landscape sketches, some depicting the Feldhausen estate in the suburb of Wynberg, where he and his family lived, others meticulously recording scenes that enlivened his trips to Cape Point, to Table Mountain, to Hout Bay and to places in the farther reaches. Among the latter were Caledon, Franschhoek, Stellenbosch and Paarl.

These Herschel landscape drawings are an almost unmatched contribution to the artistic and historical record of the Cape in the early nineteenth century. They are reproduced in this title, together with a narrative text and background material that firmly set the illustrations in their social and geographical context. The result is an evocative picture of the Cape Peninsula and its environs at a time when they were still largely wild.

Sustainability is now a buzzword both among professionals and scholars. However, though climate change and resource depletion are now widely recognized by business as major challenges, and while new practices like "green design" have emerged, efforts towards change remain weak and fragmented. Exposing these limitations, "Design Futuring" systematically presents ideas and methods for Design as an expanded ethical and professional practice. "Design Futuring" argues that responding to ethical, political, social and ecological concerns now requires a new type of practice which recognizes design's importance in overcoming a world made unsustainable. Illustrated throughout with international case material, "Design Futuring" presents the author's ground-breaking ideas in a coherent framework, focusing specifically on the ways in which concerns for ethics and sustainability can change the practice of Design for the twenty-first century. "Design Futuring"--a pathfinding text for the new era--extends far beyond Design courses and professional practice and will be invaluable also to students and practitioners of Architecture, the Creative Arts, Business and Management.

Gestures of Music Theater: The Performativity of Song and Dance offers new cutting edge essays focusing on Song and Dance as performative gestures that not only entertain but also act on audiences and performers. The chapters range across musical theatre, opera, theatre and other artistic practices, from Glee to Gardzienice, Beckett to Disney, Broadway to Turner Prize winning sound installation. The chapters draw together these diverse examples of vocality and physicality by exploring their affect rather than through considering them as texts. This book considers performativity in relation to Dramaturgy, Transition, Identity, Context, Practice, Community and finally, Writing. The book reveals how the texture of music theatre, containing as it does the gestures of song and dance, is performative in dense, interwoven, dialogical and paradoxical ways, partly caused by the intertextual and interdisciplinary energies of its make-up, partly by its active dynamism in performance. The book's contributors derive methodologies from many disciplines, seeking in many ways to resist and explode discrete discipline-based enquiry. They share methodologies and performance repertoires with discipline-based scholarship from theatre studies, musicology and cultural studies, but there are many other approaches and case studies which we also embrace. Together, they view these as neighboring voices whose dialogue enriches the study of contemporary music theatre.

Twenty-five beautiful songs from the World Church with an emphasis on Africa. Includes: GloriaSanto, santo santoSenhor tempiedade de nosHe came downStand firmHalle, halle, halleMay God draw nearThe Lord is my lightKyrie eleisonJesus Christ our living LordJesus saranamLet the world in concert singSara shristeImelaWa wa wa emimimoBlessed be GodAmen, Alleluia!Amen siakudumisaNdingen' endumisweniMayenziweMany and greatAgios o TheosKyrie eleisonYour kingdom comeJesu tawa pano

Beginners' exercises explain the basics of threading buttons, sewing stitches, fusing felt and even how to crochet. Once the techniques are mastered, designs can be as extravagant or as simple as you want - no specialist skills or equipment is required. The basic techniques are followed by a wide range of stunning projects that will appeal to every crafter out there. The projects vary from funky, chunky jewellery and accessories for kids to beautiful and delicate accessories and fun decor items for yourself and your home. For beginners there are clear instructions, while experienced crafters will find loads of inspiration for personalised projects. Beautiful colour photographs of all finished projects will provide further inspiration while templates for the designs in the book will make it easy to use that inspiration to create delightful gifts or unique items for your own use.