Following two celebrated handbooks on creative practice, Body, Space, Image: notes towards
improvisation and performance, and A Widening Field: journeys in body and imagination,
written in collaboration with Chris Crickmay, Miranda Tufnell now takes us into the field of
dance and health. For fourteen years she worked in a GP surgery in rural Cumbria. The book
opens with a moving account of an arts project that she and her collaborators ran for people
with long term health conditions. Miranda Tufnell is both a dance artist and a body therapist
and this gives the book its particular flavour.
This is a book about the body and movement, about imagination and health. It is a gathering
of many stories, voices and activities from artists, patients and health practitioners. The arts
have long played a role in medicine and there is a substantial body of evidence of the potency
of arts practice in strengthening a person's resources and capacity for well being.
While the work described here is sourced in the body and movement, it is not only written
for people with a dance background. Being able to listen creatively to the body strengthens
our body intelligence and ability to look after ourselves effectively. Practitioners from many
backgrounds come into this field and will find something of interest. This book sets out to
inspire rather than to teach, to offer windows into practice, and to convey something of what
it is like to work in this field.
