"The world outside has burst into the studio," writes the influential dancer, teacher, and choreographer Daniel Nagrin. Many dancers want passionately to confront concrete, difficult subjects. But their formalistic training hasn't prepared them for what they need to say. This book, the first on choreography approached through content rather than structure, is designed with them in mind.

Spiced with wit and strong opinions, Choreography and the Specific Image explores, in nineteen far-ranging essays, the art of choreography through the life's work of an important artist. A career...