Gestures of Music Theater explores examples of Song and Dance as performative gestures that entertain and affect audiences. The chapters interact to reveal the complex energies of performativity. In experiencing these energies, music theatre is revealed as a dynamic accretion of active, complex and dialogical experiences.

Introduction: Singing the Dance, Dancing the Song ; Chapter 1: The Song's the Thing: Capturing the "Sung" to Make it "Song" ; Chapter 2: The (Un)Pleasure of Song: On the Enjoyment of Listening to Opera ; Performativity as Dramaturgy ; Chapter 3: Relocating the Song: Julie Taymor's Jukebox Musical Across the Universe (2007) ; Chapter 4: Dynamic shape: the Dramaturgy of Song and Dance in Lloyd Webber's Cats (1981) ; Performativity as Transition ; Chapter 5: Dance Breaks and Dream Ballets: Transitional Moments in Musical Theater ; Chapter 6: "Love Let Me Sing you": The Liminality of Song and Dance in La Chiusa's Bernarda Alba (2006) ; Performativity as Identity ; Chapter 7: Tapping the Ivories: Jazz and Tap Dance in Jelly's Last Jam (1992). ; Chapter 8: Everything's Coming up Kurt: the Broadway Song in Glee ; Chapter 9: Angry Dance: Postmodern Innovation, Masculinities and Gender Subversion ; Performativity as Context ; Chapter 10: Deconstructing the Singer: the Concerts of Laurie Anderson ; Chapter 11: Singing and a Song: The "Intimate Difference" in Susan Philipsz's Lowlands (2010) ; Chapter 12: Acting Operatically: Body, Voice and the Actress in Beckett's Theater ; Performativity as Practice ; Chapter 13: Vox Elettronica: Song, Dance and Live Electronics in the Practice of Sound Theater ; Chapter 14: From Ear to Foot: How Choreographers Interpret Music ; Chapter 15: Singing from Stones: Physiovocality and Gardzienice's Theater of Musicality ; Performativity as Community ; Chapter 16: Singing the Community: the Musical Theater Chorus as Character ; Chapter 17: Singing and Dancing Ourselves: The Politics of the Ensemble in A Chorus Line (1975) ; Performativity as Writing ; Bibliography ; Index ; Bibliography