Praise for The Choreography of Care
“Pimsler’s touching book illuminates the transformative, healing power of art. The Choreography of Care offers poignant revelations about the theater of healthcare and provides fresh approaches for artists as they engage with their communities. The work of Stuart Pimsler and Suzanne Costello asks all of us the important question: how do we consider the role of art in our daily lives?”
James Lapine is a playwright and director and has won the Tony Award for Best Book of a Musical three times, for Into the Woods, Falsettos, and Passion. In 1985, Mr. Lapine received the Pulitzer Prize for Drama
“In this wise, compassionate, and insightful book, Stuart Pimsler writes about his twenty-five years of artistic collaboration with health care providers all over the world. Drawing on his own family experience, his life as a dancer and choreographer, scientific research, and the moving testimonies of nurses, doctors, and other healthcare professionals with whom he has worked, Pimsler guides his reader through the revelatory and healing powers the arts bring to medicine, not only for the sick and dying, but just as crucially for those who treat them.”
Siri Hustvedt, PhD. Lecturer in psychiatry at Weill Cornell Medical College. Author of The Shaking Woman or A History of My Nerves.
With writing as fluid and lyrical as a dance, The Choreography of Care glides the reader through the personal journey of an artist whose work found unexpected purpose in caring for caregivers. In this captivating and poignant memoir, Stuart Pimsler again demonstrates his prowess as a compelling interdisciplinary maker - weaving autobiography, insight and meaning on the page as he has on the stage for four decades.
Jill Sonke (she, her) Director, Center for the Arts in Medicine, University of Florida College of the Arts and Asst. Director, Shands Arts in Medicine
Reading The Choreography of Care is like sitting in SPDT’s own magic circle. As dexterous in his writing as in his dancing, Stuart leads us through the decades of partnering with caregivers to reveal the connection between creative expression and healing. In these profound pages Stuart provides techniques for how we might all increase our empathic capacity – which we need now more than ever. By expertly exploring the potent power of movement, touch, and storytelling, Stuart touches us with the power of his own personal story and offers an intimate visceral look at how we might access our full potential through creative expression. The future of healthcare – and of healing – lies within these pages.
Liz Engelman, is the Director of Tofte Lake Center, and works nationally as a dramaturg on the development of new work.
As a dancer and choreographer, Stuart Pimsler summons entire worlds from his body. His dance theater works incorporate everything from the tradition of Jewish stand-up comedians like his cousin, Red Buttons, to poignant works about love and loss, to deep dives into social and political unrest. Not content with merely taking the show on the road, Pimsler and his partner Suzanne Costello brought their creative methods and theatrical vitality to the field of medicine. Through years of workshops and other interactions with medical professionals and caregivers, Pimsler has created a holistic practice that is revolutionizing the way health care works. This lively and readable book gives readers insight into how movement, storytelling, visual art, and writing can charge the space between healer and patient, caregiver and loved one, individual and community. Philosophers have interrogated the mind-body problem for centuries. Pimsler takes it into the realm of a fluid interplay between the two, and how that dynamism translates to healing.
Linda Shapiro is a choreographer, dance critic and fiction writer.