Emi Hatano is one of Japan's leading modern dancers, and is widely hailed as the first great modern dancer trained and educated exclusively in Japan. She is director of the renowned Emi Hatano Creative Modern Dance Studio and Company, and Associate Professor of Modern Dance at Nippon University in Tokyo. There, she instructs dancers, drama students, and future teachers. In this, Professor Hatano's first book, she investigates the creation of dance, independent of music or story -- and shows dance to be a pure force in itself. Treating it in this way strengthens the whole dance when it is accompanied by music or plot line, thus showing dance movement and theory to be important studies in their own right. The Japanese language edition of this book will be published in the springtime, to coincide with the 40th anniversary of Professor Hatano's startling debut in her first creation, Spring of the Asuka Period.