Body Impossible theorizes the concept of virtuosity in contemporary dance and performance through a study of the career of dancer Desmond Richardson. Focusing on Richardson's creative insistence on improvisatory fun and excellence throughout the decades approaching the millennium (shaped by Reaganism, the Culture Wars, the AIDS epidemic, the New Jim Crow, and MTV), this book brings dance into conversation with paradigms of blackness, queerness, masculinity, and class in order to generate a socio-culturally attentive understanding of virtuosity.
