sign in sign up
<<
Home , Alberta Ballet Company, Alonzo King LINES Ballet, American Ballet, American Ballet Theatre, American National Ballet, Ashley Bouder

Contemporary : Exchanges, Connections and Directions

Welcome

We are thrilled to welcome so many of you to this special topics conference on . Based on the overwhelming response and enthusiasm to the call for papers, it is clear that there is a need for discourse and rigorous investigation into how this moment in ballet historiography is being shaped. We began to dialogue about ‘contemporary ballet’ two years ago, while conceptualizing what would become the 2015 issue of Conversations across the Field of Studies: Network of Pointes. That effort to articulate complexities of the genre yielded many more questions and the idea to continue the “conversation” surrounding the efficacy of ballet, its history, locality, and relevancy at a conference exclusively devoted to the topic. We chose for both practical and ideological purposes. It provided willing sponsors to whom we are eternally grateful. Furthermore, New York prompts a discourse about the city’s past and present relationship to ballet histories.

In October 2015, we put forth a call for papers hoping to elicit practitioners, scholars, critics and those who work across those categories as well as in-between. Today we happily welcome over fifty presenters and ten invited speakers. The topics that surround contemporary ballet address gender, race, the choreographic form as tradition and innovation, as well as national practices and politics from the global north and south. Over the next two days, you will witness the range and breadth of scope that refreshingly confirms a new chapter is being written.

The support from our two hosts in New York City has been truly invaluable. We are grateful to ’s Center for Ballet and the Arts and , for their generosity in resources to make this event happen. Our sponsors for the two-day conference include: the Faculty of Education (), Skidmore College, the Dance Department at Loyola Marymount University (Los Angeles) and SLIPPAGE: Performance, Technology, Culture. Finally, we owe much gratitude to the Society of Dance History Scholars and its Board of Directors for the confidence to realize this event. In addition, we would like to thank Andrea Salvatore (CBA), Tricia Toliver (Barnard College, Columbia University), Thomas F. DeFrantz (Duke University), Jim Ranieri (Prime Management), Ariel Osterweis (our local arrangements chair) and Ann Cooper Albright (President of SDHS). Last but not least, our sincere appreciation to in her capacity as Artistic Advisor for the conference.

It is our hope that you will find this two-day conference as intriguing as we did during the process of curating the event.

Jill Nunes Jensen and Kathrina Farrugia-Kriel

May 20 – 21, 2016 New York City 1

Contemporary Ballet: Exchanges, Connections and Directions

Conference Committee

Artistic Advisor Lynn Garafola, Professor of Dance, Barnard College, Columbia University (New York City)

Program Chairs Jill Nunes Jensen Ph.D., Loyola Marymount University (Los Angeles) Kathrina Farrugia-Kriel, Ph.D., Faculty of Education Royal Academy of Dance ()

Local Arrangements Chair Ariel Osterweis, Ph.D., Skidmore College (New York) and Cal Arts (Los Angeles)

Invited Speakers Joshua Beamish, Choreographer and Director of Move: the company Emily Coates, Director of dance studies (Yale University) , Director and Vice Dean (USC Glorya Kaufman School of Dance) Julia Gleich, Choreographer and Director Gleich Dances, curator of CounterPointe Francesca Harper, Choreographer, performer and director Jill Johnson, Dance Director (Harvard University) Gabrielle Lamb, Choreographer, dancer and filmmaker Emery LeCrone, Choreographer, performer and teacher Helen Pickett, choreographer, educator and performer Troy Schumacher, choreographer and Director of BalletCollective

May 20 – 21, 2016 New York City 2

Contemporary Ballet: Exchanges, Connections and Directions

Friday, May 20, 2016 at NYU’s Center for Ballet and the Arts 8:00 – 9:00 Registration 9:00 – 9:10 Welcome from Conference Chairs Jill Nunes Jensen and Kathrina Farrugia-Kriel (Main Studio) PANEL 1 (9:20 – 10:50) Topic: Contemporary Narratives Moderator: Melissa Templeton Room: Main Studio Mara Mandradjieff Maguy Marin’s Posthumanist : (Sub)objectivity and Contemporary Ballet Tanya Evidente Defining Contemporary Ballet: A Study of James Kudelka's Narrative Themes, Vocabulary and Artistic Collaborations Meryl Lodge From Rags to Riches: the Cinderella Story of Contemporary Ballet in Ann Murphy Toward a Definition of Contemporary Ballet Or PANEL 2 (9:20 – 10:50) Topic: Legacies and Exchanges Moderator: Kathrina Farrugia-Kriel Room: Meeting Room 1 Molly Faulkner and Julia Gleich Contemporary Ballet is a Liminal State: Reflection and Refraction Tyler Walters Ballet Under Glass Deborah Norris Exploring the Choreographic Work of : A Matriarch of British Contemporary Ballet in the 21st Century Jessica Maria MacFarlane Reread, Rewrite, Rewire: Connecting Female Writers and Choreographers in Contemporary Ballet Or PANEL 3 (9:20 – 10:50) Topic: Pedagogy and Training (Roundtable) Moderator: Rachel Strauss Room: Meeting Room 2 Paige Caldarella Emily Stein Iyun Harrison Bruce McCormick

10:50 – 11:10 Break Plenary Session (11:10– 12:15) Topic: Contemporary Ballet, Women, and Institutions Moderator: Jill Nunes Jensen Room: Main Studio Guest Speakers: Emily Coates, Jodie Gates, and Jill Johnson

12:15 – 1:45 Lunch on your own

May 20 – 21, 2016 New York City 3

Contemporary Ballet: Exchanges, Connections and Directions

PANEL 4 (1:45– 3:15) Topic: International Voices Moderator: Professor Thomas DeFrantz Room: Main Studio Anjali Austin Perspectives of an American Artist: The Auto-Ethnographic Chronicles of an African-American Classical Kathrina Farrugia-Kriel Negotiating Alterity and Hybridity: Mauro Bigonzetti’s Contemporization of Ballet Kylie Radford From “Burudani” to Making Impact: Insights and Perceptions of a French Artistic Director’s Journey with the Uganda National Contemporary Ballet Elisa Davis Contemporary Ballet Going Gaga Or PANEL 5 (1:45– 3:15) Topic: Historical Structures and Organizations Moderator: Lise Uytterhoeven Room: Meeting Room 1 Joellen Meglin A Thought Experiment: Against Artistic Monopolies in Ballet Caroline Sutton Clark Groovy Bodies: The 1970s and Contemporizing Ballet Henrique Rochelle Ballet as an Imported Tradition and its Current Uses by Brazilian Dance Companies Lester Tomé Cuban Dancers’ Global Careers, Brain Drain and Brain Gain: Contesting Paradigms of Labor Circulation in Contemporary Ballet Or PANEL 6 (1:45– 3:15) Topic: Recirculating Classical Forms (Organized Panel) Moderator: Hanna Järvinen Room: Meeting Room 2 Rebecca Chaleff Choreographing Alterities: The Imperial Politics of Julian Carter Contemporary Performances of : Race and Whiteness Michelle LaVigne The Persistence of Classical Form: Repetitions of in Contemporary Ballet Culture VK Preston Dance Archaeology: Dancing Deep Diaspora 3:15 – 3:35 Break PANEL 7 (3:35 – 5:20) Topic: (In)Forming Ballet Bodies Moderator: Jill Nunes Jensen Room: Main Studio Roger Copeland Ballet, and the Contemporary Ann Nugent The Forsythescape: A Cumulative Force Rachel Strauss Form, Abstraction, and the Apollonian in Contemporary Ballet, with Reference to the Work of Pam Tanowitz Ariel Osterweis with Christina Johnson Complexions Contemporary Ballet and the Nuances of TechNIQUE: Race, Gender, Hybridity

May 20 – 21, 2016 New York City 4

Contemporary Ballet: Exchanges, Connections and Directions

Or PANEL 8 (3:35 – 5:20) Topic: Global Connections (1) Moderator: VK Preston Room: Meeting Room 1 Ruth Helier-Tinoco Contemporary Ballet in City: Opus Ballet, Ricardo Domingo and La Técnica Domingo Yuma Ochi Emergence of Contemporary Ballet in the Ballet de l’Opéra de : On the Intervention of Jérôme Bel Samantha Parsons Stripping the Covers of the Body Politic Jennifer Fisher Ballet is Still an Ethnic Dance Form Or PANEL 9 (3:35 – 5:20) Topic: Exchanges, Connections and Directions Moderator: Lester Tomé Room: Meeting Room 2 Barbara Dickinson Ballet, logos and Contemporary Directions Janet Werther Queer Women in Contemporary Ballet Caroline O’Brien Contemporary Ballet Costumes Julie Janus Walters Intelligence in Motion Cadence Whittier Cultivating a Contemporary Approach in Ballet Class

5.30 End of Conference Day 1

May 20 – 21, 2016 New York City 5

Contemporary Ballet: Exchanges, Connections and Directions

Saturday, May 22, 2016 at the Julius S. Held Lecture Hall 304 Barnard Hall 8:00 – 9:00 Registration and Breakfast 9:00 Welcome from Conference Chairs and Professor Katie Glasner PANEL 1 (9:10 – 10:40) Topic: Contemporary Partnerships Moderator: Ann Nugent Daniel Callahan American Accents in Copland’s Corral: Choreomusicality and Intersectionality in and 'Rōdē,ō Russell Janzen The Limits of Ballet: Conversations About Gender Presentation in a Physical Art Kyle Bukhari Rupturing the Present: Space, Figure and Text in Michael Clark and Charles Atlas' animal/mineral/vegetable (2013) Jill Nunes Jensen ThroughLINES Revisited 10:40 – 11:00 Break PANEL 2 (11:00 – 12:30) Topic: Global Connections (2) Moderator: Ariel Osterweis Thomas F. DeFrantz The Race of Contemporary Ballet: Interpellations of Africanist Aesthetics Melissa Templeton What Gets Lost in the Word “Contemporary?” From Imperialism to Globalization and the Africanist Aesthetic in Canadian Ballet Laura Cappelle Bridging Past and Present: A Hybrid Creation for the Bolshoi Lise Uytterhoeven A New Artistic Leadership for Royal Ballet Flanders: Trust, Renewal and Gentle Transformation 12:30 – 1:45 Lunch on your own Plenary Session (2:00 – 3:00) Topic: Contemporary Ballet, Women and/as Choreographers Moderator: Professor Lynn Garafola Invited Speakers: Julia Gleich, Francesca Harper, Gabrielle Lamb, Helen Pickett 3:00 – 3:15 Break PANEL 3 (3:15 – 4:45) Topic: (Re)Viewing Ballet Moderator: Jill Nunes Jensen Hanna Järvinen What Is “Contemporary” Anyway? (2016) Carrie Gaiser Casey The Gesture of Memorial: Ratmansky, Shostakovich, and the Chamber Symphony Juliet Bellow Curating Ballet Tanya Wideman-Davis Dance Theatre of : Radical Black Female Bodies in Ballet

PANEL 4 (4:45 – 5:45) Topic: Emerging Choreographers Moderator: Kathrina Farrugia-Kriel Invited Speakers: Joshua Beamish, Emery LeCrone, and Troy Schumacher 6:00 Closing Remarks Artistic Advisor Lynn Garafola

May 20 – 21, 2016 New York City 6

Contemporary Ballet: Exchanges, Connections and Directions

Artistic Advisor

Lynn Garafola is a Professor of Dance at Barnard College, Columbia University, in New York City. A dance historian and critic, she is the author of Diaghilev's Russes and Legacies of Twentieth-Century Dance, and the editor of several books, including The Diaries of (which she also translated), André Levinson on Dance: Writings from Paris in the Twenties (with Joan Acocella); Rethinking the Sylph: New Perspectives on the ; José Limón: An Unfinished Memoir, and The and Its World. She has curated several exhibitions, including Dance for a City: Fifty Years of the (at the New-York State Historical Society); 500 Years of Italian Dance: Treasures from the Cia Fornaroli Collection (with Patrizia Veroli), New York Story: and His World, and Diaghilev’s Theater of Marvels: The Ballets Russes and Its Aftermath (all at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts). A member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, she is a former Getty Scholar and a recipient of fellowships from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, Social Science Research Council, and National Endowment for the Humanties. Editor for several years of the book series Studies in Dance History, she has written for Dance Magazine, , Dance Research, The Nation, Times Literary Supplement, and many other publications. A member of Columbia University’s Harriman Institute and the organizer of conferences, symposia, and public programs on the and twentieth-century dance generally, she is currently working on a book about the choreographer .

Invited Speakers

Joshua Beamish founded MOVE:the company in 2005 and his works have since extensively toured throughout North America, Europe, Asia and Africa. Outside of the company, he has created in collaboration with , New York City Ballet Principals for Restless Creature and for The Ashley Bourder Project, Principals Carla Korbes and Lindsi Dec, Company dancer Lloyd Knight, The National Ballet of Canada’s YOUdance, Compania Nacional de Danza de Mexico, Cape Dance Company/South African, the Royal Ballet for Pierced, Dance Theatre, Ballet Kelowna, Sylvain Brochu, the Universieiteis of Alberta and Missouri, students at Purchase College at SUNY and The Julliard, Ballet Kelowna, Coriolus Dance, Le Prisme Culturel, Halifax Dance, Ballet Jorgen and Kansas City’s Wylliams/Henry Contemporary Dance, among others. Joshua is the recipient of artistic residences throughout North America, including the Banff Centre, Jacob’s Pillo and a term as the National Incubator Artist for the American Dance Institute in Washington, D.C. He is an alumni of the New York Choreographic Institute, an affiliate organization of the New York City Ballet and the School of and a Jerome Robbins Foundation grantee. Joshua is a current member of the The ’s Young Leader’s Circle Committee. http://joshuabeamish.com

May 20 – 21, 2016 New York City 7

Contemporary Ballet: Exchanges, Connections and Directions

Emily Coates has directed the Dance Studies curriculum at Yale University since its inception in 2006. A recipient of the Poorvu Family Award for Interdisciplinary Teaching, she teaches dance in dialogue with theater, film, visual art, and physics, for Theater Studies and the Yale School of Drama. She has performed internationally with New York City Ballet (NYCB), ’s White Oak Dance Project, , and Yvonne Rainer. Career highlights include dancing three duets with Baryshnikov, in works by Mark Morris, , and . She was among the last generation of NYCB dancers to work closely with Jerome Robbins. She has presented her solo and collaborative creations at Danspace Project at St. Mark’s Church, Baryshnikov Arts Center, Zankel Hall, Harvard, Cornell, Brown, in the Movement Research Fall Festival and Performa Biennial, and created new work for , among other venues. Her essays have appeared in PAJ, Theater, and The Huffington Post. With particle physicist Sarah Demers, she is currently co-writing a book on physics and dance forthcoming from Yale University Press, with support from an Alfred P. Sloan Foundation grant for Public Understanding of Science, Technology, and Economics. Their science-art video Three Views of the Higgs and Dance, funded by the Arts Council of Greater New Haven, premiered in 2013. She graduated magna cum laude with a B.A. in English and holds an M.A. in American Studies from Yale.

Jodie Gates has established a remarkable career in the field of dance for over thirty- five years, she is an experienced educator, director, choreographer, producer and former leading dancer. Currently Ms. Gates is Vice Dean and Director of the Glorya Kaufman School of Dance at the University of Southern California. Under her direction, the dance school hosts a revolutionary new professional degree for dance performance, choreography and scholarship. She danced as a principal ballerina with the , Frankfurt Ballet, and , and an international guest artist. She has been teaching for over twenty years including as a guest master teacher for professional companies worldwide and as a Professor of Dance at the University of California, Irvine. Ms. Gates has choreographed over sixty original dance works. Her work has been called “visually compelling, powerful, beautiful,” by the Philadelphia Inquirer and “richly textured and profound,” by the Orange County Register. She has created works for companies such as , Ballet, Staatsballett , , Complexions Contemporary Ballet, , BalletX, Washington Ballet, and Cedar Lake Contemporary Ballet. She is also responsible for staging William Forsythe’s ballets, including productions at Paris Ballet, Ballet, Prague National Theater, Zurich Opera Ballet and Teatro La Scala, among others. Her honors include the American Ballet Theater/Altria Choreography Fellow, a recipient of Jerome Robbins ‘New Essential Works Program’ and honored by the American Association of University Women for her achievement in the arts. Jodie is also the founding director of the award winning Laguna Dance Festival in Southern California.

May 20 – 21, 2016 New York City 8

Contemporary Ballet: Exchanges, Connections and Directions

Julia Gleich is a choreographer, teacher, scholar and mathematics aficionado. Gleich’s early training includes the School of American Ballet and with , Robert Denvers, David Howard, and later, Peff Modelski. She also studied at the Limón Institute and Cunningham Studio. Gleich danced in regional ballet and companies across the US and was a Ballet Mistress for Utah Ballet and Ballet West. She has been on faculties of the Ballet Department and Manhattanville College and Molloy College in New York. Gleich is on faculty at Trinity LABAN Conservatoire of Music and Dance(London,UK) and is Head of Choreography at and frequently teaches at Peridance. Gleich earned an MFA from the University of Utah and MA from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She was on the Board of Directors for the American Dance Guild and has been a project evaluator for the Queens Council on the Arts, the Wisconsin Arts Council, and the Arts and Humanities Research Council, UK. She is interested in collaboration, illuminating the relationships between the traditional and the contemporary, and scrapping aesthetic labels. Gleich’s work has received critical acclaim in , DanceInsider, Village Voice, The New Criterion, The Brooklyn Rail, among others. She is founding choreographer and director of Gleich Dances, which began as A Coterie of Dancers in 1993 in Jackson Hole (WY), and later became Gleich Dances in 1995. Gleich Dances enjoyed two seasons produced by NYC’s JoyceSoHo (’01, ’03). The company has been seen throughout the and in the UK. In 2004, Ms. Gleich with Jason Andrew founded Norte Maar for Collaborative Projects in the Arts with a mission to renew and refresh the exchange between the interdisciplinary arts. Gleich is also a founder and director of Aegis Live Arts (www.nortemaar.org/nmpresents/aegis.html), creating unique locational dance works that enliven history and architecture in London. Gleich’s site specific dance works include performances in drained pools, on piers, in train stations and an annual stint in the Walmart parking lot in Plattsburgh, NY (’04, ’05, ’06,’07). She was commissioned to create a site-specific work for the opening of St. Pancras International train station in 2007. She has collaborated with composers, musicians, designers, directors and writers and welcomes new ideas to challenge her own aesthetic. www.gleichdances.org

Francesca Harper Francesca Harper is an internationally acclaimed choreographer, and Broadway performer. She was named U.S. Presidential Scholar in the Arts and performed at the in 1987. Harper became a with the Dance Theater of Harlem, and spent several years as a principal in William Forsythe’s Ballet Frankfurt. Her artistry led to Broadway performances in Fosse, The Producers, All Shook Up, The Frogs and Tony nominated treasure The Color Purple. Francesca performed in national tours of Sweet Charity and Sophisticated Ladies. She has choreographed for the American Dance Theater, Ailey II, Tanz Graz, Hubbard Street II and the Dallas Black Dance Theater. Her company, The Francesca Harper Project, performs her original choreographer of contemporary and . Franc’s television appearances include performances on Boardwalk Empire, David Letterman and Te Oprah Winfrey Show. She was a ballet consultatnt for Darren

May 20 – 21, 2016 New York City 9

Contemporary Ballet: Exchanges, Connections and Directions

Aronofsky’s feature film Black Swan. In 2013 she received the Louis Vuitton Innovation Award for her performance in Reconstruction 3.0, during New York Fashion Week. Long Island University honored her with a Living History Award, during Black History Month in February 2013. Francesca continues to be a featured performer in Zinnias – The Life of Clementine Hunter, an opera directed by Robert Wilson. http://www.francescaharper.com/index.html

Jill Johnson is 27-year veteran of the dance field, has appeared in over 50 tours and taught for dance companies and colleges on five continents. An honors graduate of the National Ballet School, she was a soloist with The National Ballet of Canada and and researcher with Ballet Frankfurt. A protégé and 24-year close collaborator of choreographer William Forsythe, she stages and produces Forsythe's ballets on companies worldwide, including The Ballet, La Scala, The Norwegian National Ballet, Alterballetto, Netherlands Dans Theater, , , The National Ballet of Canada, Pacific Northwest Ballet, Batsheva Dance Company, , and Ballet. Her choreographic work includes The Copier for Cedar Lake Contemporary Ballet; Room/Room for NYU, and 27 for 17 for The New School University; As Yet Unnamed for the Movement Invention Project Collective; Folding Articulation for Princeton University, Waterline for Barnard College at Columbia University, and Solo for Jeff for The . She also choreographs for film and television, notably a series of dance film shorts for Bravo arts channel in Canada, is a featured performer in Forsythe's Clear House Dance, and music videos for German techno artist Sven Vaeth and American singer-songwriter David Poe. Recent artistic residencies include a The New School University, and at the Baryshnikov Arts Center in New York City where she also collaborated with Mikhail Baryshnikov and William Forsythe on a solo for Mr. Baryshnikov. She has served as a faculty member and designed curricula for Princeton University, Barnard College at Columbia University, The Juilliard School, New York University's Tisch School of the Arts, The Joffrey School, The New School University, and The Ailey School, and is a founding collaborator of the Movement Invention Project (MIP) in New York where she has also been Choreographer-In-Residence. Ms. Johnson serves as an artistic advisor to former New York City Ballet principal dancer Wendy Whelan, on Whelan's new solo project Restless Creature; with Slow Dancing filmmaker David Michalek in a film for fashion designer Dries Van Noten at the Louvre’s Musee des Arts Decoratifs. She recently worked on an evening-length work in collaboration with Francesca Harper, Mario Zambrano, and the Harvard Dance Project, premiering April 14-17, 2016, at Harvard's Farkas Hall. http://ofa.fas.harvard.edu/people/jill-johnson

Gabrielle Lamb A daughter of the American South, Gabrielle Lamb grew up amidst the crumbling mansions and live oaks of Savannah, Georgia. Her career choice made at the age of five, she left home at fifteen to study at the School. At 16 she declined admission to Harvard University in order to search for her artistic home, a quest which led her all the way across the United States with stops along the way to dance with the Boston and Cleveland Ballets. In the Czech Republic, she performed

May 20 – 21, 2016 New York City 10

Contemporary Ballet: Exchanges, Connections and Directions as a soloist on the stage of the Prague State Opera. Finnish National Ballet, where she remained for three years as a soloist. During her years as a soloist in Les Grands Ballets Canadiens de Montreal she worked closely with some of today`s finest choreographers, including Mats Ek, Ohad Naharin, and Shen Wei, to name only a few; and she performed featured roles on stages across the world: Berlin, , Madrid, Sao Paolo, Mexico City, Vancouver, Toronto, Los Angeles, and New York. She was a winner of the 2009 National Choreographic Competition of Hubbard Street Dance ; and her dance works for stage and screen have been presented by Hubbard Street 2, The , Les Grands Ballets Canadiens, Jacob's Pillow, the , BalletX, , Ballet Memphis, Dance on Camera at , and the American Dance Festival. Her dance-film work has also screened on the Bravo and ARTV networks (Canada) as well as at dance film festivals in , Belgium, , , and Japan. In 2013 Ms. Lamb was the Grand Prize winner of both the Genesis International Choreographic Competition at Milwaukee Ballet and the National Choreographic Competition of Western Michigan University. In 2014 she was selected as a Choreography Fellow. She is also the winner of the Banff Centre's 2014-15 Clifford E. Lee Choreography Award and a 2014 Princess Grace Award for Choreography. http://www.gabriellelamb.com

Emery LeCrone is an American choreographer whose highly acclaimed work has garnered numerous commissions. Hailed by The New York Times as “inventive…a ready for primetime knockout” and by the New Yorker as “ambitious…expansive, and dynamic,” LeCrone continues to push the boundaries as an emerging female choreographer of her generation.” The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum’s esteemed Works & Process series has twice commissioned evenings dedicated to LeCrone’s choreography. Her most recent 2014 Guggenheim program featured dancers from New York City Ballet and American Ballet Theatre and new costumes by famed fashion designer Yigal Azrouël. LeCrone has created new pieces for Colorado Ballet, St. Louis Ballet, North Carolina Dance Theatre, and Minnesota Dance Theatre among others. She has received a 2010 New Essential Works (NEW) Grant to support the development and creation of her work Divergence for and is a 2011 New York City Center Choreography Fellowship recipient. LeCrone has choreographed for The New York City Ballet’s New York Choreographic Institute, The National Choreographers Initiative, Ballet Builders, and The A.W.A.R.D Show!, as well as created new ballets for the Juilliard School’s New Dances, Barnard College, Columbia University, University of North Carolina School of the Arts, Goucher College, and The Hartt School, among many others. Currently LeCrone resides in New York where she continues to perform, teach, and choreograph. In 2013 she founded her own company, Emery LeCrone Dance, with the goal of providing a home for the creation of her new dance pieces and an environment in which to preserve her past repertory. http://emerylecrone.com/web/

May 20 – 21, 2016 New York City 11

Contemporary Ballet: Exchanges, Connections and Directions

Helen Pickett studied dance in her hometown San Diego and at the School under the direction of and , and Helgi Tomasson. 2015 marks 10 years for Helen as a choreographer, creating over 30 ballets in the U.S. and Europe. In 2005, Helen received her first choreographic commission from Boston Ballet. The New York Choreographic Institute awarded her a Fellowship Initiative Grant in 2006. In 2007, Dance Magazine named Helen one of 25 to Watch. She received a Choreographic Residency from Jacob’s Pillow in 2008. Helen was one of the first choreographers to receive the Jerome Robbins Foundation’s New Essential Works Grant. In the same year and through 2008, Helen choreographed for Boston Ballet, Washington Ballet, , and Ballet X. From 2009 through 2011, Helen created new ballets for Royal Ballet of Flanders, Ballet West, Boston Ballet, Aspen Santa Fe Ballet, Ballet, and Dance Theatre of Harlem. In the 2012/2013 season, her commissions included Semper Oper/Dresden Ballet, State Opera, Scottish Ballet, , and Smuin Ballet. Since 2012, Helen has been Resident Choreographer for Atlanta Ballet. 2014-2018, her commissions include: Les Troyens, Opera by Hector Berlioz, Chicago Lyric Opera, Ballet West, Kansas City Ballet, Oregon Ballet Theater, Scottish Ballet (NEW full-length, with NEW music from Peter Salem, Designs, Lez Botherston), Smuin Ballet and Tulsa Ballet. She was nominated for an Isadora Duncan Dance award in 2013. In 2014, she was named Best Choreographer in Atlanta for her ballet, The Exiled. Helen premiered her first full-length ballet, Camino Real, by Tennessee Williams. She is the WINNER of the Best choreographer and Best Dance Production of Atlanta in 2015. In 2005, Helen returned to the speaking role, Agnes, as a guest artist with The Royal Ballet of Flanders, in William Forsythe’s Impressing the Czar. In 2009, Impressing the Czar received the Laurence Olivier Award, and in 2012, the Prix de la Critique award for outstanding performance of the year. Helen created a choreographic intensive for college age choreographers entitled, Choreographic Essentials, and a motivational creative workshop entitled The Expansive Artist. In addition, she has teaches Forsythe Improvisation Technologies throughout the United States. In 2006, Dance Europe published Helen’s article, Considering Cezanne. In 2012, Emory University published her writing for the Vulnerability and the Human Condition Initiative, director Martha Fineman, that appeared on the Emory University School of Law website. In 2011, Helen earned a Master of Fine Arts in Dance from Hollins University. For her Master’s Thesis, she collaborated with sound and light architect Christopher Janney. http://www.helenpickett.com/index.html

Troy Schumacher formed BalletCollective as a twenty-first century model inspired by historic ballet, music and visual art collaborative efforts. Its mission is to present ballet-based work in an intimate setting with live music that represents contributions from the choreographer, dancers, musicians and artists who engage in an ongoing give and take process. Schumacher has received choreographic commissions from New York City Ballet, Danspace Project, the 92nd Street Y Fridays at Noon series, Performa, School of American Ballet, New York Choreographic Institute, Salon/Sanctuary, and Atlanta Ballet. Schumacher is active in other cultural media and has participated in a number of collaborations including Carine Roitfeld’s

May 20 – 21, 2016 New York City 12

Contemporary Ballet: Exchanges, Connections and Directions

CR Fashion Book, Aritzia and Creative Agency V Group’s Zero Zero Project, Sony PlayStation, and a recent photo spread in The New York Times Men Style Magazine. As a dancer with the New York City Ballet, Schumacher has performed principal roles in several ballets, including ’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Stars and Stripes, ’ , and Jerome Robbins’ . Schumacher choreographed and premiered his first ballet commissioned by the New York City Ballet in 2014 to critical acclaim, featuring music by Judd Greenstein and costumes by Thom Browne, and choreographed a new premiere for the Company in September, 2015 featuring a new score by Ellis Ludwig-Leone. http://balletcollective.com/about/

May 20 – 21, 2016 New York City 13

Contemporary Ballet: Exchanges, Connections and Directions

Presenters’ Abstracts and Biographies Friday May 20, 2016

Panel 1 Mara Mandradjieff Maguy Marin’s Posthumanist Cinderella: (Sub)objectivity and Contemporary Ballet Some scholars critique the ballet body as anti-feminist; they examine the historic, cultural, and institutionalized pressures conditioning female dancers into a specific shape, weight, and aesthetic. However, in a posthuman era, one finds alternative body possibilities with space to challenge this status quo. Maguy Marin’s Cinderella, choreographed for the Lyons Opera Ballet, exemplifies this potential, and therefore, represents an important moment in contemporary ballet history. Marin ironically critiques the objectification of ballet bodies by further objectifying them into living dolls. Yet, within a posthuman world, where objects assume agency and human subjectivity is de-centered or complicated, one must reconsider what it means to objectify a human body. In other words, I argue by hyper-objectifying, making the dancers’ “thingness” evident, Marin not only critiques the use and display of the performing body, she questions its possible agency through a posthuman reality. This approach demonstrates fascinating ways contemporary ballet has, and can, dispute classical and body expectations.

Mara Mandradjieff trained at schools such as and The School of American Ballet. She later danced professionally with Bodiography Contemporary Ballet, Columbus Dance Theatre, Texture Contemporary Ballet, and The Georgia Ballet. Mara received her bachelors and masters at the University of Pittsburgh, where she eventually choreographed and taught as a part-time faculty member, in addition to her involvement with Point Park University. Currently, Mara teaches at both Emory University and Kennesaw State University, while pursuing her Ph.D. in Dance at Woman’s University and running her non-profit organization Lume Foundation that brings dance into healthcare facilities.

Tanya Evidente Defining Contemporary Ballet: A Study of James Kudelka's Narrative Themes, Vocabulary and Artistic Collaborations The National Ballet of Canada has the largest number of choreographic works created by its former artistic director, James Kudelka. Kudelka trained at Canada’s National Ballet School and danced professionally with the National Ballet of Canada and Les Grands Ballets Canadiens. He became the first ‘homegrown’ director of the National Ballet of Canada who’s mastery of both classical and modern/contemporary works have earned him commissions from major ballet companies throughout North America: San Francisco Ballet, American Ballet Theatre, Boston Ballet, Ballet, Ballet Met among others. This paper will discuss Kudelka’s significant contribution to the history of ballet in Canada and how his works have come to define contemporary ballet in Canada and beyond its borders. It is part of a larger research project that seeks to create an archival record

May 20 – 21, 2016 New York City 14

Contemporary Ballet: Exchanges, Connections and Directions of his work both at home and internationally and to contribute to the discussion around how we talk about contemporary ballet in Canada. Kudelka’s narrative themes, rich technical vocabulary of movement and strong emphasis on artistic collaboration with dancers, designers and musicians are all crucial factors of his creative process and integral to the legacy of his contribution to the world of ballet. His work continues to influence contemporary ballet repertoire both in Canada and the U.S and would carry substantial weight in conversations about the genre.

Tanya Evidente received her M.A. in dance at York University and is an Assistant Professor of Dance at Ryerson University Theatre School. She began her formal ballet training at Canada’s National Ballet School and Prodanza in , . Tanya danced professionally with La Joven Guardia and Ballet Nacional de Cuba under artistic director and continued to dance in Europe with Ballet de Ciutat de Barcelona and in Toronto with Ballet Jorgen. She was an artist with the National Ballet of Canada for over a decade under former artistic director James Kudelka and Karen Kain.

Meryl Lodge From Rags to Riches: the Cinderella Story of Contemporary Ballet in South Africa This paper argues that contemporary ballet is not only delineated by aesthetics and artistry but can be thought of as a relational category produced by the market demands and business orientations of late capitalism. By considering contemporary ballet as a political, cultural, and economic object as well as an artistic practice, we expand the scope of ballet innovation outside its traditional locales in the West to include new centers of ballet in the Global South such as South Africa, where culturally and economically adaptive forms of ballet are thriving. Using ethnographic evidence from fourteen months of fieldwork in the South African ballet community as a starting point for this re-orientation, the paper focuses on the labor practices and production processes of the mounting of a 2015 “Africanized” Cinderella. The Cinderella production demonstrates how South African contemporary ballet links dancers’ “labor of love” with changing regimes of work and the enmeshment of ballet with well-worn colonial pathways. My argument is not to dispute the historicity of contemporary ballet. Rather, the paper considers contemporary ballet, especially as it emerges from the Global South, as a complex category of dance that works in conjunction with the politico-economic regimes of work of its time.

Meryl Lauer Lodge is a Ph.D. candidate in anthropology at University of Minnesota and a Mellon fellow at Minnesota’s Interdisciplinary Center for the study of Global Change. She has previously been a visiting fellow at the Centre for Humanities Research at University of Western Cape and a visiting researcher at the University of Witwatersrand. She holds a B.A. from Barnard College. Currently, Meryl is writing her dissertation, “Performances of Privilege: The Practice of Politics in South African Ballet.” Drawing from critical race theory, postcolonial studies, dance studies, and anthropology, her work tracks political and dancing bodies from studio to stage.

May 20 – 21, 2016 New York City 15

Contemporary Ballet: Exchanges, Connections and Directions

Ann Murphy Toward a Definition of Contemporary Ballet If we are to truly begin to understand the borders of contemporary ballet, we need to understand its relationship to the edges of contemporary dance from which it borrows strategies, language, and inspiration. We also need to answer a host of questions. For instance, is the experimental edge of contemporary ballet driving ballet? If not, what is? And if contemporary ballet can graft new language onto older structures, how are these dances significantly different from the dances of modern/contemporary dancemakers who were classically trained? What do we learn about contemporary ballet from choreographers who found their artistic home in the more open-ended space of contemporary dance and dance/theater, despite training in classical dance? Could that work now sit on stages and find a receptive audience, or would it still be out of place?

Ann Murphy is Assistant Professor and current Chair of the Mills College Dance Department, San Francisco. Her chapter “Bill Robinson and Shirley Temple Tap Past Jim Crow” will appear in the Oxford Anthology of Screendance Studies, out in spring 2015. She also recently contributed to and co-edited Rhythm Field: The Dance of Molissa Fenley, a collection by fellow artists about the 25-year career of the choreographer and dancer. The volume is due to be published by Seagull Press this spring. Murphy, a dance critic in the Bay Area for over 20 years, writes for the Bay Area News Group.

Panel 2 Molly Faulkner and Julia Gleich Contemporary Ballet is a Liminal State: Reflection and Refraction This presentation looks at the liminal nomenclature to describe ballet innovators and rebels whose ideas were shocking by simply NOT being classical. Balanchine knocked dancers off balance, valued movement for movement’s sake and his work became neo-classic, Nijinska explored social relationships and ritual, utilizing Fokine’s ideas of creating movement outside the classical vocabulary to help tell a story, and her work became modern. And Armitage cut her hair (an act of rebellion as a woman in the ballet world), referenced classical ballet with wit, and her work became post-modern before landing squarely in what she herself calls contemporary ballet. This journey through contemporary ballet is not yet finished; there is a rich, volatile, state betwixt and between classroom training and performance in which world of ballet becomes personal. Where ballet training fights with itself, living between the codified classical and the not fully realized contemporary. Have we hung on to strongly to the classical ideas and lost sight of what is happening on stage? Is the role of contemporary ballet choreographers to refract ? Deliberately tackling the taboos, commonizing the myths, and de- classifying the secrets of ballet? Once refracted, then what? For contemporary can’t stay contemporary forever. ... Or can it?

May 20 – 21, 2016 New York City 16

Contemporary Ballet: Exchanges, Connections and Directions

Molly Faulkner, Ph.D. is a Professor of Dance and former Chair of Performing Arts at Palomar College in San Marcos, California. She is a master teacher and choreographer for Burklyn Ballet in Vermont, and a board member International. She had danced professionally for , Arizona Dance Theatre, Sesame Street Live (Grover), Tokyo Disneyland, and on the ABC Television Series Young Riders. Her research interests include educational leadership, feminist pedagogy in ballet, and comedy in dance.

Julia K. Gleich MFA, MA is Head of Choreography at London Studio Centre, technique faculty of Trinity Laban, and Artistic Director/Choreographer of Gleich Dances. As a Director of Norte Maar in NYC she produces annually CounterPointe, a program of women making work for pointe NY/London. Her research on vector movement theories is published in the Dynamic Body in Space. She was external examiner for Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts. Awards include: Vector Solo, an official selection of the Philadelphia Dancescrecen Festival 2016, Choreographic Observership from DanceUK in 2016, and Distinguished Alumna Award by the University of Utah 2014.

Tyler Walters Ballet Under Glass The designation “contemporary ballet” suggests competing notions of the historical and the present day. How can contemporary ballet convey the aesthetic traditions of the form and yet remain current in our post-everything, information era? While all contemporary ballets, by definition, address this issue implicitly, much of my own choreography is explicit about the tensions between these two concepts. This paper will analyze a work that I am currently developing – a site specific performance entitled Ballet Under Glass: Specimens. The performance/installation will be a collaboration between myself as choreographer, professional dancers from , a composer/musician and a visual artist, incorporating projected media and an original score. The central metaphor of the work will explore ballet’s ability to adapt and renew, in contrast with Jennifer Homans’ contention that ballet is a dying art. It will also examine certain conventions common to both traditional and contemporary ballet including the enduring conventions of the , and the persistent imager of dancers as super-human, sub-human, non-human creatures that denies the basic humanity of the performers. Presented in a public space, it will challenge the standard theatrical audience/performer relationship and encourage the viewer to take a closer look.

Tyler Walters is Associate Professor of the Practice of Ballet at Duke University and Director of the Carolina Ballet Summer Intensive. A leading dancer with the Joffrey Ballet in the 1980’s and 90’s, Mr. Walters was featured in hundreds of performances across the United States and around the globe. His choreography has been recognized with a Choo-San Goh Award and a fellowship from the New York Choreographic Institute. Mr. Walters has created over 50 dances since 1996 including commissions from such companies as Oregon Ballet Theatre, Carolina Ballet, and Ballet Theatre of Chicago.

May 20 – 21, 2016 New York City 17

Contemporary Ballet: Exchanges, Connections and Directions

Deborah Norris Exploring the Choreographic Work of Cathy Marston: A Matriarch of British Contemporary Ballet in the 21st Century My research investigates questions raised, and opportunities opened up, for choreographers and dancers, pursuing contemporary approaches to classical ballet repertoire. Grounded in “respect for the playwright” Cathy Marston’s oeuvre remakes storytelling through dance, and stands out, professionally and aesthetically, in a landscape marked by the absence of female ballet choreographers. With the choreographic gender debate becoming more prolific within ballet companies, Marstons’ new production of Jane Eyre, adapted from Charlotte Bronte for , is a work of significance; a female choreographer interpreting the work of a noted female novelist, writing about an iconic heroine. I reflect on Marston’s importance, both as a female choreographer and adaptor of traditional narratives, which challenge both the capacities of dancers and choreographers, and the ‘horizons of expectation’ (Bennett, 1990: 183) of twenty-first century ballet audiences.

Deborah Norris is Lecturer in Dance at Edge Hill University. An early career researcher, Deborah has just commenced her PhD studies at Roehampton University, London, exploring 21st Century contemporary ballets’ choreographic demands on today’s dancer and the possible developments within training programmes. A graduate of , Deborah continued her training at the University College of Ripon and York St John, taking her dissertation research to New York to study the History of Tap Dance. She completed her MA in Dance Studies at De Montfort University, under the supervision of Ramsay Burt. Deborah gained a scholarship to the Jose Limon Institute of Contemporary Dance, in New York (2006).

Jessica Maria MacFarlane Reread, Rewrite, Rewire: Connecting Female Writers and Choreographers in Contemporary Ballet One of the major questions we are asking today is, how can contemporary ballet make the necessary contemporary changes for women and, overall, for all participants of dance? We can look to the sister arts for direction. As a young researcher of both art forms, I believe the literary world and the dance world are related. There are fascinating parallels between writers and choreographers; readers and dancers; novels and contemporary ballet. In this study I combine what I've discovered from literature with my questions and concerns for contemporary ballet. I've sectioned my study into five passages, each guided by one creative pair (one author, one choreographer) to decode the mysteries of “the women problem” in both fields. In 2016 the pace of equal opportunity in contemporary ballet has stalled; in many ways contemporary ballet choreographers who are women are decades behind their literary sisters. Accordingly, I aimed to connect issues of gender, literacy, resources, and publications for writers to corresponding issues for choreographers.

May 20 – 21, 2016 New York City 18

Contemporary Ballet: Exchanges, Connections and Directions

Jessica Maria MacFarlane was born and raised in Houston, TX. Initially from San Jacinto Community College-South, Jessica transferred to Texas State University where she earned a BFA (magna cum laude) in dance studies with a writing minor in May 2015. She’s passionately pursued the life of a dance researcher and historian with her extracurricular work for two undergraduate dance companies, two semesters as a ‘Writing for Dance’ Teacher’s Assistant, and as an Honors grant recipient with a dance-related undergraduate Honors thesis. Currently, Jessica is a freelance writer for Arts + Culture Texas with aspirations towards a Ph.D. in dance history.

Panel 3 (Roundtable) Pedagogy and Training: NYU’s Center for Ballet and the Arts laments on its website: “Ballet today is adrift; even when it is good…it is relegated to the margins of culture and thought of as ‘elite’ and ‘inaccessible.’ This roundtable gathers professional ballet performers and instructors to discuss the world of contemporary ballet as an intervention into the ways ballet is perceived, taught, and performed. We will specifically address the following questions: • Is contemporary ballet the answer to making ballet relatable and accessible? • What is contemporary ballet and can it inform contemporary discourses on gender, race, and sexuality? • Does contemporary ballet humanize the ballet world? • How do you teach it in the academy and what ramifications does it have on traditional ballet pedagogy? • Just as classical ballet has its various schools of training, what schools or (companies) influence contemporary ballet training methodologies?

Paige Caldarella (MFA University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign) received her B.F.A. from the Juilliard School and immediately went on to dance with Company from 2000 to 2004. Caldarella is an emerging contemporary ballet choreographer whose work explores the relationship between contemporary ballet and the array of techniques with which it intersects. She is a recipient of the Chicago Dancemakers Forum grant and was a 2012 invited choreographer for the ’s New Works Series. In 2015, Caldarella received the Teaching Excellence award at Columbia College Chicago, where she is an Associate Professor in Dance.

Emily Stein began dancing as a child in Buffalo, New York. She holds BA in Dance from the University of Iowa, and an MFA in Performance and Choreography from Smith College. In 1993, she joined Chicago's Zephyr Dance, and choreographed and performed with the company for eighteen years. She served as Associate artistic Director from 1997 to 2011. Both with Zephyr and as an independent artist, her dancing and choreography have been seen throughout the US, from Florida to Texas to New York City and Toronto. Emily has produced her choreography independently in Chicago and her work has twice been nominated for Chicago Dance Achievement/ Awards. Her current artistic work explores the

May 20 – 21, 2016 New York City 19

Contemporary Ballet: Exchanges, Connections and Directions intersections of and improvisation as processes that live in the body. While studying at the University of Iowa with Francoise Martinet, she began teaching in the university's Talented and Gifted children’s program. Before joining the faculty of the Dance Center of Columbia College, she taught ballet and modern technique at Smith College, Hampshire College, the University of and Barat College, and at a wide variety of private studios in the Chicago area. Since 1995, she has been a teaching artist in the , practicing Zephyr's collaborative model of Arts Integration. Her own dancing journey has taken her from Balanchine to Deborah Hay and everywhere in between, and she strives to use this breadth to train dancers with open minds and intelligent bodies.

Iyun Ashani Harrison is the founder and artistic director of Ashani Dances, a Baltimore-based dance company founded in 2011. Alice Kaderlan of The Seattle Times reports that, "Ashani Dances showcases an artist [Harrison] of diverse talents with sophisticated musical tastes and an understanding of how to use a bare stage to full effect." Mr. Harrison is a graduate of The Juilliard School and received his MFA from Hollins University/American Dance Festival. He has danced professionally with Dance Theatre of Harlem, of New York, Ailey II, Seattle Dance Project and National Dance Theatre Company of Jamaica. Mr. Harrison’s television credits include PBS’ Setting the Stage 2007, NBC’s 20th Hispanic Heritage Awards, PBS’ Who’s Dancin’ Now? – Arts Education in Your Community and The South Bank Show in England. Mr. Harrison has taught on the faculties of Pacific Northwest Ballet School, The Ailey School, Cornish College of the Arts, Webster University and he is currently an assistant professor of dance at Goucher College.

Bruce McCormick received his M.F.A. from the University of Washington and his B.F.A. from The Juilliard School. He performed in ten countries on four continents as a member of Les Grands Ballets Canadiens, the Bavarian State Ballet, and the Bern Ballet, where he was a soloist and . He also served as assistant artistic director of North Netherlands Dance from 2010-2012. Throughout his career, he danced works by many choreographers including George Balanchine, Stijn Celis, , , Mats Ek, William Forsythe, Jacopo Godani, Jiří Kylián, José Limón, Susan Marshall, Ohad Naharin, Marius Petipa, Twyla Tharp, and Doug Varone. In addition he assisted choreographers Karole Armitage, , Emanuel Gat, Andrea Miller, Stephen Shropshire and Medhi Walerski, among others. McCormick has presented his own work in various venues throughout the Americas and Europe. He also choreographed the opera Eugene for the Stadttheater Bern and restaged Stijn Celis’s choreography for for the Royal Danish Opera. He is currently an assistant professor at the University of Washington and also a guest rehearsal director with Ballet British Columbia.

May 20 – 21, 2016 New York City 20

Contemporary Ballet: Exchanges, Connections and Directions

Panel 4 Anjali Austin Perspectives of an American Artist: The Auto-Ethnographic Chronicles of an African-American Classical Ballet Dancer Despite continued accomplishments and recognition of achievements by African- Americans and other minorities in the United States, perceptions attached to racial stereotyping remain and influence the continued marginalization of Black ballet dancers, even in contemporary ballet. The limited inclusion of ballet dancers of color in ballet history exemplifies these archaic perspectives. This presentation explores the training and experiences of African-American ballet dancers, including issues concerning anatomical determinism and cultural perceptions, both of which contributed to and impeded the success of Black dancers’ careers in ballet. By drawing on a significant and compelling legacy – often overlooked or disregarded in dance histories – I aim to (1) openly share the unique experiences and perseverance of individuals who have worked at, and on, a superior level to gain what is often considered ‘basic’ (if not invisible) notoriety; (2) investigate the absence of these formidable artists in our ballet training centers; and (3) chart a course for correcting this imbalance by embracing the rich and full history of Black classical ballet dancers. In doing so, I seize the reigns of responsibility by illuminating my personal and professional history as a Black classical ballet artist, and offering insights for cultivating change within the field.

Anjali Austin is Associate Professor of Dance at Florida State University. Anjali is a former member of Dance Theatre of Harlem and has worked with choreographers such as , , , , and Frederick Franklin. Her performance credits include Swan Lake (Act II), Flower Festival, , , , Giselle and Frankie and Johnny. During Ms. Austin’s career she enhanced her performing and technical skills with intensive training in Pilates and is a Master Trainer in the GYROTONIC EXPANSION SYSTEM.

Kathrina Farrugia-Kriel Negotiating Alterity and Hybridity: Mauro Bigonzetti’s Contemporization of Ballet This paper bridges the writing of contemporary ballet histories and new theorizations for the proliferation of ballet scholarship, largely through connecting the disciplines of dance, literature and critical studies. Drawing upon my observations of Mauro Bigonzetti’s contemporization of ballet, I offer insights into the historical and choreographic trajectories that can be drawn from the of Italian contemporary ballet, the work of Mauro Bigonzetti and Cinderella (2015). Through the recent developments in the field of , this paper will offer insights into an application of artistic alterity and hybridity that appears as a result of the transmodern effect. The transference of transmodernism into the field of ballet studies offers an argument that is timely and necessary. In conclusion, this paper boldly proposes ways through which shards of new critical theories transfer

May 20 – 21, 2016 New York City 21

Contemporary Ballet: Exchanges, Connections and Directions effectively from the field of literature and critical studies to the field of contemporary ballet studies.

Kathrina Farrugia-Kriel is Senior Lecturer in Dance Studies (with responsibility for Research and Academic Integrity) at the Faculty of Education at the Royal Academy of Dance in London and sits on the Executive Board of the Society of Dance History Scholars (2012-2018; second term). Her scholarship on Transmodern Dance Practices is articulated through the contemporary works by Angelin Preljocaj, Mauro Bigonzetti and their re-imaginings of Bronislava Nijinska’s (1923). Dr. Farrugia-Kriel has presented at several international conferences within North America, Europe and South Africa. She curates the Guest Lecture Series at the Royal Academy of Dance and is currently on the organizing committee for the Dance Teaching in the 21st Century: Practice and Innovation taking place in Sydney (Australia) in December 2016. When time permits, she examines postgraduate dissertations at the University of Cape Town’s School of Dance as well as guest lectures at the University of Malta. Her publications include Network of Pointes (with Nunes Jensen, 2015) and articles on Yvonne Mounsey (South African Dance Journal, 2015), transmodern dance practices (forthcoming) and the legacy of Princess Natalie Poutiatine’s pioneering ballets in Malta (1930s – 1965) (forthcoming). Her work as Guest Editor for Conversations across the Field of Dance Studies: Network of Pointes with Farrugia-Kriel (2015) catalyzed the idea for the Special Topics Conference: Contemporary Ballet: Exchanges, Connections and Directions.

Kylie Radford From “Burudani” to Making Impact: Insights and Perceptions of a French Artistic Director’s Journey with the Uganda National Contemporary Ballet Within this case study I propose to give an example of how the genre of contemporary ballet is being interpreted internationally by examining the work of the Uganda National Contemporary Ballet. French choreographer and dancer Valerie Miquel began working with dancers in Uganda in 2007 after being invited to introduce them to contemporary dance by the Alliance Française and Goethe- Zentrum, both European cultural societies based in the Ugandan capital city, Kampala. Following the initial success of the group Miquel decided to stay on in Uganda and in 2009 the company became a resident performer at the National Theatre in Kampala and, crucially, changed their name to Uganda National Contemporary Ballet. The UNCB website states that they perform ‘an exciting blend of modern and traditional African dance, underscored by the structured discipline and graceful elegance of Western European classical dance’. I address the following research questions: How are UNCB interpreting and defining contemporary ballet within their work? What artistic and/or social impact does their work have when examined within a wider context? What cultural differences or challenges have they encountered and how might their work develop in the future?

Kylie Radford is currently studying part time for an MA in Education (Dance Teaching) at the Royal Academy of Dance’s Faculty of Education. Radford is also a registered RAD teacher based in London and South East England. She runs a small

May 20 – 21, 2016 New York City 22

Contemporary Ballet: Exchanges, Connections and Directions ballet school as well as being the Assistant Registrar at the Conservatoire for Dance and Drama.

Elisa Davis Contemporary Ballet Going Gaga Ohad Naharin is one of the most visible and celebrated choreographers in the field of today. Since becoming the Artistic Director of the Tel Aviv-based Batsheva Dance Company in 1990, Naharin has attracted international attention for his distinctive aesthetic, shaped by his movement language: Gaga. As “one of the most influential luminaries of contemporary dance” (Subin 2015), Naharin’s repertory is in high demand among contemporary ballet companies in the United States and Europe. I ask how Naharin’s status and Gaga’s aesthetic influence come to bear on the signifier of the contemporary with respect ballet in the globalized marketplace. Although Naharin frequently describes Gaga as a mode for undoing habits and stripping the body of limiting techniques, he has recently adjusted his rhetoric to allow for Gaga to cooperate with ballet technique as a means to revitalize ballet movement. I examine how Naharin positions Gaga as a formula for reinvigorating the genre of ballet: struggling for relevance in the wake of the contemporary demand for both choreographic virtuosity and “the new.” Specifically, I examine how the merging of Gaga with ballet articulates survival and revival as significant themes and problematics of contemporary ballet.

Elisa Davis holds a B.A. in American Studies and Dance from Barnard College and an M.A. in Performance Studies from New York University where she received the award for distinguished masters student. She is currently a PhD student in Dance Studies at Temple University studying Ohad Naharin’s movement language, Gaga, and the category of the contemporary in dance. Other research interests include globalization, the intersection between dance and politics, and the intersections between theater and dance. She currently performs with Third Rail Projects in their newest large-scale immersive theater work, The Grand Paradise running in Brooklyn, NY.

Panel 5 Joellen Meglin A Thought Experiment: Against Artistic Monopolies in Ballet In 1963, soon after the Ford Foundation announced its $7,756,00 program (worth over sixty million in 2015 dollars) to strengthen professional ballet in the United States, a storm of protest erupted in the dance community. The New York Times claimed that the program was tantamount to declaring that George Balanchine’s technique and style was “so superior to any others existing in this country that they should be developed to the virtual exclusion of all others.” Dance critics, producers, teachers, and artists of all kinds joined in the outcry. No ballet companies/schools in the Midwest received funds, and Ruth Page of Chicago, whose company had successfully toured under the auspices of Columbia Artists Management for the past

May 20 – 21, 2016 New York City 23

Contemporary Ballet: Exchanges, Connections and Directions

7 years, was totally ignored. Husband and attorney Thomas Hart Fisher prepared a civil antitrust action, complaining that the Ford Foundation was, in effect, pulverizing the competition by creating a monopoly. While the brief was never actually filed, it reflected the sentiments of the dance community at the time, and today offers a provocative perspective on how philanthropic funding patterns can work against core American values of equal opportunity. Using this case study as a starting point, I conduct a thought experiment: what might a model for inclusion of women and minorities in initiatives to develop diverse choreographic talent and ballet leadership in the future look like?

Joellen A. Meglin is co-editor of Dance Chronicle and an emeritus faculty member at Temple University, where she brought 13 doctoral students to dissertation completion. Her book-length cultural-critical study of Ruth Page’s life and choreographies is under contract with Oxford University Press. Her research articles on the ballet have been published in Dance Research (UK), Dance Research Journal, Dance Chronicle, and two Studies in Dance History monographs. Meglin has presented in Paris, London, Ghent, Tokyo, Toronto and throughout the United States. Funding for her research comes from the New York Public Library, the Newberry Library in Chicago, and Temple University.

Caroline Sutton Clark Groovy Bodies: The 1970s and Contemporizing Ballet Dance scholars such as Jennifer Homans have identified the 1970s as a “dance boom” during which ballet flourished in the United States. Yet, little to no scholarship exists making connections between ballet development and a context of changing aesthetics and attitudes about the body during this time period. In the article I authored for Network of Pointes, I focused on how a regional company in the United States in the 1970s, Austin Ballet Theatre, included a “contemporizing” of ballet in its practices. In this paper I extend the conversation to bring awareness to ballet in the context of changing socio-cultural relationships with the body in the U. S. during the 1970s. Through the specific example of Austin Ballet Theatre as a site of iteration, I propose that a contemporizing of ballet at this time navigated changing cultures of the body. To do so, I incorporate cultural studies scholar Sam Binkley’s theories exploring how textual and visual discourses of the 1970s reflect desires towards more feelings of “authenticity” and being “real” in the body. Ultimately, I argue that these body-liberating influences during the 1970s significantly shifted ballet practices and aesthetics towards the constellation of a loosely-defined genre of “contemporary ballet.”

Caroline Sutton Clark is a doctoral candidate at Texas Woman’s University. Coming from a range of experience in modern dance, butoh, ballet, and other forms of world dance, Clark received her BFA from the University of Michigan and MFA from the University of Hawaii, where she received the Carl Wolz Award for outstanding graduate student in dance and a Hawaii State Dance Council Choreographic Award. An avid oral historian, Clark’s dissertation research focuses on the monthly

May 20 – 21, 2016 New York City 24

Contemporary Ballet: Exchanges, Connections and Directions performances of Austin Ballet Theatre at a psychedelic rock and country music hall during the 1970s.

Henrique Rochelle Ballet as an Imported Tradition and its Current Uses by Brazilian Dance Companies At the moment when the first Brazilian dance companies were created (in the late 1920s and then in the 1950s), there were already multiple discussions on the need for modernizing ballet, and under that influence, Brazilian performing dance has been, since its origins, placed somewhere among classical, modern and contemporary dance. Most of the current major dance companies of the country still use Ballet, either as a vocabulary or as a technique for their creations — both of new works and of those that come from past traditions and repertories — allowing Ballet to be viewed in Brazil as a tool that articulates just a little with the historical aspect of this art form, but that still considers it a major influence, as regarding the aesthetic and technical aspects of it. From a series of opinions provided by some of the choreographers and directors of past and current Brazilian dance companies, as well as through analysis of dance history and criticism, we can suggest a specific use of ballet in Brazil that, at the same time, alludes to some of the discussions of the Contemporary Ballet as a genre, but that also eludes a progressive historical definition of it.

Henrique Rochelle is a doctoral candidate and guest lecturer at Universidade Estadual de Campinas (Brazil) from where he got his master’s degree in performing arts, and his bachelor’s degree in literary studies. He has taught classes on dance history, organized and written for international conferences, contributed to a dance encyclopedia, and has worked with dance companies as a theoretician and researcher. His doctorate is funded by FAPESP both is Brazil and for a research period in Europe at Université Paris 8 (France). Henrique Rochelle is also the author of Da Quarta Parede, a blog of dance theory, criticism and historiography.

Lester Tomé Cuban Dancers’ Global Careers, Brain Drain and Brain Gain: Contesting Paradigms of Labor Circulation in Contemporary Ballet Since the mid-1990s, high international demand for Cuban ballet dancers, combined with professional and economic factors driving migration from the island, has led a large number of these artists to work abroad. They are participants of the increasingly globalized labor market of contemporary ballet—fueled, in part, by the quest of European and North American troupes to diversify and internationalize in ways that embody multicultural cosmopolitanism. My paper analyzes this phenomenon through the lens of migration studies and, particularly, theories on South-North skilled labor flows. I conceptualize the Cuban dancers’ exodus as a form of brain drain that threatens the stability of the National Ballet of Cuba, while turning the country’s National School of Ballet into a training ground for foreign troupes. Yet, in some cases Cuba capitalizes on the diaspora of its ballet dancers, which illustrates the paradigm of brain gain in labor migration scholarship. Artists

May 20 – 21, 2016 New York City 25

Contemporary Ballet: Exchanges, Connections and Directions who work transnationally with consent of the government, such as José Carreño, and Loipa Araújo, act as a new type of cultural ambassadors for the country and articulate liaisons between the Cuban ballet and the establishment that enable enriching bidirectional exchanges.

Lester Tomé Ph.D. teaches in the Dance Department and the Latin American and Latino/a Studies Program at Smith College, as well as in the Five College Dance Department. He was a Visiting Scholar at Harvard University’s David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies (2013-14) and a National Endowment for the Humanities’ Fellow (2014-15). He is at work on a book manuscript that examines the development of ballet in Cuba as a case study of both ballet’s globalization and the cultural production of the . His articles have appeared in Dance Chronicle, Dance Research Journal of Korea, Dance Magazine and Cuba en el Ballet.

Panel 6 (Organized Panel) Rebecca Chaleff Choreographing Alterities: The Imperial Politics of Giselle This presentation/position asks how classical ballet restages the politics of imperial and commodity capitalisms and how subjects of alterity trouble this reproduction. Complicating scholarship on the that interprets ballerinas as commodified objects, I analyze the Wilis as reductive representations of alterity that dance within an anachronistic space, where choreography marks them as queer and racialized others. Considering the perspective of subaltern female performers, I ask how Romantic era ballerinas used time to perform subversion. How did technical advances re-animate her to slip the gaze of the spectator and assert herself as a thing to be reckoned with?

Rebecca Chaleff is a doctoral candidate in the department of Theater and Performance Studies at Stanford University, minoring in Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. Her dissertation analyzes how choreographic legacies function as political tools that shape temporalities, script histories, and capitalize on affect within a global marketplace. She has performed with the Merce Cunningham Dance Company Repertory Understudy Group, Douglas Dunn and Dancers, and the Dance Company, among others, and is currently a member of GERALDCASELDANCE and Molissa Fenley and Company. Rebecca’s performance reviews have been published in TDR/The Drama Review and Performance Research.

Julian Carter Contemporary Performances of The Dying Swan: Race and Whiteness In some accounts the single most performed dance in the classical repertory, The Dying Swan has recently provided the basic movement score for a number of performers working in more contemporary idioms. My presentation/paper draws from four performances, one each from Brazil, South Africa, England and the U.S., and considers the traces left by the swan's migration along the paths worn by Empire. I am especially interested in how the Fokine original supports contemporary performances of postcolonial race relations and what the

May 20 – 21, 2016 New York City 26

Contemporary Ballet: Exchanges, Connections and Directions transposition of the movement to new bodies tells us about the contemporary dance of death.

Julian Carter is Chair of Critical Studies at California College of the Arts. He is a theorist and critical historian interested in performance, race and erotic cultures. Recent essays appear in GLQ, The Transgender Studies Reader, Vol 2, TSQ: Transgender Studies Quarterly and the Oxford anthology The Makings and Meaning of Queer Dance. He is currently writing about ballet swans.

Michelle LaVigne The Persistence of Classical Form: Repetitions of The Nutcracker in Contemporary Ballet Culture The repetition of iconic dances over time points toward the persistence of cultural forms and the economy of repetition. Even in the midst of a growing and thriving contemporary ballet culture, several classical ballets fall into this category. This presentation/position is concerned with the repetition and circulation of The Nutcracker, which Jennifer Fisher claims as having “multiple personalities” (Nutcracker Nation, 3). Yet, its form and music remain mostly “fixed.” How does the multitude of these repetitions speak? What does their accumulation say about the persistence of a mutable classical form with respect to the economy of dance and the sameness of classical form within contemporary ballet culture?

Michelle LaVigne is an Associate Professor in the Department of Rhetoric and Language at the University of San Francisco, and is Director of Public Speaking. Her writing/research focuses on the intersection of dance, rhetoric, and performance. She writes about the persuasive qualities of dance movements and aesthetics, and how practices of rhetoric might be rethought from the movements of dance. In addition to speaking at national and international conferences, she has published reviews in the Quarterly Journal of Speech and Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism. She is currently working on a project about the how repetition of certain dances (The Nutcracker, Revelations, etc.) “speak” as a cultural mimetic actions.

VK Preston Dance Archaeology: Dancing Deep Diaspora This presentation/position addresses the work of dancer-choreographer Raphaëlle Delaunay. Delaunay interrogates gender and race through her powerful reanimations of dance techniques. Delving into gestural excavations and the ‘still tremor’—from butoh as well as the flickering error/excess of ballet technique— Delaunay investigates an apprehension of history traversing the body in the thinking-feeling labor of the interpreter as historiographer. Delaunay’s work activates what I am calling a deep diaspora of embodied traditions. I examine these kinesthetic acts through the soloist’s mixing of danced traditions, investigating moments ghosted from Giselle as well as the tracing of a baroque performative commons in gesture.

VK Preston is a Visiting Assistant Professor in the Department of Theatre Arts and Performance Studies at Brown University. My scholarly interests include dance

May 20 – 21, 2016 New York City 27

Contemporary Ballet: Exchanges, Connections and Directions studies, performance in the Atlantic world, and queer theory. I pursue contemporary as well as historical research, and have received an early career fellowship from the Australian Research Council’s History of Emotions project. My co-authored TDR essay on choreographer Dave St-Pierre, “Tendering the Flesh: the ABCs of Dave St-Pierre’s Contemporary Utopias” won the 2013 Richard Plant award for best article from the Canadian Association for Theatre Research. I recently completed a Ph.D. at Stanford University and SSHRC postdoctoral fellowship at McGill.

Panel 7 Roger Copeland Ballet, Modernity and the contemporary The suggestion that ballet might have a firmer purchase on “modernity” than modern dance flies in the face of both received opinion and common sense. But the varieties of movement most often associated with modernity (e.g. propulsive speed, a voracious appetite for space, sharp angularity of design, sudden reversals of direction, fragmentation and/or isolation of body parts, unpredictable entrances and exits, etc.) are considerably more evident in the work of say, George Balanchine or William Forsythe than in the work of the best known dance choreographers. The one exception to that rule is of course, the work of Merce Cunningham. But what distinguishes Cunningham from his predecessors in the world of modern dance was his willingness—make that “eagerness” — to cross the Mason/Dixon line that had separated ballet and modern during the first half of the 20th century. It thus comes as less of a surprise to learn that it was ballet, as opposed to modern dance, chorographers who proved most eager to assimilate uniquely “modernist” influences as various as , , , and jazz.

Roger Copeland is a Professor of Theater and Dance at Oberlin College. He has published well over one hundred articles about dance, theater, and film in The New York Times, The New Republic, The Village Voice, Dance Theatre Journal, Partisan Review, American Theatre, and many other periodicals. His books include What is Dance? (named Best Dance Book of 1983 by the Dance Perspectives Foundation and paperback of the month by The London Times) and Merce Cunningham and the Modernizing of Modern Dance. He has contributed chapters to many books and anthologies, including Conversations with Susan Sontag, Perspectives on Photography, Dance History: An Introduction, The Routledge Dance Studies Reader, The Dance of Defiance, Dance, Gender, and Culture, Dancing Female, Merce Cunningham, and The Encyclopedia of Dance and Ballet.

Ann Nugent The Forsythescape: A Cumulative Force A landscape stretches across a physical expanse as far as the eye can see. It is a sprawling accumulation of history whose imagery is an outer manifestation of an inner condition. In the landscape of William Forsythe's ballets, turbulence is at work. I have termed this ideological repositioning the Forsythescape. The

May 20 – 21, 2016 New York City 28

Contemporary Ballet: Exchanges, Connections and Directions

Forsythescape is heterogeneous; a combination of landscape, urbanscape and cityscape. It is the sun on canvas: it is colours fading and twilight falling. It is New York skyscrapers and open spaces beyond. It points to fragment, displacement, distortion and reconsideration, and a promise that has nothing to do with anything reverential, safe or hermetically sealed. Sometimes the Forsythescape reveals a broken and gnarled body that is the antithesis of the classical ideal. When the subversive is allowed to enter the territory of ballet it can seem hostile, opposing ballet’s expected representation. This paper will consider how the Forsythescape is characterised, and how the land, populated by unexpected forms, was altered by Forsythe’s two decades directing the Ballet Frankfurt (1985-2005). It will focus on specific works to explore the uprooting of tradition in the context of socio-cultural change. What is to be discovered from the cumulative force of the Forsythescape?

Dr Ann Nugent is a British dance critic and senior lecturer at the University of Chichester, where she teaches criticism and writing. Her research focuses on the choreography of William Forsythe and - following some fifty articles, papers and broadcasts about his work - she is currently working on a monograph for publication. She was founding editor of Dance Now and, subsequently, editor of Dance Theatre Journal. Her first career was as a dancer, with London Festival Ballet and ’s Gothenburg Ballet. She continues to work as a freelance critic, and is a regular contributor to the Shinshokan Dance Magazine, Japan.

Rachel Straus Form, Abstraction, and the Apollonian in Contemporary Ballet, with Reference to the Work of Pam Tanowitz The present paper discusses the role of abstraction and formalism in ballet, with special reference to Pam Tanowitz’s contemporary choreography. The paper begins with a brief historical perspective on abstraction in 20th-century Western concert dance, from Oskar Schlemmer’s pioneering contributions at the Bauhaus to the dominance of Balanchine’s abstract ballets in postwar New York City. The historical analysis employs, as a conceptual framework, Friedrich Nietzsche’s opposition of Apollonian and Dionysian aesthetics, focusing in particular on how the German philosopher’s ideas became part of a self-understanding among ballet and modern dance figures. Advocates of ballet, such as Akim Volynksy in and in the United States, supported a similarly Apollonian, formalist conception of artistic creation, as formulated by Nietzsche, in order to restore and advance ballet against the initially prevailing movement of modern dance. The brief historical analysis of abstraction and ballet, in the first part of the paper, serves as a background for examining the significance and cultural projection of Pam Tanowitz’s contribution to contemporary ballet, in the second part. The paper presents empirical research results on Tanowitz’s work based on ethnographic approaches to choreographic practice, including key-informant interviews, observation of studio practice, and analysis of her most recent creations.

May 20 – 21, 2016 New York City 29

Contemporary Ballet: Exchanges, Connections and Directions

Rachel Straus is the Dance History Lecturer at The Juilliard School (2011- ). As a scholar and dance critic, she has published in books, academic journals, newspapers, magazines, exhibition catalogs, and festival programs. Her research topics include modern dance and contemporary ballet, aesthetics and art criticism, and research methods in art scholarship. Awards: Research in Dance, Roehampton University (2008-2009), Research Fellow, N.E.A. Journalism Institute for Dance Criticism (2007), Art Reporting Honors, Columbia U. (2005), M.F.A. Choreography Award, Purchase College (2000). She has been an invited dance lecturer at London's Roehampton University, Slovakia's Bratislava Academy of Performing Arts, Queens College, CUNY, and SUNY-Purchase College.

Ariel Osterweis with Christina Johnson Complexions Contemporary Ballet and the Nuances of TechNIQUE: Race, Gender, Hybridity This 25-minute conversation between Christina Johnson and Ariel Osterweis engages issues of race, gender, and hybridity in and around Complexions Contemporary Ballet’s recently developed training system, TechNIQUE. As co- founder and Co-Artistic Director (Richardson) and founding member (Johnson) of Complexions, Richardson and Johnson have unique insight into the parallel emergence of the company’s choreographic style and particular pedagogical priorities. Osterweis (who also danced in Complexions in the 1990s) places Richardson at the center of her current monograph on virtuosity, race, and gender in contemporary dance, and is interested in destabilizing assumptions of virtuosic aesthetics, ultimately bringing attention to the way class and legibility contribute to the precariousness of virtuosity as a term and a mode.

Ariel Osterweis recently joined the faculty of The Sharon Disney Lund School of Dance at the California Institute of the Arts (CalArts), where she will teach dance history, aesthetics, and pedagogy. She has also taught at Skidmore College, Wayne State University, and UC Berkeley. Osterweis earned her PhD in Performance Studies at UC Berkeley and her BA in Anthropology at Columbia University. Her book manuscript, Body Impossible: and the Politics of Virtuosity (working title), is under contract with Oxford University Press and examines issues of race, class, gender, and sexuality in contemporary dance. Osterweis also researches Sub-Saharan African dance and mixed-race, feminist, and transgender performance that disavows dance-based virtuosity. Publications appear in Dance Research Journal, TDR/The Drama Review, Women and Performance, e-misférica, Theatre Survey, The Oxford Handbook of Dance and the Popular Screen (Oxford University Press, 2014), and Choreographies of 21st Century Wars (Oxford University Press, 2016). Osterweis danced with Complexions Contemporary Ballet, Mia Michaels R.A.W., and Heidi Latsky, choreographs, and has served as dramaturg for John Jasperse and Narcissister. She is on the Board of Directors of the Society of Dance History Scholars and is Book Reviews Editor for Dance Research Journal.

Christina Johnson danced with Boston Ballet before joining the Dance Theatre of

May 20 – 21, 2016 New York City 30

Contemporary Ballet: Exchanges, Connections and Directions

Harlem, where she was a principal dancer. In her 13-year tenure with DTH she danced leading roles in Swan Lake, Giselle, Firebird, Voluntaries, , , and . Johnson has worked with Jerome Robbins, , , , and Sir . She has also had original works created on her by Glen Tetley, Rui Horta, , and Dwight Rhoden. In Sweden, she was a member of Le Ballet du Grand Theatre de Geneve and the Ballett Basel, where her repertoire expanded to include works by William Forsythe, Jiri Kylian, James Kudelka, Ohad Naharin, Jean- Christophe Maillot, Twyla Tharp, Amanda Miller, and David Parsons. Johnson has also been a featured guest artist with companies such as the Royal Ballet. Johnson is an original member of Complexions Contemporary Ballet and made her Broadway debut in The Red Shoes. She is featured in The African Americans, a book that portrays accomplished African Americans in various fields. Johnson is a teacher, coach, and ballet master, and has worked with companies and schools such as the Pacific Northwest Ballet, Boston Ballet, Washington Ballet, Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre, Joffrey Ballet, Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, Dance Theatre of Harlem, Pennsylvania Ballet, Complexions Contemporary Ballet, Ballet Hispanico, North Carolina Dance Theatre, Cedar Lake Contemporary Ballet, Spectrum Dance Theater, Gotesborg Ballett, Ballett Basel, Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo, Armitage Gone! Dance, Cornish College of the Arts, and the University of Washington. She is currently the Rehearsal Director for Complexions Contemporary Ballet. Johnson holds an MFA in Dance from Hollins University in collaboration with the American Dance Festival, The Forsythe Company and Frankfurt University of Music and Performing Arts in Germany. She is a certified Life Coach and marathon runner, and speaks French and German.

Panel 8 Ruth Helier-Tinoco Contemporary ballet in Mexico City: Opus Ballet, Ricardo Domingo and La Técnica Domingo Dance and choreographic practices labeled “ballet” have a history in Mexico which connect Russian and French classical ballet with vernacular “folklorico” theatricalized genres, not least through the performances of in Mexico City in the early twentieth century (1919). Since that time ballet aesthetics and pedagogies in Mexico have shifted and changed in line with many major world contexts, including developing and incorporating practices falling under the rubric of “contemporary ballet.” In this paper my focus is on one major self-identifying “contemporary ballet” company based in Mexico City, Opus Ballet. Founded by artistic director and choreographer Ricardo Domingo, who developed La Técnica Domingo (The Domingo Technique), this professional company performs an impressive array of new work, drawing on the ballet schools of Cuba, Russia, and New York, and developing new aesthetic and pedagogical structures (taught through the Black Swan Studios). I discuss the specifics of La Técnica Domingo, particularly in relation to other contemporary ballet companies, techniques, and aesthetics. I examine how the designation “contemporary ballet” plays out in the

May 20 – 21, 2016 New York City 31

Contemporary Ballet: Exchanges, Connections and Directions rich dance and scenic arts world of Mexico, and I discuss issues of where Mexico’s contemporary ballet companies fit in relation to broader global contexts.

Ruth Hellier-Tinoco, Ph.D., is a scholar-creative artist and Associate Professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Her research and teaching focus on experimental performance-making; community arts; and the politics and poetics of performance, theater, music, and dance in Mexico. Her many publications include Embodying Mexico: Tourism, Nationalism, and Performance (OUP) and Women Singers in Global Contexts: Music, Biography, Identity (University of Illinois Press). She is currently finishing a book on experimental physical theater company La Máquina de Teatro in Mexico City. She is a member of the CORD Board and is the Editor of the journal Mexican Studies/Estudios Mexicanos.

Yuma Ochi Emergence of Contemporary Ballet in the Ballet de l’Opéra de Paris: On the Intervention of Jérôme Bel This paper argues that Opéra de Paris creates contemporary ballet, especially through the intervention French contemporary choreographer Jérôme Bel: Véronique Doisneau (2004) and his newest work Tombe (2016) at the Opéra de Paris. Jérôme Bel is one of the most radical contemporary choreographers, whose work seems to be incompatible with the traditional aesthetic of the Paris Opera. Through the commission of the ex-director Brigitte Lefèvre, Jérôme Bel created Véronique Doiseneau and now in 2016 by the commission of , Jérôme Bel sets about his new creation Tombe, mixing dancers of this institution and non-dancers. When Bel created Véronique Doisneau in the sanctuary of the danse classique, he said that « I have the point of view of anthropologist to investigate the Ballet de l’Opéra de Paris as the tribe who has a strange habitude ». I suggest that Bel’s way of observation is not irrelevant to that of Joann Kealiinohomoku proposed in her work An anthropologist looks at ballet as a form of ethnic dance (1970). And from this anthropological way, Jérôme Bel exposed that the illusionistic vision of classic ballet consists from non-democratic hierarchy among the dancers, at the same time, added the new aesthetic to the classic ballet. Through the analysis of Bel’s work and application of anthropology and performance studies, I will try to define one of the actual forms of contemporary ballet which deconstructs the code of danse classique, namely new kind of performative ballet.

Yuma Ochi is Research associate of The Tsubouchi Memorial Theatre Museum Waseda University in Tokyo. She has Master’s degree from Université Paris 8 and Waseda University. Her main research interest is French contemporary dance since 1990s when the codes and the spectacularity were questioned, largely through the work of Jérôme Bel and Xavier Le Roy.

May 20 – 21, 2016 New York City 32

Contemporary Ballet: Exchanges, Connections and Directions

Samantha Parsons Stripping the Covers of the Body Politic This paper grapples with my continuing scholarship in critical dance and performance studies as I attempt to examine and articulate the role of Wayne McGregor in contemporizing ballet. My presentation brings together strands of McGregor’s work for the Royal Ballet to better understand what contemporary ballet articulates about the female body politic in Woolf Works (2015). I am drawn to the notion of contemporary ballet as a vehicle of change. Simultaneously it is difficult not to recognize the institution as patriarchal and how the dominant discourse continues to predicate performance in a gendered space. The problem is with institutionalized systems of signs and how the female body is situated and performed. As language, ballet is not only taught through an order of specific movement, but also gendered. The meanings attached to these movements are carried in the bodies of those making and performing ballet through memories, performance and knowledge-making. Therefore, ballet does not live in pedagogy but in performance, and using the words of Virginia Woolf, I ask: “How can we combine the old words in new orders so that they survive, so that they create beauty, so that they tell the truth? That is the question.”

Samantha Parsons has been involved in the field of dance, performance and movement analysis as an educator, scholar, consultant and writer for more that 16 years. She holds an MALS from SUNY Empire State College and a BA (Honors) in from the Faculty of Education (Royal Academy of Dance/University of Surrey). She is a certified Laban Movement Analyst and Registered Somatic Movement Therapist. She provides continuing movement education in fields of dance, education and fitness. She is also founding president of Global Performance Systems Inc., which provides support services for businesses by examining the body/bodies at work to enhance workers’ satisfaction, management development and team performance.

Jennifer Fisher Ballet is Still an Ethnic Dance Form “Part of the dominance of ballet as a cultural form,” Cynthia Novack wrote in 1990, “rests not only in its historical longevity and institutional entrenchment, but in its professional ideology of exclusivity and completeness.” In her discussion of how sexual dimorphism dominated gender protocols in ballet 25 years ago, Novack advised scholars to research ballet’s roots and cultural power just as we would the dance of Ghana. Since then, the ballet world has only inched forward in that direction. With the recent death of “ballet as an ethnic dance form” author Joann Kealiinohomoku, it seems time to reconsider the labels and limitations that still stick to ballet. It’s not considered “ethnic,” because colonial language and attitudes cling. Or perhaps it’s just not convenient or exacting enough. Ballet is still taught as a Euro-Russian-American art form, whereas it seems more a Euro-Afro-American one (as per Dixon Gottschild). The word “contemporary” further complicates its identity, given the competition dance world usage (replacing the category “lyrical”). What

May 20 – 21, 2016 New York City 33

Contemporary Ballet: Exchanges, Connections and Directions difference does it make? This paper connects Kealiinohomoku’s seminal 1968 essay on ballet as ethnic dance to Alonzo King as exemplar of the ballet future in global perspective, building on the progressive analysis of Jill Nunes Jensen and Jennifer Homans. Like many rigorous ethnic forms, ballet struggles with innovation. To look back at its signal ethnic identity is to understand the base from which it evolves with the rest of the world.

Jennifer Fisher wrote Nutcracker Nation: How an Old World Ballet Became a Christmas Tradition in the New World (Yale, 2003), which won the Special Citation of the De La Torre Bueno Prize, and co-edited with Anthony Shay When Men Dance: Choreographing Masculinities Across Borders (Oxford, 2009). An associate professor at the University of California, Irvine, she has written on ballet and whiteness, men on pointe, ballet and masculinity, empowerment and ballerinas, and Nutcracker, swooning as ballet love, Pavlova and the Swan Brand, and interviewing strategies in the ballet world. She is also a ballet coroner whose most recent inquests into the death of Giselle were held at the San Francisco Ballet. Her upcoming “memoir ethnography” is titled An Autobiography of Ballet.

Panel 9 Barbara Dickinson Ballet, Logos and Contemporary Directions Classical ballet owes its aesthetic development, design of the body and approach to expression to some of the greatest philosophers and mathematicians of the Western world, such as Pythagoras of Samos (580-500 BCE), Plato (427-347 BCE), the Stoics of Greece and Rome, and René Descartes of France (1596-1650). All celebrate logos - mathematics, reason, balance, order and clarity. These principles are so engrained in the fabric of the ballet form that they are often unconsidered or unrecognized by the creators of the contemporary ballet, and therefore, not challenged. This paper will first examine this intellectual framework as it relates to classical ballet, and then look at the work of two contemporary ballet choreographers and explore how and to what degree they have retained or deviated from this foundation. In contemporary ballet, the standard vocabulary is often extended, modified or added to, but are the original principles still in play in these new forms?

Barbara Dickinson, Professor of the Practice of Dance at Duke University, served as Dance Program Director for 18 years, overseeing a greatly expanded Dance Program and establishing a major in dance. She has created many large-scale collaborative choreographic works including Walking Miracles, an original dance/theater production based on the stories of survivors of child sexual abuse. Her recent research interest is age and the dance artist. Her chapter “Age and the Dance Artist,” was published in Staging Age: The Performance of Age in Theatre, Dance, and Film (eds. Leni Marshall and Valerie Lipscomb) by Palgrave Macmillan in 2010.

May 20 – 21, 2016 New York City 34

Contemporary Ballet: Exchanges, Connections and Directions

Janet Werther Queer Women in Contemporary Ballet In her introduction to the ground-breaking edited volume Dancing Desires in 2001, Jane Desmond notes a dearth of material on women or lesbians in scholarship on sexuality in/and dance. Published in 2007 A Queer History of Ballet focuses exclusively on homosexual men. Few publications have yet offered correctives to these elisions. This paper, however, seeks to productively trouble the continued presumption that “queer contemporary ballet” invokes a gay male subject. Using autoethnography and embodied practice to mine my own experience of becoming a "ballezbian,” I will consider The Company, directed by Katy Pyle, as an important example of contemporary ballet. I will further engage through observation with considerations of embodied gender non-normativity and transgender bodies in the ballez. In addition to my own experiences and participant- observations, I will color my consideration of queer women in contemporary ballet practice with analysis of Jillian Pena's Polly Pocket and Panopticon and with the use of pointe work by queer burlesque artist Velvet Kensington. While acknowledging my theoretical debt to the lesbian feminist dance theory and historiography of, in particular, Susan Leigh Foster, I contend that this paper begins to fill a significant gap in scholarship on contemporary ballet and queer dance practices.

Janet Werther is pursuing her Ph.D at the CUNY Graduate Center in New York. Her research focuses on theatre spaces as sites of intergenerational queer exchange and queer tropes of embodiment. She is a Fellow at the CUNY Center for Humanities and a research assistant for Danspace Project. Janet teaches theatre appreciation and social issues through drama and performance at Baruch College. She also holds an MFA in Dance from Sarah Lawrence College and performs with the Ballez Company in Brooklyn, NY. Her article “Mary Wigman: Expressionist, feminist, theatre artist” was published by Studies in Musical Theatre.

Caroline O’Brien Contemporary Ballet Costumes The National Ballet of Canada is one of the foremost ballet companies in the world, described in The Globe and Mail as ‘a company that can perform classical and contemporary ballet with equal ’ This paper examines a number of works through the lens of costume in efforts to contribute to the conversation about what makes a ballet contemporary. The Romantic and Classical ballets are guided by a set of codes and conventions that have remained stable since Taglioni first elevated onto her toes in 1832. Contemporary ballet opens up the genre so that designs can range from the sleekest of and to soft flowing shirts and skirts to more structured and padded garments. A material culture investigation of some of the garments and their accompanying sketches and photographs can help us to challenge assumptions about existing conventions in the ballet world, conventions that include the familiar silhouette of the and pointe shoes. It is part of a larger project investigating design process and production of costume leading to an understanding of where ballet costume fits in the spectrum of fashion and dress. Is costume for contemporary ballet integral to the body that wears it, and how does

May 20 – 21, 2016 New York City 35

Contemporary Ballet: Exchanges, Connections and Directions costume contribute to current understandings?

Caroline O’Brien is Associate Professor at Ryerson Theatre School in Toronto and has spent many years designing and building costumes for classical and contemporary ballet. She was recently recognized by The Costume Society of America for curating 60 Years of Designing the Ballet at The Design Exchange in Toronto.

Julie Janus Walters Intelligence in Motion The traditional methods of teaching ballet focus on a very strict technique and an extremely limited set of skills. This is of increasingly limited use for today’s contemporary ballet artists. Many choreographers require dancers to possess a physical awareness and self- knowledge that enables them to contribute creatively and improvisationally. What are the pathways to self-discovery and self-actualizing that allow them to do this? I am developing a method that draws from different areas of somatics. The intent is not only to teach somatics, but to integrate the information directly into ballet movement and an expanded sense of the possibility of ballet. It is true that some dancers take the initiative to learn somatic methods, but do not understand how to apply them when they enter the ballet studio or stage. I have found that somatics can be taught as a way of experiencing movement that develops an ability to use the body as a creative instrument. This paper will expand on these ideas and how effective they have been in training dancers to be more sensitive and expressive movers, and as a result, more effective contributors to the company or choreographers with whom they might work.

Julie Janus Walters is Assistant Professor of the Practice of Dance at Duke University and Co-Director of Duke Ballet Repertory Ensemble. A former leading dancer with the Joffrey Ballet, she was featured in performances around the world, and appeared on national and international television. She has taught for major professional companies and educational institutions. Her experience dancing for the Joffrey Ballet has greatly informed her development as a teacher and choreographer. Her primary work is in choreography and teaching classical and contemporary ballet, pointe, and historical ballets from the twentieth century. Her ongoing research explores connections between ballet and somatic methods.

May 20 – 21, 2016 New York City 36

Contemporary Ballet: Exchanges, Connections and Directions

Presenters’ Abstracts and Biographies Saturday May 21, 2016

Panel 1 Daniel Callahan American Accents in Copland’s Corral: Choreomusicality and Intersectionality in Rodeo and 'Rōdē,ō In 1942, four years after composing Billy the Kid, Aaron Copland was hesitant to write "another cowboy ballet," even if this proposed Rodeo centered on a cowgirl. Agnes de Mille persisted, and Copland produced a score with U.S. folk music woven throughout. This paper attends not to the whip-snapping cowboy tunes and famous "Hoe-Down,” but to the comparatively undiscussed slow second section, "Corral Nocturne." I will consider the spatial and temporal affordances that "Corral Nocturne” offered, first, to de Mille for her 1942 choreography about a cowgirl trying to find herself and acceptance, and, second, to for his 2015 avowedly plotless choreography, 'Rōdē,ō, the "Corral Nocturne" section of which is for five men whose movement Peck likens to "weather patterns." Peck’s dance, I argue, hews closer to the scenario that de Mille sent Copland than it does to what de Mille eventually choreographed. This paper will conclude by considering how it might matter to contemporary ballet audiences that in May 2015 at Lincoln Center in performances running in tandem at ABT and NYCB both of these choreographies featured dancers of color: as de Mille’s Cowgirl and as the focus of Peck’s .

Daniel Callahan is an Assistant Professor of Music at Boston College. After receiving his PhD from Columbia University in 2012, he was the Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow in Music and the Humanities at the . His book project, The Dancer from the Music, explores the embodiment of classical music across the history of US modern dance. His conference paper comes not from that manuscript but from an essay that he will revise for final submission this summer to appear in an anthology on new directions in dance studies, and so he very much looks forward to your feedback.

Russell Janzen The Limits of Ballet: Conversations About Gender Presentation in a Physical Art Same-sex partnering often signifies relevance or current day commentary in contemporary work in the ballet world. Troy Schumacher, Justin Peck, Wayne McGregor, and Miles Thatcher have all shown works in New York this past year showcasing nontraditional pairings and groupings. Role reversals in male-female duets and same sex pairings claim to expand and play with ballet’s traditional ideas of masculinity and femininity, but what kind of gender and sexual diversity is actually depicted on ballet stages today? Most writing about gender roles in the ballet world is theoretical, focuses on the choreographer or audience perceptions, and ignores the experience of the dancer. Examining the dancer’s experience - the training, what is encouraged, what is discouraged, and the capacity for self- expression - reveals other potentialities and limitations of ballet today. I spoke with

May 20 – 21, 2016 New York City 37

Contemporary Ballet: Exchanges, Connections and Directions a range of artists working in the ballet world today to explore ballet’s capability to reflect and depict diverse gender identities. Through conversations with Katy Pyle, James Whiteside, Reid Bartelme, and Faye Arthurs, my paper addresses the antiquated expectations of the ballet world and ways in which gender norms are being challenged (or not) in new works.

Russell Janzen is a full-time dancer and a part-time student. A soloist with New York City Ballet, Russell has performed a range of repertoire including “Diamonds” from , , and Prince Siegfried in Swan Lake. He has originated roles in works by Justin Peck, Benjamin Millepied, Emery LeCrone, and Pam Tanowitz. Since 2013 he has been a student at the New School where he works to be a part of expanding the scope of conversations surrounding the arts. He was the 2015 recipient of the Clive Barnes Award and is a Riggio Honors student.

Kyle Bukhari Rupturing the Present: Space, Figure and Text in Michael Clark and Charles Atlas' animal/mineral/vegetable at the Barbican, London (2013) How can we understand the phenomenon of contemporary ballet beyond approaches confined to genre, style, and its position as vanguard of the ballet canon? Is the term ‘contemporary ballet’ one that will eventually be historicized, like modern and postmodern dance? Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben suggests that a contemporary artist enacts a rupture from the present moment, a temporal caesura that creates critical distance from their own time. I extend this idea into the realm of contemporary ballet, and propose that current dance practices are not only conditioned by Agamben’s rift in the temporal field, but are also spatially constructed. To do this, I consider how space itself is a social construct, malleable, and can potentially become identity laden—and through dance become imbued with an affect that is resolutely contemporary. Choreographer Michael Clark’s (UK) recent collaboration with visual artist Charles Atlas (US) entitled animal/mineral/vegetable (2013) exemplifies this spatiotemporal framework of analysis as it relates to contemporary ballet. I propose that Clark’s architectonic yet figurative approach to choreography, that at once embodies the archaic, hieroglyphic and post-gender human, coupled with Atlas’ vividly saturated stage lighting and dynamically animated abstract forms and texts, engage with the aesthetics of space and time in a way that thrust this collaborative work into the forefront of contemporary ballet manifestations.

Kyle Bukhari has a BA Anthropology & Aesthetics from Columbia University and Masters degree in Dance Studies from Roehampton University, London. As a dancer, Bukhari has performed with the Joffrey Ballet, New York, and the Zurich Ballet, Switzerland. Bukhari was the winner of the Best German Dance Solo (1998) and has created choreographies for the Augsburg City Theatre, Saarland State Theatre, Saarbrucken, the Tanzfabrik Berlin in Germany, the Centennial of Monte Verità in Ascona, Switzerland (2000) the Swiss Contemporary Dance Days, Lausanne (2002), the Amman Contemporary Dance Festival, Jordan and The Season in Beirut,

May 20 – 21, 2016 New York City 38

Contemporary Ballet: Exchanges, Connections and Directions

Lebanon (2004). He has choreographed and performed at the Whitney Museum in the Berlin Sun Theater with anthropologist Michael Taussig (2013) and at the Museum of the City of New York (2014). Currently, he collaborates with Jodi Melnick, Yanira Castro and Dana Caspersen. Bukhari has taught at Barnard College, Pratt University, the Joffrey Ballet School, Zurich Dance Theatre School and Tanzhaus Zurich. Alongside being US-UK Fulbright Fellow in Dance in London, (2013-14), Bukhari has given presentations at Columbia University, University of Ghent, Belgium, University of Groningen, Holland, Video Art Festival Camaguey, Cuba (2014-16). In September 2016 he will join the dance department at Sarah Lawrence College as Lecturer in dance history.

Jill Nunes Jensen ThroughLINES Revisited This paper locates Alonzo King, and by extension Alonzo King LINES Ballet, at the forefront of ballet’s shifting landscape. A re-direction of my earlier work on King, that emphasized his understanding of gender as a flexible construction, this paper further contends that his ballets and the process through which they are derived— albeit contributing significantly to the iconography of “contemporary ballet”— perform a new articulation of gendered partnerships and have done so for decades. Through the lines of these dancing bodies (I engage the metaphor here as figure of speech as for its literal reference to line or alignment as integral to the form of ballet), previous understandings of what masculinity and femininity infer are recast so as to allow the artists an ability to relate to one another in a way that suggests a new model for ballet today. Building upon years of research on this company, my work has always positioned King at the forefront of new movements. It is from that place that I now consider how his ballets continue to reinvent the art in a way that prioritizes aspects of the form generally absent in balletic analyses.

Jill Nunes Jensen is on faculty at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, leading courses in dance history, choreography, and ballet technique. In 2014 Dr. Nunes Jensen completed two terms of service on the SDHS Executive Board as the Corresponding Secretary. She has presented work at CORD and SDHS conferences both nationally and internationally. Her research on Alonzo King LINES Ballet has been published in When Men Dance (Oxford University Press), Dance Chronicle (Routledge, Taylor & Francis), and Theatre Survey (Cambridge). Additionally, she has articles on King and AKLB that will be published in Dance in American Culture (University of Florida Press, forthcoming) and Rethinking Dance History, 2nd ed. (Routledge, 2017). Her work as Guest Editor for Conversations across the Field of Dance Studies: Network of Pointes with Farrugia-Kriel (2015) catalyzed the idea for the Special Topics Conference: Contemporary Ballet: Exchanges, Connections and Directions.

May 20 – 21, 2016 New York City 39

Contemporary Ballet: Exchanges, Connections and Directions

Panel 2 Thomas F. DeFrantz The Race of Contemporary Ballet: Interpellations of Africanist Aesthetics Contemporary Ballet emerges in direct relationship to Africanist aesthetics: the curated use of rhythmic forcefulness as a compositional device; the choreographed individuality of dancer movement laid bare within a group dynamic; unexpected physical attack and extension of form toward surprising performative ends; the implicit inclusion of the audience's ability to decode gestural and musical contents; and an abiding performance register of cool. Choreographers of this mode of performance refer consistently to these sorts of aesthetic devices, whether their collaborating artists are of African descent or not. This presentation will explore the overarching deployment of black aesthetic approach to ballet that is inevitably marked as "contemporary." Of course, "contemporary" in this rendering implies "black;" the presentation will parse out this tonality of the naming. The works of William Forsythe, Jormo Elo, Mats Ek, Twyla Tharp, and Alonzo King will be considered in relationship to earlier legacies created by George Balanchine and Jerome Robbins. Of special import to this presentation will be a reconsideration of Sally Banes' 1993 essay, "Balanchine and Black Dance." The presentation will focus on works by Forsythe, King, and Tharp as a trio of artists whose work continues to circulate in 2016.

Thomas F. DeFrantz is Professor and Chair of African and African American Studies at Duke University, and director of SLIPPAGE: Performance, Culture, Technology, a research group that explores emerging technology in live performance applications. He co-convened the Choreography and Corporeality working group (IFTR) from 2005-2013, and acted as President of the Society of Dance History Scholars from 2011-2014. Recently, in contemporary ballet, he acted as dramaturg to Helen Pickett’s creation Zwischen(T)Raum (2012), Dresden Semper Opera, and to Tanya Wideman-Davis and Thaddeus Davis’s past-carry-forward (2013), Dance Theatre of Harlem.

Melissa Templeton What gets lost in the word “Contemporary?” From Imperialism to Globalization and the Africanist Aesthetic in Canadian Ballet During its formative years, classical ballet in Canada embraced a connection to Europe. While innovators like George Balanchine and Jerome Robbins explored Africanist aesthetics in the creation of a unique “American” style, many Canadian ballet artists, struggling to separate themselves culturally from their U.S. counterparts, borrowed heavily from codified European ballet techniques to distinguish their work. In the Twenty-First Century, as national boundaries become porous and global connections cause artistic practices to blend, Canada’s interest in European ballet has begun to wane and a more ambiguous, “contemporary,” style is taking shape. While we could potentially interpret this style as increasingly inclusive, the equivocal nature of the word “contemporary” threatens to mask a history of Eurocentrism and racism that has shaped the Canadian ballet community. In this paper I consider how Africanist aesthetics have been both celebrated and

May 20 – 21, 2016 New York City 40

Contemporary Ballet: Exchanges, Connections and Directions repressed in Canadian ballet. Comparing the development of “contemporary ballet” in the repertoire of the National Ballet of Canada and Les Ballets Jazz de Montreal, I suggest that the style has on the one hand led to the incorporation and wider- acceptance of Africanist aesthetics in the Canadian dance community, but also obscures the racism and prejudices that have suppressed it.

Dr. Melissa Templeton is currently a Visiting Assistant Professor of Dance at the University of California, Riverside, where she teaches courses in critical dance studies. Her current research examines the construction of “whiteness” and “blackness” in Montreal and its relationship to Québec nationalism and Canadian multiculturalism. Dr. Templeton’s work has been published in Dance Collection Danse and The Dance Current, and her dissertation research received support from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

Laura Cappelle Bridging Past and Present: A Hybrid Creation for the Bolshoi While contemporary ballet seeks to take the art form in new directions, classical choreographers are also deeply connected to the past. Their works are rooted in a technique developed over centuries, and typically rehearsed and performed by companies alongside historical repertoire from the 19th and 20th century. In this paper, I will examine the hybrid nature of contemporary ballet through a case study, the creation of Jean-Christophe Maillot’s The Taming of the Shrew for the in 2014. The rehearsals for this new narrative work showed a Monaco-based ballet choreographer exchanging and developing steps with Russian dancers from one of the oldest companies in the world, many of them unaccustomed to contemporary ballet. The social dimension of the creation process greatly influenced the end product as the artists negotiated gender roles in the studio and onstage as well as steps and performance styles, influenced by the Bolshoi’s rich history and repertoire as well as by Maillot’s naturalistic requirements. I argue that contemporary ballet on a global level is influenced by the conditions of creation in repertoire companies and the technical and cultural exchanges they foster. This paper is based on the extensive sociological fieldwork, comprised of daily studio observation and interviews, I conducted over the ten-week rehearsal period for Taming of the Shrew in Moscow in 2014.

Laura Cappelle is a dance writer and researcher. She has been the Paris-based dance critic for The Financial Times since 2010, and regularly contributes to Pointe, Dance Magazine and Dance Europe, among other publications. Additionally, Cappelle is a Ph.D. candidate in Sociology at the Université Sorbonne Nouvelle - Paris 3 in France, where her supervisor is arts sociologist Bruno Péquignot, and a Teaching Fellow in Sociology at the Université Paris 1 Panthéon Sorbonne. She holds an M.A. in European Culture from University College London and an M.A. in Sociology from the École Normale Supérieure de Lyon. She researches the creation process in ballet companies.

May 20 – 21, 2016 New York City 41

Contemporary Ballet: Exchanges, Connections and Directions

Lise Uytterhoeven A New Artistic Leadership for Royal Ballet Flanders: Trust, Renewal and Gentle Transformation In February 2015, contemporary dance theatre choreographer Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui was appointed artistic director of the Royal Ballet Flanders. This paper will evaluate his appointment in the current challenging national, political, cultural and economic context and in the company’s institutional history since 1969. Cherkaoui, born and now based in Antwerp, affords the company with a renewed sense of international artistic credibility following perceived fluctuations in leadership quality in decades past. Choreographic analysis of Fall (November 2015), Cherkaoui’s first full work on the company as part of the transitioning season, will explore the ways in which the choreographer’s key creative values – cooperation, exchange, translation – are visible in this creation. A sense of comfort is derived from the intuitive negotiation of familiar, conventionally gendered movement patterns for both artists and spectators. However, a re-patterning simultaneously occurs through an exploration of unfamiliar movement pathways signifying recovery, renewal and resilience. Particularly the introspective moments of slowness and stillness in the work enable audiences to reflect on, and come to terms with, the new artistic direction. This initial work can therefore be read as a gently getting to know each other and a careful establishing of trust between artistic director, performance artists and spectators.

Lise Uytterhoeven is Senior Lecturer and Head of Learning & Teaching at London Studio Centre, where she teaches dance history, theory and analysis. She holds a PhD from University of Surrey, funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council. Her monograph Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui: Dramaturgy and Engaged Spectatorship will be published by Palgrave Macmillan in the New World Choreographies series. Lise is Vice-Chair of the Society for Dance Research. She has published in Contemporary Theatre Review and The Ethics of Art (ed. Guy Cools & Pascal Gielen). Her study guide What You? Shaping your dissertation in dance, co-written with Charlotte Nichol, is forthcoming from Routledge.

Panel 3 Hanna Järvinen What Is “Contemporary” Anyway? Jeux (2016) Working with a contemporary dance choreographer on a ballet that is not easily fit into dance historical categories – genres, periods, or styles – has led me to think of what we mean by ‘contemporary’ in ballet or art dance more generally, and what does this word do to the works thus defined. In this paper, I will discuss the historical trajectories of Jeux (working title), a 2016 choreography by Liisa Pentti to the archival score of the eponymous 1913 ballet by . I argue that the 1913 ballet already disturbs the category of ‘contemporary’ in our definitions of ‘contemporary ballet’; but more significantly, the 2016 work blurs the lines between ‘contemporary ballet’ and ‘contemporary dance’ not only in its form but in the manner it treats contemporaneity and being in the present. As such, our failure to fit

May 20 – 21, 2016 New York City 42

Contemporary Ballet: Exchanges, Connections and Directions into categories may offer some insight into how we write the history of ballet as an art form and why: who and what do we exclude from ‘contemporary’ and why?

Dr Hanna Järvinen works as a University Lecturer at the Performing Arts Research Centre of the Theatre Academy, the University of the Arts Helsinki. A cultural historian by training, she is interested in the epistemology and ontology of dance. She is the author of Dancing Genius (Palgrave Macmillan 2014) as well as articles in e.g. The Senses and Society, Dance Research, and Dance Research Journal. Her current research project involves work with dancers on legacies of dance .

Carrie Gaiser Casey The Gesture of Memorial: Ratmansky, Shostakovich, and the Chamber Symphony In 2012-2013 choreographer Alexei Ramtansky presented his Shostakovich Trilogy, an evening of ballet to the music of his favorite composer and a continuance, thematically, of his interest in the early Soviet era of ballet (as seen in his recreation for the Bolshoi of several ballets from the 1930s: Bright Stream (1935) in 2003; Bolt (1931) in 2005; (1932) in 2008; Lost Illusions (1936) in 2011). The Trilogy marked a new direction in Ratmansky’s engagement with Soviet themes. In this presentation I examine how the second of the Trilogy’s ballets, the Chamber Symphony, functions as a choreographed memorial to Shostakovich and how this ballet also suggests, through its choreographic choices, a particular relationship to the aesthetic-ideological paradigms of the Soviet past. I am interested in how Ratmansky’s retrospective choreography, through the memorial gesture, re- presents the past – a “turn toward memory” that theorist Andreas Huyssen characterized as postmodern - and how including Ratmansky in a genealogy of contemporary ballet sets out yet another productive complication to the definition of this category.

Carrie Gaiser Casey currently serves as 2015/2016 Resident Scholar at San Francisco Ballet. She received her PhD from the University of California, Berkeley with a dissertation on female company directors in early twentieth century ballet. She also teaches in the LEAP (Liberal Education for Arts Professionals) program at St. Mary's College of California. Her publications include articles in Dance Chronicle, Theatre Journal, and the anthology Dance on its own Terms.

Juliet Bellow Curating Ballet Over the past five years, dance has made a forceful entrance into art museums. Museums’ incorporation of dance, an incorporation both literal and metaphorical, raises a variety of thorny questions: about the status of the performer, who functions as both laboring subject and as exhibited object; about the status of live performance as elite art and as spectacular entertainment; about the status of dance in an institution designed to display and to preserve artworks with a more concrete and stable material presence. For scholars and practitioners of ballet, art museums’ interest in dance presents a related problem. The staging of dance in galleries—that is to say, in unframed spaces, often in open-ended circumstances—subtly but

May 20 – 21, 2016 New York City 43

Contemporary Ballet: Exchanges, Connections and Directions inevitably inflects the event with the “post-medium condition” of post-1960s artistic practice. Thus, only some dance forms find themselves truly “at home” in the art museum, and arguably ballet is not one of those forms. My paper focuses on the status of works (drawings, notations, photographs, films, and live performance) displayed in museums to represent the dance event and address the ways that the museum, as a physical space and an institutional frame, shapes our understanding of ballet’s present and its past.

Juliet Bellow is Associate Professor of Art History at American University. Her book Modernism on Stage: The Ballets Russes and the Parisian Avant-Garde (2013) was published by Ashgate Press, and she was a Consulting Scholar for the exhibition “Diaghilev and the Ballets Russes, 1909-1929” at the . Currently a fellow at The Center for Ballet and the Arts, she is working on a new book, entitled Auguste Rodin’s Dancers: Moving Toward the Limits of Sculpture. Other publications have appeared in The Cambridge Companion to Ballet, The Modernist World, Art Journal, American Art, and Dance Research Journal.

Tanya Wideman-Davis Dance Theatre of Harlem: Radical Black Female Bodies in Ballet This paper explores transgressive acts against white normative existences in ballet via black female bodies in the Dance Theatre of Harlem company. The paper positions the women of DTH as pushing outside of the boundaries of white ornamental beauty while defining new identities for black women globally to see themselves as ballet dancers. The paper and presentation illuminates labor and negative representations of black female bodies and places the women of DTH outside of the majority black female caretaker roles. In the early formative years of DTH many radical decisions were made about how female bodies performed their agency on stage. Women wearing flesh colored tights and pointe shoes as opposed to pink, individual dancers in the 1970s wore socially conscious Afros and in the 1990s ballerinas performed showing their tattoos in “contemporary ballet” works. These were provocative and non-normative stances. To this day the women of DTH are performing radical transformations of ballet. Are we at a moment in time where ballet can transcend paralyzing traditional labels to embrace a coexistence of ethnic bodies?

Tanya Wideman-Davis is Co-Artistic Director of Wideman/Davis Dance and is on faculty as Assistant Professor at The University of South Carolina. With an extensive career as a dancer, choreographer, and teacher, Tanya completed her Master of Fine Arts from Hollins University/ADF. Tanya has danced with many world-renown companies, including Dance Theatre of Harlem (Principal Dancer), The Joffrey Ballet of Chicago, Complexions Contemporary Ballet, Alonzo King Lines Ballet, Dance Galaxy, and Spectrum Dance Theater. She has served as Guest Artist for Cleveland San Jose Ballet, Donald Byrd: The Group, Spectrum Dance Theater, and Ballet Memphis.

May 20 – 21, 2016 New York City 44

Contemporary Ballet: Exchanges, Connections and Directions

Forthcoming SDHS events CORD + SDHS 2016 Pomona College · Claremont, CA

November 3-6, 2016 The 2016 Joint Conference of the Congress on Research in Dance and the Society for Dance History Scholars will be hosted by Pomona College in Claremont, California. BEYOND AUTHENTICITY AND APPROPRIATION: BODIES, AUTHORSHIP AND CHOREOGRAPHIES OF TRANSMISSION For more information, view http://sdhscordconference.wildapricot.org

Recent and Forthcoming SDHS Publications: Studies in Dance History

Visit sdhs.org for more information on the Society of Dance History Scholars

May 20 – 21, 2016 New York City 45