Autumn 2009 - Summer 2010
Officers
President: Barbara Sellers-Young is Dean of the Faculty of Fine Arts at York University where she is also a professor in the Dance Department. Her research investigates the processes of transmission that are the result of the conjuction of the local with the global. She is author of three books "Teaching Personality with Gracefulness," "Breathing, Movement, Exploration," and the edited volume with Anthony Shay "Bellydance: Orientalism, Transnationalism and Harem Fantasy."
Recording Secretary: Juliet McMains is a dance scholar and artist whose work centers on social dance practices (ballroom, salsa, swing, tango) and their theatrical expression on competition and theatre stages. Her first book Glamour Addiction: Inside the American Ballroom Dance Industry received the CORD 2008 Outstanding Publication Award. Juliet is currently writing a book that traces the history of salsa and mambo dancing in the United States. She has taught dance at the University of Central Florida, Florida State University and California Polytechnic Institute. Juliet has a Ph.D. is Dance History and Theory from the University of California at Riverside and a B.A. in Women’s Studies from Harvard University. She is currently an Assistant Professor in the Dance Program at the University of Washington in Seattle.
Editorial Board Chair: Michael Huxley is a Principal Lecturer in Dance at De Montfort University where he teaches and researches dance history. He is published in a number of books and journals. He is Chair of the CORD Editorial Board and Senior Academic Adviser Dance for PALATINE, the UK HE Subject Centre. He has been closely involved with De Montfort University's Centre for Excellence, CEPA, since its inception, and is conducting pedagogic research into the student learning experience.
Board of Directors
Patrick Alcedo received his Ph.D. in Dance History and Theory from the University of California, Riverside, under the auspices of the Asian Cultural Council. In 2007, he took residece as a Rockefeller Humanities Fellow at the Smithsonian Institute in Washington, DC. He is now an Assistant Professor in Dance at York University in Toronto and has recently been appointed as Chair of CORD's Awards Committee.
Graduate Rep: Clare Croft is a doctoral candidate in the
Performance as Public Practice program at the University of
Texas-Austin, where she is completing her dissertation about U.S. State
Department sponsorship of international dance tours as a form of
cultural diplomacy. Articles by Clare will appear in upcoming issues of
Theatre Journal and Theatre Topics. Clare continues to work as a dance
critic; she is a regular contributor to the Austin American-Statesman.
Maura Nguyen Donohue is Assistant Professor of Dance at Hunter
College/City University of New York. She spent the past year as
Assistant Professor at Queens College/CUNY and was faculty in the Five
College Dance Department at Smith College, Mt. Holyoke College and
Hampshire College. As an active choreographer, advocate, and writer in
the NYC dance community, she serves on the Board of Directors for Dance
Theater Workshop, the advisory committee for DanceNow/NYC, and is
Senior Artistic Advisor for The Dance Insider. She is the proud mother
of two.
Judith Hamera, Professor and Head of the Department of
Performance Studies at Texas A&M University, works at the
intersections of dance, communication, performance and American
Studies. She is the author of Dancing Communities: Performance,
Difference and Connection in the Global City (Palgrave Macmillan,
2007), which received the National Communication Association
Ethnography Division award for Best Book of 2007. In addition, she is
the editor of Opening Acts: Performance in/as Communication and
Cultural Studies (Sage, 2006), co-editor of The Handbook of Performance
Studies (Sage, 2006), and co-editor of the Cambridge Companion to
American Travel Writing (Cambridge University Press, 2009). Her
publications appear in Cultural Studies, Modern Drama, TDR: The Drama
Review, Text and Performance Quarterly, and Women in Language, among
other journals. She served as editor of the National Communication
Association’s journal of performance studies, Text and Performance
Quarterly (1997–2000), serves on the editorial boards of TPQ and the
NCA Non-Serial Publications Program, and is the recipient of the
National Communication Association's Lila Heston Award for Outstanding
Scholarship in Interpretation and Performance Studies.
Eric Handman is an Assistant Professor at the University of
Utah’s Department of Modern Dance. He is a choreographer, performer,
dance filmmaker and educator. Prior to receiving his MFA from the
University in 2003, he earned a bachelor’s degree in English from
Skidmore College in 1991. He spent much of the Nineties as a
professional dancer in New York City as a member of such companies as
Doug Varone and Dancers, Joy Kellman & Company and Nicholas
Leichter Dance. He has also danced for choreographers David Dorfman,
Lisa Race, Stephen Koester, Charlotte Boye-Christensen, Pooh Kaye,
Wendy Perron, Simone Forti, Debra Fernandez, Tim Harling & Lisa
Giobbi, Eun Me Ahn, and Koosil-ja Hwang. He teaches domestically and
internationally and specializes in technique, improvisation, contact
improvisation, composition, qualitative research methods, dance
filmmaking, aesthetics, criticism and theory.
Maura Keefe is a contemporary dance historian and dance writer. She is a Scholar-in-Residence at Jacob's Pillow Dance Festival, and has led audience engagement programs at numerous locations including Princeton University, UCLA, and the Goethe Institut, as well as for the Paul Taylor Dance Company and the Martha Graham Dance Company. Her current research investigates the relationships between dance and sports. She has an MFA in choreography and performance from Smith College, and a PhD in dance history and theory from University of California, Riverside. She is an associate professor of dance at The College at Brockport.
Hari Krishnan
SanSan Kwan (Performance Studies, NYU, Ph.D.) is an assistant professor in the Department of Theatre Arts and Dance at California State University, Los Angeles. She is currently working on a book about dance and urban space in the Chinese diaspora.
Danielle Robinson, Ph.D. is a dance scholar who researches the cross-cultural movements of Afro-Diasporic popular dances within the Americas. Her published articles have examined ragtime, jazz, and swing dancing, focusing on the cultural histories and meanings of these social dance forms in North America. She is presently completing a book manuscript on "modern" social dancing in early twentieth century New York City. Her newest research project sends her to rural northeastern Brazil. With support from Canada's Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, she is leading a multidisciplinary team of scholars in an ethnographic study of samba de roda, a dance and music complex that has roots in Afro-Brazilian slave cultures that was recently recognized as a Masterpiece of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity by UNESCO. Before joining York's Dance Department (Toronto) in 2005, she was previously a visiting professor of dance at the Federal University of Bahia (Salvador) in Brazil.
Claire Rousier has been the manager of the department memory and research at the Centre national de la danse. She developed a multimedia international research and resource area of activity dedicated to the choreographic culture. She also sets up an active publishing and research support policy. Among the symposiums that she has managed at the CND, we can name: “Practice, figures and myths of the dance community since the 20th century” (2002), “Cultural Identities Artistic Identities from Bombay to Tokyo” (2006) and “Dance and Resistance” (2007-2008). Claire also manages at the CND research programmes and contributes as well to the development of programmes reactivating choreographic repertory like the one in 2006 dedicated to the “International dance archives”. The following exhibitions have already been organised under the leadership of Claire Rousier: “The construction of the femininity in Dance”, “Grandjouan draws Duncan”, “the notation systems”, “Dance Is a Weapon. NDG 1932/1955” and “Dancing Black across Modern America”.
Karen Schaffman is Associate Professor of Dance in the Visual and Performing Arts Department at Cal State San Marcos where she teaches both studio and lecture courses in dance, performance, and interdisciplinary arts. In 2001, she earned her Ph.D. in Dance History and Theory from the University of California, Riverside, with her research based on contact improvisation in relation to choreographic analysis, identity politics and cultural studies. Schaffman is also a graduate of the European Dance Development Center in Holland where she studied improvisation, performance, and somatic techniques with internationally renowned choreographers. She was co-founder and member of Lower Left, a teaching and performance collective in San Diego (1994-2006). Currently she collaborates with Veronika Blumstein, Downstream, and SomeBodiesMoving Dance Company. She has taught and performed internationally (Hungary, Mexico, Holland, Germany, Russia) and was lecturer at University of California, Davis. Her writing has been published in Taken By Surprise: A Dance Improvisation Reader (2003,Wesleyan Press) and Contact Quarterly.
Sally Sommer is widely recognized as a leading expert on dance in American popular culture. As associate professor of the practice of dance at Duke University, she taught courses in history of modern dance, history of African-American dance, and dance criticism. Since the autumn of 2001, she has been a full professor at Florida State University, teaching in the master’s program in dance. As a dance critic and performance journalist, she writes regularly for periodicals in this country and for Le Monde, the Paris-based journal for which she is special New York correspondent. As a historian, she served as dance editor for the Encyclopedia of African-American History and Culture (Macmillan, 1996), and she has served as commentator and artistic consultant on dance performance for national public radio and public television, focusing on social dance, tap dance, dance in music videos, and contemporary club dance.
Henry Spiller (BA, UC Santa Cruz; MM, Holy Names University; MA and PhD, UC Berkeley) is Assistant Professor of Music (Ethnomusicology) at the University of California, Davis. His research focuses on Sundanese music and dance from West Java, Indonesia, especially the relationship between drumming and choreography, and gender and sexuality issues in the performing arts. Publications include _Erotic Triangles: Sundanese Dance and Masculinity in West Java_ (Chicago, in press), _Focus: Gamelan Music of Indonesia_ (Routledge, 2008), and articles in _Journal of the Society for American Music_, _Asian Music_, _The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians_, _Asian Theatre Journal_, _World of Music_, and others. Spiller is an active performer with a variety of US gamelan groups, including the UC Davis Sundanese Gamelan Ensemble.
Helen Thomas is Research Director at London College of Fashion and Co-director of the University of the Arts London Research Centre on .Fashion, The Body and Material Cultures. Her first training was in dance at the Laban Art of Movement Studio. She taught dance for a number of years before embarking on first, a sociology degree and subsequently, a PhD, in which she set out to develop a rigorous methodological approach to the sociology of dance. Her research interests centre on the sociology of dance and the body, modern dance and social dance forms, cultural theory, and qualitative research methods. Recent publications include: The Body, Dance and Cultural Theory (Palgrave 2003); Cultural Bodies: Ethnography and Theory (eds. with J. Ahmed Blackwell 2004). She is currently completing a book, The Body and Everyday Life (for Routledge), and was Principal Investigator of a recently completed Arts and Humanities Research Council funded research project, Pain and Injury in a Cultural Context: Dancers’ Embodied Understandings and Cultural Mapping.
Karen Vedel completed her PhD at Department of Arts and Cultural
Studies, University of Copenhagen (2005). She has held post doctorate
research fellowships at University of Copenhagen (2006) and Helsinki
Collegium for Advanced Studies (2006 – 2008) and is currently a part of
the research team behind ”Dance in Nordic Spaces. The Formation of
Corporeal Identities”, University of Tampere
Publications
DRJ Editor: Mark Franko
Book Review Editor: Gay Morris
Proceedings Editor: Tresa Randall
