BA, Columbia University. MA, University of Roehampton, London. Danced with the Joffrey Ballet in New York and the Zurich Ballet in Switzerland. Winner: Best German Dance Solo (1998). Created choreographies for the Augsburg City Theatre; Saarland State Theatre in 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, Lebanon (2004). Choreographed and performed at the Whitney Museum in Berlin Sun Theater with anthropologist Michael Taussig (2013) and at the Museum of the City of New York (2014). Currently collaborates with Jodi Melnick and Yanira Castro. Has taught at Barnard College, Pratt University, Joffrey Ballet School, Zurich Dance Theatre School, and Tanzhaus Zurich. US-UK Fulbright Fellow in Dance in London, United Kingdom (2013-14). Presentations at Columbia University; University of Ghent, Belgium; University of Groningen, Holland; Video Art Festival, Camaguey, Cuba; and Center for Ballet and the Arts, New York University (2014-16). Current research focuses on dance philosophy and intermediality in works of artists such as Yvonne Rainer, Richard Serra, Michael Clark, and Charles Atlas. SLC, 2016–
Graduate Courses
MFA Dance 2019-2020
Graduate Seminar I: Investigating the Contemporary in Practice and Theory
Graduate Seminar—Spring
This graduate-level course explores a variety of approaches currently evident in dance studies and contemporary dance practice and examines their conceptual underpinnings, such as dance, gender, race and identity, dance and the intermedial, dance in the museum, and the embodiment of dance’s past. Key case studies will be viewed and discussed, along with a critical exploration of theoretical proposals of authors such as Giorgio Agamben, Claire Bishop, Judith Butler, Thomas DeFrantz, Gilles Deleuze, Michel Foucault, Johnathan Burrows, Andre Lepecki, Fred Moten, and Irit Rogoff. Students will gain familiarity with current trends in practice and theoretical discourse through written exercises and oral presentations and develop their critical perspective as thinkers and dance makers.
Introduction to Dance History
Component—Year
This course is for all students beginning the dance program.
This course explores the history of Western theatrical dance from the courts of Catherine de' Medici to the early 20th Century. The goal of the class is first to become familiar with and then to question the dance historical canon in relation to the broader social and historical movements within which it is embedded—and how that differs from our perspective today. The class offers an overview of key artistic movements and traces the development of major forms and genres, considering them within their social, cultural, racial, and gendered contexts. Through class screenings, attendance of live performances, and written assignments, students will learn methods of observation, analysis, interpretation, and evaluation informed by a broad understanding of dance’s past and present and how that relates to their own research and practice.
Previous Courses
Advanced Dance History: Topics in 20th-Century Dance and Performance History
Component—Spring
Undergraduate students may take this course with permission of the instructor.
This writing-focused graduate seminar examines 20th-century dance history from a variety of critical perspectives, such as collaboration and intermedial aesthetics; transdisciplinary and experimental performance practices; gender, race, and sexuality; site-specific work; and technology and screendance. Students will have the opportunity to deepen their expertise of the subject and exercise their own critical and scholarly voices by unsettling and questioning the Western theatrical dance canon from a robustly informed historical, social, technological, and aesthetic point of view.
Advanced Dance History: Topics in 20th-Century Dance and Performance History
Graduate Seminar—Spring
This writing-focused graduate seminar examines 20th-century dance history from a variety of critical perspectives such as collaboration and intermedial aesthetics; transdisciplinary and experimental performance practices; gender, race, and sexuality; site-specific work; and technology and screendance. Students will have the opportunity to deepen their expertise of the subject and exercise their own critical and scholarly voices by unsettling and questioning the Western theatrical dance canon from robustly informed historical, social, technological, and aesthetic points of view.
Thesis Prep
Graduate Seminar—Year
The yearlong MFA Thesis Prep seminar is the academic capstone of the master’s study in the dance department at Sarah Lawrence College. The course is structured to take the advanced student through the stages of writing a thesis: defining the field of research, identifying and articulating a research question, developing the bibliography, choosing an appropriate methodology, organizing the material, and developing strategies of analysis and argumentation that lead to the writing of an original thesis. Various modes of inquiry will be examined, drawing on the disciplines of dance studies, philosophy, and practice as research. Through group discussions of published research, student work, and one-on-one meetings with the course leader, the seminar will focus on investigative processes with particular emphasis on understanding, contextualizing, experimenting with, and articulating one’s own process of scholarly inquiry and discourse.
Dance History
Component—Year
This course is for all students beginning the dance program.
This course explores the history of Western theatrical dance from the courts of Louis XIV to the present. The course offers an overview of key artistic movements and traces the development of major forms and genres, considering them within their social, cultural, racial, and gendered contexts. Through class screenings, attendance of live performances, and written assignments, students will learn methods of observation, analysis, interpretation, and evaluation informed by a broad understanding of dance’s past and present and how it relates to their own research and practice.