Dissertation Title

 

Moving Dance from Stage to Image:

Ballet in Women's Visual Art, 1910-1930

 

 

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Dissertation Abstract

 

My dissertation uses archival evidence of English and French audience reception to examine how the movement legacies of traveling Eastern European (Russian Imperial and then Soviet) ballet performers were represented pictorially by female artists between the years 1910-1930, emphasizing the cultural impact of concert dance on women’s visual art production in Paris and London. By interpreting the large but overlooked network of existing sketches, illustrations, caricatures, paintings, and sculptures created by understudied modernist figures such as Laura Knight, Valentine Gross, Una Vincenzo, Vera Willoughby, and Eileen Mayo which resulted from their own theatrical viewing experiences – primarily of the Ballets Russes but also of cabaret and circus – I introduce a new access point into the ways ballet has been productive in contributing to the development of cultural values across societal divides through visual aspects of spectatorship.

 

 

 

Key Words

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ballet history, ballet historiography, cultural history, audience, reception, spectatorship, intercultural performance, visual culture, visual art, women’s art, feminist art, modernism

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ACADEMIC INTERESTS

THEMES/HISTORIES:

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• Modernism

• Ballet

• The Baroque and the neo-Baroque

• The History of the Alphabet, Languages, and Writing Systems

• The Historical Avant-Gardes

• Symbolism in Painting (Intercultural)

• Literary Symbolism (France)

• Dance History (Intercultural)

• Costume History (Intercultural)

• The History of Makeup, Masks, and Masquerade

• Encyclopedism, Travel Literature, and Collecting/Curiosities

• Art during the Soviet Revolution/ in the USSR

• The Aesthetics of Architecture and Urbanism, The City as Text

• Textile as Text

• Illustration: Children’s Books, Fashion, Theatrical Costume

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CONCEPTS:

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• Carnivals and Festivals

• The Carnivalesque

• Fairy Tales and Folklore

• Synesthesia

• Kinesthesia

• Palimpsests

• Virtuosity (in Dance)

• Gesamtkunstwerk (The Total Work of Art)

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THEORIES/PHILOSOPHIES:

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• Intertextuality

• Thing Theory/ “Thingology”/ Material Culture as Documentary Evidence

• Theories of Embodiment

• Spectatorship

• Existentialism

• Postcolonialism, Decolonization, and Indigenous Epistemologies

• Ecocriticism

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METHODS:

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• Archival Analysis

• Semiotics

• Photographic Analysis

• Text-image Analysis

• Dance Adaptation and Revival

• Dance Scoring and Notation

• Choreography

• Mapping, Cartography, and Psychogeography

• Literary Translation

• Interdisciplinarity and Cross-Departmental Research

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HOBBIES:

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• Multimedia Painting (Using Found Objects)

• Circus Acrobatics (Ground-Level, Contortion)

• Thrifting/Second-Hand/Vintage Fashion

• Upcycling

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