Robert Louis Fosse was an American actor, choreographer, dancer, and film and stage director. He directed and choreographed musical works on stage and screen, including the stage musicals The Pajama Game (1954), Damn Yankees (1955), How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying (1961), Sweet Charity (1966), Pippin (1972), and Chicago (1975). He directed the films Sweet Charity (1969), Cabaret (1972), Lenny (1974), All That Jazz (1979), and Star 80 (1983).
Yvonne Rainer is an American dancer, choreographer, and filmmaker, whose work in these disciplines is regarded as challenging and experimental. Her work is sometimes classified as minimalist art. Rainer currently lives and works in New York.
Deborah Jowitt is an American dance critic, author, and choreographer. Her career in dance began as a performer and choreographer. Jowitt has received several awards for her work, including a Bessie for her work in dance criticism.
The American Dance Guild (A.D.G.) was founded in 1956, as the Dance Teachers' Guild by twelve dance teachers in New York City to promote the art of dance in the United States by educating the American public and by maintaining standards of teaching.
Elsie Ivancich Dunin is a dance ethnologist (ethnochoreologist), choreographer, professor and author specializing in folk dance from Croatia, Macedonia, and Romani (Gypsies) in Macedonia. Her studies focus on Croatian diaspora communities and associated sword dances in both Old and New World contexts. She is Professor Emerita of dance ethnology from the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) and is currently a dance research advisor with the Institute of Ethnology and Folklore Research in Zagreb, Croatia. Her two daughters are Teresa (T.J.) and Elonka Dunin.
The Society of Dance History Scholars (SDHS) was a professional organization for dance historians in the United States and internationally. Founded in 1978, it became a non-profit in 1983. SDHS became a member of the American Council of Learned Societies in 1996, hosted an annual conference, published conference proceedings and a book series, and presented awards to new and established scholars. In 2017 it merged with the Congress on Research in Dance to form the Dance Studies Association (DSA).
The de la Torre Bueno Prize is an annual award offered by the Dance Studies Association for the best book published in English in the field of dance studies. The award honors José Rollin de la Torre Bueno, the first university press editor to develop a dance studies titles list. The award of $1000 recognizes exemplary scholarship and important contributions to the field.
Cross-Cultural Dance Resources (CCDR) is a non-profit dance research organization in the United States, formed in 1981 and based in Tempe, Arizona. It maintains a non-lending library devoted to the study of dance, with over 15,000 shelved items plus the archives of Eleanor King, Gertrude Prokosch Kurath and Joann Kealiinohomoku. The organization also produces the CCDR Newsletter, which is issued twice per year and provides information on dance research, news, and upcoming events. In 2000, the organization was recognized for a special preservation award by the Dance Heritage Coalition, as well as being recognized by the White House Millennium Council, as part of "Save America's Treasures".
Gertrude Prokosch Kurath (1903–1992) was an American dancer, researcher, author, and ethnomusicologist. She researched and wrote extensively on the study of dance, co-authoring several books and writing hundreds of articles. Her main areas of interest were ethnomusicology and dance ethnology, with some of her best known works being "Panorama of Dance Ethnology" in Current Anthropology (1960), the book Music and dance of the Tewa Pueblos co-written with Antonio Garcia (1970), and Iroquois Music and Dance: ceremonial arts of two Seneca Longhouses (1964), in the Smithsonian Institution Bureau of American Ethnology bulletin. She made substantial contributions to the study of Amerindian dance, and to dance theory. From 1958 to January 1972 she was dance editor for the journal Ethnomusicology.
Eleanor Campbell King (1906–1991) was an American modern dancer, choreographer, and educator. She was a member of the original Humphrey-Weidman company, where she was a principal dancer in the pioneering modern dance movement in New York City, then moving on to choreography and founding her own dance company in Seattle, Washington. She was a professor emerita at the University of Arkansas, where she taught from 1952 to 1971, before retiring to Santa Fe, New Mexico, to start a new course of study into classical Japanese and Korean dance. She choreographed over 120 dance works, and wrote extensively for a variety of dance publications. In 1948, she was named Woman of the Year in Seattle, and in 1986 was listed as a "Santa Fe Living Treasure", also receiving the New Mexico Governor's Artist Award. In 2000, her archive was recognized by the White House Millennium Council's "Save America's Treasures" program.
Joann Wheeler Kealiinohomoku (1930–2015) was an American anthropologist and educator, co-founder of the dance research organization Cross-Cultural Dance Resources (CCDR). She has written and/or edited numerous books and articles, including contributions on dance-related subjects to multiple encyclopedias, such as writing the entry for "Music and dance in the United States" in the Garland Encyclopedia of World Music. Some of her best-known works are "An anthropologist looks at ballet as a form of ethnic dance" (1970) and "Theory and methods for an anthropological study of dance" (1976). An associate professor of anthropology at Northern Arizona University, she was named professor emerita in 1987. In 1997, she received the first annual award for "Outstanding Contribution to Dance Research" from Congress on Research in Dance. In 2000, the CCDR collection was named by President Bill Clinton's White House Millennium Council, as something that needed to be preserved under the "Save America's Treasures" program.
Sally Rachel Banes was a notable dance historian, writer, and critic.
Jonah Bokaer is an American choreographer and media artist. He works on live performances in the United States and elsewhere, including choreography, digital media, cross-disciplinary collaborations, and social enterprise.
Lynn Theresa Garafola is an American dance historian, linguist, critic, curator, lecturer, and educator. A prominent researcher and writer with broad interests in the field of dance history, she is acknowledged as the leading expert on the Ballets Russes de Serge Diaghilev (1909–1929), the most influential company in twentieth-century theatrical dance.
David Vaughan was a dance archivist, historian and critic. He was the archivist of the Merce Cunningham Dance Company from 1976 until the company was disbanded in 2012.
Elizabeth Aldrich is an American dance historian, choreographer, writer, lecturer, consultant, administrator, curator, and archivist. She is internationally known for her research, performance, choreography, teaching, and lectures on Renaissance and Baroque court dance, nineteenth-century social dance, and twentieth-century ragtime dance.
George Dorris is an American dance historian, educator, editor, and writer. As managing editor of Dance Chronicle for thirty years, he laid foundations and established standards for dance scholarship not only in the United States but in many other countries of the world. In 2007, he was honored with a lifetime membership in the Society of Dance History Scholars and by the award for Outstanding Service to Dance Research presented by the Congress on Research in Dance.
Nadine George-Graves is an academic who works at the intersection of African American studies, gender studies, and dance and theater history. She holds the Naomi Willie Pollard Endowed Chair at Northwestern University with appointments in the Department of Performance Studies and Deaprtment of Theatre. She is also the executive co-editor of Dance Research Journal. She has a PhD in Theater and Drama from Northwestern University, and a BA in Philosophy and Theater Studies from Yale University.
Chrystelle Lee Trump Bond was an American dancer, choreographer, dance historian, and author. Bond was the founding chair of the dance department at Goucher College. She was the co-founder and director of Chorégraphie Antique, the dance history ensemble at Goucher. Bond was a dance critic for The Baltimore Sun.
