Society of Dance History Scholars Announces Annual Awards for 2015

NEW YORK - May 6, 2015 - PRLog -- The Society of Dance History Scholars is pleased to announce its annual awards for 2015. These prestigious awards support the work of dance scholars at various stages of their careers. The Selma Jeanne Cohen Award, Graduate Student Travel Grants, Gertrude Lippincott Award, and The de la Torre Bueno Prize® will be awarded at a special ceremony during the joint conference (co-produced with CORD, The Congress on Research in Dance), “Cut & Paste: Dance Advocacy in the Age of Austerity” at the Hellenic Centre of the International Theatre Institute in Athens, Greece. All awards will be presented at the Awards Luncheon on Saturday, June 6th.

This year’s winner of The de la Torre Bueno Prize®is Prarthana Purkayastha, Plymouth University, UK, for her book: Indian Modern Dance, Feminism and Transnationalism, in New World Choreographies series, Eds. Rachel Fensham & Peter M. Boenisch (Palgrave Macmillan, 2014).

Rebecca Rossen of the University of Texas-Austin, USA, receives a Special Citation for her book: Dancing Jewish: Jewish Identity in American Modern and Postmodern Dance (Oxford University Press, 2014).

Since 1973 SDHS has annually awarded The de la Torre Bueno Prize® to the year's most distinguished book of dance scholarship. Named after José Rollins de la Torre Bueno, the first university press editor to develop a list in dance studies, The de la Torre Bueno Prize® has set the standard for scholarly excellence in the field for more than thirty years.  This year’s committee members included Norma Sue Fisher-Stitt, Susan Cook, and Sarah Davies Cordova.

Naomi Bragin (PhD Candidate) of University of California and Brianna Figueroa (PhD Candidate) of University of Texas at Austin were awarded the 2015 Selma Jeanne Cohen awards. This award is of special significance as it recognizes outstanding English-language papers by graduate students who demonstrate excellence in dance scholarship. Named in recognition of Selma Jeanne Cohen's great contributions to dance history, SDHS inaugurated an award in her name at the 1995 conference to encourage graduate student involvement in SDHS and the larger dance studies community. This award includes an invitation to present a paper at the 2015 conference, waiver of the registration fee for that conference, and a grant to help defray costs of attending the conference. Awards are based on the originality of the research, the rigor of the argument, and the clarity of the writing.

In her paper Global Street Dance and Libidinal Economy, Naomi Bragin offers a sophisticated analysis of global street dance. She presents a compelling argument around how street dance circulates within the libidinal economy of black performance. The theoretical intervention within her writing offers compelling reading and the concept of choreo-centricity evokes an original contribution to the field that will shape future work on street dance in global context. Bragin’s work moves across a breadth of  examples and methods/methodologies, including ethnography, close reading, and embodied knowledge of author. The adjudicating panel recognised Bragin’s work as an examplar of excellence in graduate work.

In Economies of The Flesh: Scripting Puerto Rican Colonial History Through Dance, Brianna Figueroa offers an exemplary conference paper that elicits a well-paced and cogently-shaped argument. Her work draws out an embodied dance, the Puertorriqueño body, as a unique site for recuperating silenced cultural memory. The writing engages an undeveloped area of dance studies (Latina/o concert dance) and Figueroa reminds her audience and her reader that (post)colonialism is/was a process carried out through bodies. Poignant questions aide to motivate and articulate the line of enquiry and Figeuroa’s work eloquently weaves together shards of theories, memories and analyses of bodies that move through contemporary political contexts. These specific qualities illustrate excellence in Figueroa’s graduate work.

The Graduate Student Travel Committee unanimously agrees to award the Graduate Student Travel Grant for the 2015 SDHS/CORD conference, “Cut & Paste: Dance Advocacy in the Age of Austerity,” to Celena Monteiro (University of Chichester), "Screening Subjects: Transnational Dancehall Queen Culture in a Social Media Age," Heather Rastovac Akbarzadeh (University of California, Berkeley), "Does Iranian Dance Need Saving? The Politics of Preservation in the 1st International Iranian Dance Conference," and Maria Eugenia Cadus (Buenos Aires University, Argentina), “Electra (1950): Argentine Ballet and Welfare Democratization in a Mass Public Event of First Peronism."

Sherril Dodds ofTemple University receives the esteemed Gertrude Lippincott Award this year for her article “The Choreographic Interface: Dancing Facial Expression in Hip-Hop and Neo-Burlesque Striptease.” Published in Dance Research Journal, Professor Sherril Dodds issues a call to arms, or rather, a call to the face. Using a direct and arresting writing style, Dodds identifies the face as a blind spot in dance research, and urges dance scholars to join her in reclaiming the face as an integral part of the dancing body that, nevertheless, has a distinct role in the production of meaning.

Lippincott is awarded annually to the best English-language article published in dance studies. Named in honor of its donor, a dedicated teacher of modern dance in the Midwest and mentor for many students, it was established to recognize excellence in the field of dance scholarship. The award carries a cash purse of $500. This year’s committee was Clare Parfitt-Brown, Cindy Garcia, and Lisa Uytterhoeven.

SDHS was organized in 1978 as a professional network and incorporated as a non-profit organization in 1983. The society now counts among its members, individuals and institutions across the globe committed to the interdiscipline of dance studies. SDHS was admitted to the American Council of Learned Societies as a constituent member in 1996 and is committed to the advancement of the field of dance studies through research, publication, performance, and outreach to audiences across the arts, humanities, and social sciences. SDHS holds wide-ranging annual conferences, publishes new scholarship through its proceedings and book series, collaborates regularly with peer organizations in the U.S. and abroad, and presents yearly awards for exemplary scholarship, including The de la Torre Bueno Prize®.