Movable Pillars: Organizing Dance, 1956–1978

The Society of Dance History Scholars, 1978

The Society of Dance History Scholars, 1978 The Society of Dance History Scholars (SDHS) was founded in 1978 to focus primarily on the historical research of dance. SDHS advances a broad definition of dance history, “to recover the meaning of the dance event for participants and spectators,” according to its web site, which leaves room for a variety of approaches and methodologies. Its mission, as currently stated on the SDHS web site (www.sdhs.org, 2007), is to: “advance the field of dance studies through research, publication, performance , and outreach to audiences across the arts, humanities, and social sciences.” This occurs through annual conferences, working groups (identified below), newsletters, and scholarly publications. The members of the organization currently represent a vast range of disciplinary perspectives and SDHS encourages research methods from a wide range of disciplines, including musicology, anthropology, theater and performance studies, feminist theory, and queer theory, as well as movement analysis and choreographic reconstruction. Accordingly, SDHS shares and disseminates its members research at annual conferences through a variety of methods, including paper presentation and panel discussion , movement workshops, and performances. The range of methods and disciplinary approaches is also reflected in the SDHS working groups, which include Dance History Teachers, Early Dance, Ethnicity and Dance, Interdisciplinary Approaches to Nineteenth Century Dance, Social and Vernacular Dance, Practice-as-Research, Reconstruction, and Students in SDHS. In 1996, SDHS became a constituent member of the American Council of Learned Societies to further broaden and solidify the scope of its academic involvement. Current membership (in 2007) stands near five hundred. Many are artist-scholars who combine performance practice with historical research . These members include arts administrators, dance critics, filmmakers , notators, reconstructors, librarians, and archivists, in addition to independent scholars and teachers of dance studies. SDHS promotes scholarly research and activity through annual conferences and through its publications, including include the Studies in Dance History series, conference proceedings, and newsletters. Studies in Dance History, which began in 1988 as a periodical publication, was redefined as a monograph series in 1994 and currently is published by the University of Wisconsin Press. 167 Cover of second annual SDHS conference, “Western Dance History: Resources and Teaching Methods,” February 16–18, 1979, in New York City. Chaired by Constance Kreemer. Courtesy of the Society of Dance History Scholars. SDHS recognizes excellence in scholarship through awards and grants. These include the de la Torre Bueno Prize, named after José Rollins de la Torre Bueno, founder of the Wesleyan University Press and the first university press editor to develop a list of titles in dance studies. The Gertrude Lippincot Award is given to the best English-language article published in dance studies. SDHS supports the work of emerging scholars through its Selma Jeanne Cohen Award for unpublished graduate student research, inaugurated in honor of SDHS founder Selma Jeanne Cohen in 1995, and through Graduate Student Travel Grants, first offered in 2006 to help students travel and participate in the annual SDHS conferences. SDHS also provides opportunities for leadership through its expansive leadership structure that includes officers, a board of directors, student representatives, an editorial board, and working group committee chairs. The Society of Dance History Scholars commissioned Teren D. Ellison to write an official history of the organization. Entitled The Society of Dance History Scholars: The History of a Secret Passion, this history is posted on the SDHS web site and is available to members of the society. The SDHS archives are presently held in a private collection. Selma Jeanne Cohen The interview with Selma Jeanne Cohen was conducted in her home in the East Village of New York City on March 22, 1999. Selma Jeanne Cohen (b. September 18, 1920, Chicago; d. December 23, 2005) was one of the important dance historians, writers, and teachers of her time. She taught at the University of Chicago, U.C.L.A., New York University School of the Arts, Hunter College, and at the High School for Performing Arts in New York. She also taught at the Connecticut College Summer School of Dance. Selma Jeanne Cohen wrote for the New York Times and Saturday Review. She edited The Modern Dance: Seven Statements of Belief, completed and edited the autobiography Doris Humphrey : An Artist First, and the scholarly journal Dance Perspectives, and the recent International Encyclopedia of Dance. She wrote Next Week, Swan Lake: Reflections on Dance and Dances. Selma Jeanne Cohen was a founder of SDHS, a pastdirector...