Renowned dance scholar Brenda Dixon Gottschild, a self-described anti-racist cultural worker utilizing dance as her medium, was in-residence in Princeton University’s Program in Dance in the Lewis Center for the Arts from April 3 through 6. She engaged extensively with students and faculty in the Programs in Dance and Theater.
Dixon Gottschild is the author of Digging the Africanist Presence in American Performance: Dance and Other Contexts; Waltzing in the Dark: African American Vaudeville and Race Politics in the Swing Era, winner of the 2001 Congress on Research in Dance Award for Outstanding Scholarly Dance Publication; The Black Dancing Body–A Geography from Coon to Cool, winner of the 2004 de la Torre Bueno prize for scholarly excellence in dance publication; and Joan Myers Brown and the Audacious Hope of the Black Ballerina—A Biohistory of American Performance.
Her additional honors include the Congress on Research in Dance Award for Outstanding Leadership in Dance Research (2008); a Leeway Foundation Transformation Grant (2009); the International Association for Blacks in Dance Outstanding Scholar Award (2013); the Pennsylvania Legislative Black Caucus Civil Rights Award (2016), a Pew Fellowship in the Arts (2017); the Dance Magazine Award (2022); the New York University Hemispheric Center for American Politics and Performance 2022 Mellon Foundation Artist in Residency Award; and the 2022 Dance History Scholars Scholarly Achievement Award.
Dixon Gottschild is a freelance writer, consultant, performer, and lecturer; a former consultant and writer for Dance Magazine; and Professor Emerita of dance studies at Temple University. As an artist-scholar she coined the phrase, “choreography for the page,” to describe her embodied, subjunctive approach to research writing.
Nationwide and abroad she curates post-performance reflexive dialogues, writes critical performance essays, performs self-created solos, and collaborates with her husband, choreographer/dancer Hellmut Gottschild, in a genre they developed and titled “movement theater discourse.”
Brenda Dixon Gottschild (at table) joins Lecturer in Dance Jaamil Olawale Kosoko in the course “Dramaturgies of Care in Contemporary Performance,” where she discussed the need to incorporate systems of care and healing into the greater conversation within the frameworks of modern performance making. Photo by Jon Sweeney
While on the Princeton campus, Dixon Gottschild visited the spring Freshman Seminar “Global Tactics in Hybrid Media and Performance Making,” taught by Lecturer in Dance and former Princeton Arts Fellow Jaamil Olawale Kosoko, on April 3. This course introduces students to hybrid media and performance practices through which artists consider the body, identity, and collective history in public space, whether that space is onstage or within the digital domain. Using a visual and performance studies approach, the course has been exploring various sites of cutting-edge contemporary art practices from scenes of political theater to experimental staged performances. Dixon Gottschild was among a number of “pioneering guest artists, scholars, and curators sharing their perspectives on the ever-shifting cultural climate.”
On April 4, Dixon Gottschild visited another class taught by Kosoko. In the dance course, “Dramaturgies of Care in Contemporary Performance,” she discussed the need to incorporate systems of care and healing into the greater conversation within the frameworks of modern performance making. This is a critical issue that has increased dynamically since 2020 and is becoming more vital for contemporary artists while creating work in the age of global crisis.
Brenda Dixon Gottschild interacts with students in the course “Dramaturgies of Care in Contemporary Performance. Photo by Jon Sweeney
Dixon Gottschild also provided a critique on senior Camryn Stafford’s original choreography project, “There She Is,” during a rehearsal and provided feedback ahead of the piece’s premiere performances April 13 through 15. Stafford’s new work depicts the embodiment of Black women’s hypervisibility and simultaneous invisibility within society. Using a juxtaposition of 1960s pageant audio and student interviews, the piece oscillates between experiencing the hypervisibility of Black women and learning more about the truth that often remains invisible. “There She Is” asks the audience to question how they may have stereotyped, objectified, and tokenized Black women in the past, finding both familiarity and disgust with the stories and scene. The piece also asks the audience to question what they know, what they think they know, what they thought they knew before watching, and why they may think in the ways they do, while encouraging them to question the meanings we place on Black women. The project is an extension of Stafford’s Department of African American Studies thesis, which explores the simultaneous hypervisibility and invisibility of Black women within society, using a mix of student interviews and media to provide examples and testimony.
Bringing her knowledge of performance to the Program in Theater on April 5, Dixon Gottschild visited Assistant Professor of Theater Rhaisa Williams’ class, “Black Performance Theory.” Dixon Gottschild engaged the class in discussion on the course’s exploration of the foundations of Black performance theory, drawing from the fields of performance studies, theater, dance, and Black studies. Using methods of ethnography, archival studies, and Black theatrical and dance paradigms, the class examined how scholars and artists imagine, complicate, and manifest various forms of Blackness across time and space.
On her final day before heading back to Philadelphia on April 6, Dixon Gottschild joined Professor of the Practice Rebecca Lazier’s class, “Choreography Studio,” to present the workshop “Socially Engaged Somatic Theater,” opened to all interested Princeton students. The workshop provided students insight into the choreographic process including how to use improvisation with poetry, movement, and voice to create source material for creating dance works.
Dixon Gottschild has been a guest artist at Princeton in the past, most recently for Reclamations!, a lecture series curated by Kosoko in 2017 on Black feminist performance.
Photo Gallery
Dance scholar Brenda Dixon Gottschild (center) shares her perspectives with students in the Freshman Seminar course “Global Tactics in Hybrid Media and Performance Making” taught by Lecturer in Dance and former Princeton Arts Fellow Jaamil Olawale Kosoko (right). Photo by Jon Sweeney
While in-residence at Princeton, Brenda Dixon Gottschild provided feedback on senior Camryn Stafford’s new original choreographic work, “There She Is,” shown here at its premiere performance. Photo by Larry Levanti
Brenda Dixon Gottschild (at table) joins Lecturer in Dance Jaamil Olawale Kosoko in the course “Dramaturgies of Care in Contemporary Performance,” where she discussed the need to incorporate systems of care and healing into the greater conversation within the frameworks of modern performance making. Photo by Jon Sweeney
Brenda Dixon Gottschild interacts with students in the course “Dramaturgies of Care in Contemporary Performance. Photo by Jon Sweeney
