With Jennifer Homans, Dance History Is Getting a New Chair, and a Seat at NYU’s Liberal Arts Table
Jennifer Homans has been named the inaugural Van Cleef & Arpels Chair in the History of Dance at New York University’s College of Arts & Science.
A force in the dance world, Homans is a former professional dancer, the current dance critic for the New Yorker, and the author of the best-selling books Apollo’s Angels and Mr. B: George Balanchine’s 20th Century. She has been a Distinguished Scholar in Residence at NYU since 2008 and founded its interdisciplinary Center for Ballet and the Arts (CBA) in 2014.
Dance Teacher recently spoke with Homans about her new appointment and her hopes for the future.
How do you feel about being the first-ever Chair in the History of Dance at NYU?
It’s very gratifying. The position creates enormous stature for the field that didn’t exist before. The history of dance now has a seat at the table of the liberal arts, along with the history of art and music and literature and science. That makes it a lot easier for somebody who’s trying to teach it to successfully do so.
I have mainly devoted myself to writing about and researching dance, but I’m a historian with a PhD in modern European history. So it’s important to me that this chair is within the Department of History in the College of Arts & Sciences, not in the Tisch School of the Arts. This means you don’t have to be specialized in dance to learn about it. It situates dance in a larger context for a wider public.
Why do you think the history of dance is important for everyone to study, not just dancers?
Because everybody has a body, and we all move our bodies. There isn’t a culture in the world, that I’m aware of, that doesn’t dance. It’s a fundamental form of expression and it’s one of our first arts. It incorporates and absorbs as many of the other arts as it chooses—music, design, visual art. All kinds of disciplines can be folded into it, and have been. It’s an interesting and interdisciplinary way to study human culture.
Dance is not an isolated thing that happens over there in its little corner. It’s part of intellectual history, part of political history, part of economic history. It has a place in all of those realms. For instance, my last book, Mr. B: George Balanchine’s 20th Century, is both the story of George Balanchine and the story of the 20th century in art and culture. Not the only story, of course, but one story.
I understand that part of what you’re hoping to do is foster an interdisciplinary way of looking at dance and its history. How might that look?
Being a chair gives me a platform to reach out to colleagues across the university to create collaborative courses. The neurobiology of why people move, for instance, or dance on film. I can now create these interdisciplinary moments for students, and also for the faculty who are involved in them, and I think that has benefits that go beyond any particular course.
What has been the feedback from your colleagues so far?
My colleagues are thrilled. There are a lot of people who are interested in dance. They’re not people who study dance, and they’re not even dancers. They’re just people who are curious about it, and also a little intimidated. People often tell me they’re afraid they won’t know how to watch dance, that they won’t understand it. My response to that is: “Just go. Just exist. Just look and listen and hear and see. You will be able to understand it because you have a body. We all do.”
One of the possible benefits of establishing a chair like this at NYU is that other liberal arts colleges might think, “Oh, well, of course, that should exist! Why don’t we have that here? We should!” I am hoping that will happen. It will build a much more fertile and developed field of study.
It could be like art history, which wasn’t always part of university curriculums in the United States. In fact, it didn’t exist until the 20th century.
What advice do you have for teachers of dance and dance history?
Teachers are the backbone of the profession. They’re the people who pass the traditions along and teach the new generation what dance is—not just how to do it, but what it is and how to live it. I hope teachers will want to bring the history of dance into their dance technique courses because I think if people can appreciate the history, it will enrich their whole experience. It will help people understand better what they’re doing and why.
I hope teachers will see that it’s not that there’s dance technique over here, and dance history over there. Movement over here, and words over on the other side. We, as dancers, can learn from words, too. There’s no reason not to read as well as to dance. I think that will make for better dancers.
Photo credit: Jennifer Homans, photo by Brigitte Lacombe (left); and (right) group shot (from L to R): Antonio Merlo, Anne and Joel Ehrenkranz Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Science at New York University, Jennifer Homans, Helen King, President & CEO of Van Cleef & Arpels, Americas, and Serge Laurent, Van Cleef & Arpels’ Director of Dance and Culture Programs. Photo courtesy NYU Arts & Science Communications.
The post With Jennifer Homans, Dance History Is Getting a New Chair, and a Seat at NYU’s Liberal Arts Table appeared first on Dance Teacher.