If you’re reading this blog, you’re either (a) very bored, (b) interested in a URG, (c) interested in dance and/or literature, or (d) are Callie (hey, Cal). If you’re in the first category, I make no promises about this blog. If you’re in any of the other three, I truly hope that this will be at least moderately interesting and/or helpful to you.
For my senior honors thesis next year, I intend to write about choreographic memoir as a literary genre. Which sounds super official and important, but really I’m just writing about how people write about dance. It’s all very self-indulgent.
I’ll be in Evanston this summer, getting paid to prep for my thesis endeavor by reading a bunch of books about dance (read: living the dream). I’m tracking modern dance choreographers in America for the past 100-ish years, starting with Isadora Duncan and Ruth St. Denis and working my way to Bill T. Jones and Liz Lerman. I’ll be reading their autobiographies/memoirs and anything else I can find that they’ve written, as well as some supplementary reading about them and their lives. I would post the schedule here, but I’m sure I’ll get off-track and I don’t want you guys to judge me.
I’ll be using this blog to track my progress and consolidate my thoughts about the choreographers each week; I truly have no clue what format that will take but we’ll figure it out together. It’ll also probably contain a lot of reviews of the miscellaneous coffee shops/ice cream stores/parks I sit in every day in and around Chicago and Evanston, so hopefully at least that part will be useful.
A summer full of dance and reading and coffee–
Off we go.