Dr Larraine Nicholas

 

Job Title: Senior Lecturer Qualifications: BA, MA, PhD Telephone: +44 (0)20 8392 3245 Email Address: L.Nicholas@roehampton.ac.uk

Background as Scholar and Teacher

I am a dance historian, contributing to BA, taught postgraduate and research degree programmes. My doctoral thesis, completed at Roehampton in 1999, explored the cultural and historical context of British choreography in the years 1945-55. Since then, I have presented conference papers internationally, diversifying in periods and genres while maintaining an academic curiosity in relation to economic, political and structural relationships within theatre dance. From the nineteenth to the twenty-first centuries, such issues are central to understanding the artistic development of dance in the theatre.

The post World War II Cold War period is one such fruitful area. I published 'Fellow Travellers: Dance and British Cold War Politics in the Early 1950s,' (Dance Research, 19, no. 2, Winter 2001) and contributed a chapter on British modern dance of the 1940s/1950s to Re-Thinking Dance History (Alexandra Carter, ed.) published by Routledge in 2004. Dance in its political and social contexts, from the nineteenth century onwards, is a central theme of my courses taught at BA and MA level, especially the MA module ‘Dance and the Politics of Identity’.

Main Projects

For a number of years I have researched the ‘utopian’ dance of Dartington Hall in Devon. Published in 2007, Dancing in Utopia: Dartington Hall and its Dancers (book, pp. 274) is an in-depth study of the phenomenon from the 1920s onwards, expanding into the more widespread changes in British contemporary dance as art, education and community involvement over the twentieth century.


My current research is working towards another book, Mar[king] Time, fusing the triad of time, dance and history, with case studies drawn across the centuries from nineteenth to twenty-first.

Research students

My past and current research students have worked in the areas of dance history, dance analysis and national identity in various genres of ballet and contemporary dance.

My body as a dance teacher has been formed by ballet and modern (Graham) dance techniques but as I currently dance in middle age, I confine myself to performance practice as a relaxation only, but one that informs me historically, performing ‘early dance’ with Consort de Danse Baroque.

Publications

(2008) Dance History as an Imagined Space: The Dance School at Dartington Hall, Its Mutable Past and Uncertain Future, Looking Back/Moving Forward: International Symposium on Dance Research, Society of Dance History Scholars, Saratoga Springs.

(2007) Dancing in Utopia: Dartington Hall and its Dancers, Alton, Hants: Dance Books.

(2004) Dancing in the Margins?: British Modern Dance in the 1940s and 1950s, Rethinking Dance History, ed. Alexandra Carter, London: Routledge, 119 - 131.

(2003) Mécénat et communauté à Dartington Hall, Être ensemble: Figures de la communauté en danse depuis le XXe siècle, ed. Claire Rousier, Paris: Centre national de la danse, 165 - 178.

with Stephanie Jordan (2003) Putting the Canon in its Place: Tales from the Database Stravinsky the Global Dancer’, Dance History on Shannon’s Shore: Proceedings of 26th Annual Conference, Society of Dance History Scholars, 67-69.

with Stephanie Jordan (2003) Stravinsky the Global Dancer: A Chronology of Choreography to the Music of Igor Stravinsky , http://www.roehampton.ac.uk/stravinsky.

(2001) 'Dancing in Utopia', in Transmigratory Moves: Dance in Global Circulation, New York: Congress on Research in Dance 34th International Conference, 230-233.

(2001) 'Fellow Travellers: Dance and British Cold War Politics, Dance Research, 19:2, 83-105.

Undergraduate courses taught at Roehampton:

Dance Studies

Postgraduate courses taught at Roehampton:

Dance Studies
Dance: Ballet Studies