Lynn Garafola
Encyclopedia
Lynn Garafola is a prominent dance historian, critic, and frequent commentator on dance for The Nation
The Nation
The Nation is the oldest continuously published weekly magazine in the United States. The periodical, devoted to politics and culture, is self-described as "the flagship of the left." Founded on July 6, 1865, It is published by The Nation Company, L.P., at 33 Irving Place, New York City.The Nation...

 magazine and numerous other periodicals. Noted dance critic Marcia Siegel has written of Garafola, “I do not know of another dance historian with the courage and the sophistication to bypass the adulatory discourse that protects the dance field from investigative research.”

Early life and career

Garafola was born in New York City, attended Hunter High School
Hunter High School
Hunter High School is a large public high school located at 4200 South 5600 West West Valley City, Utah. It was opened in 1990 with its first graduating class graduating in 1991...

 and Barnard College
Barnard College
Barnard College is a private women's liberal arts college and a member of the Seven Sisters. Founded in 1889, Barnard has been affiliated with Columbia University since 1900. The campus stretches along Broadway between 116th and 120th Streets in the Morningside Heights neighborhood in the borough...

, and graduated in 1968. She received a Ph. D. in Comparative Literature
Comparative literature
Comparative literature is an academic field dealing with the literature of two or more different linguistic, cultural or national groups...

 from the City University of New York
City University of New York
The City University of New York is the public university system of New York City, with its administrative offices in Yorkville in Manhattan. It is the largest urban university in the United States, consisting of 23 institutions: 11 senior colleges, six community colleges, the William E...

 in 1985. Since 2000, she has taught at Barnard College, where she is currently Professor of Dance.

Garafola was a Scholar in Residence at the Getty Research Institute
Getty Research Institute
The Getty Research Institute , located at the Getty Center in Los Angeles, California, is "dedicated to furthering knowledge and advancing understanding of the visual arts". A program of the J...

 (formerly the Getty Center for the History of Arts and the Humanities) in 1991-92, and has held Fellowships from the Social Science Research Council
Social Science Research Council
The Social Science Research Council is a U.S.-based independent nonprofit organization dedicated to advancing research in the social sciences and related disciplines...

 and the National Endowment for the Humanities
National Endowment for the Humanities
The National Endowment for the Humanities is an independent federal agency of the United States established by the National Foundation on the Arts and the Humanities Act of 1965 dedicated to supporting research, education, preservation, and public programs in the humanities. The NEH is located at...

. In 2005, she was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
American Academy of Arts and Sciences
The American Academy of Arts and Sciences is an independent policy research center that conducts multidisciplinary studies of complex and emerging problems. The Academy’s elected members are leaders in the academic disciplines, the arts, business, and public affairs.James Bowdoin, John Adams, and...

.

Writing about dance

Garafola’s works, which include books, essays, book reviews, edited volumes, catalogue entries, and translations, have redefined the field of dance history, bringing modern research methods and modes of interpretation to subjects ranging from the romantic ballerina to the New York City Ballet
New York City Ballet
New York City Ballet is a ballet company founded in 1948 by choreographer George Balanchine and Lincoln Kirstein. Leon Barzin was the company's first music director. Balanchine and Jerome Robbins are considered the founding choreographers of the company...

. Her first book, Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes
Ballets Russes
The Ballets Russes was an itinerant ballet company from Russia which performed between 1909 and 1929 in many countries. Directed by Sergei Diaghilev, it is regarded as the greatest ballet company of the 20th century. Many of its dancers originated from the Imperial Ballet of Saint Petersburg...

, which received the De la Torre Bueno Prize
De la Torre Bueno Prize
The de la Torre Bueno Prize is an annual award offered by the Society of Dance History Scholars for the best book in the field of dance studies. The award honors José Rollins de la Torre Bueno, the first university press editor to develop a dance studies titles list...

, is recognized as the finest study of a company that played a critical role in the development of twentieth-century dance. In The New Republic
The New Republic
The magazine has also published two articles concerning income inequality, largely criticizing conservative economists for their attempts to deny the existence or negative effect increasing income inequality is having on the United States...

, Richard Taruskin
Richard Taruskin
Richard Taruskin is an American-Russian musicologist, music historian, and critic who has written about the theory of performance, Russian music, fifteenth-century music, twentieth-century music, nationalism, the theory of modernism, and analysis. As a choral conductor he directed the Columbia...

 praised the book’s “breathtaking array of new documentary materials,” adding, “it is a breakthrough, an epoch-maker.”

Subsequent books include André Levinson on Dance (editor, with Joan Acocella
Joan Acocella
Joan B. Acocella is an American journalist who is the dance and book critic for The New Yorker. She has written several books on dance, literature, and psychology....

, 1991); The Diaries of Marius Petipa (translator and editor, 1992); José Limón: An Unfinished Memoir (editor, 1998) [winner of the Award for Outstanding Scholarly Dance Publication from the Congress on Research in Dance
Congress on Research in Dance
Congress on Research in Dance is an international non-profit interdisciplinary society for dance researchers, artists, performers and choreographers. CORD publishes the Dance Research Journal, and sponsors annual conferences which distribute annual awards...

]; Rethinking the Sylph: New Perspectives on the Romantic Ballet (editor, 1997); The Ballet Russes and Its World (editor, with Nancy Van Norman Baer, 1999) [winner of the Kurt Weill Book Prize]; and Legacies of Twentieth-Century Dance (2005). Between 1991 and 1998 Garafola served as editor of the monograph series, Studies in Dance History, for the Society of Dance History Scholars. Her current work focuses on the life and work of the choreographer Bronislava Nijinska
Bronislava Nijinska
Bronislava Nijinska - February 22, 1972)) was a Russian dancer, choreographer, and teacher of Polish descent.Nijinska was born in Minsk, the third child of the Polish dancers Tomasz and Eleonora Nijinska . Her brother was Vaslav Nijinsky...

.

Dance history

Garafola is an active public intellectual in areas related to dance and its history. She has presented numerous lectures to audiences in the United States and abroad, and has been curator of several museum exhibitions, among them "Dance for a City: Fifty Years of the New York City Ballet" (New-York Historical Society
New-York Historical Society
The New-York Historical Society is an American history museum and library located in New York City at the corner of 77th Street and Central Park West in Manhattan. Founded in 1804 as New York's first museum, the New-York Historical Society presents exhibitions, public programs and research that...

, 1999), and three recent exhibits at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts
New York Public Library for the Performing Arts
The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center houses one of the world's largest collections of materials relating to the performing arts. It is one of the four research centers of the New York Public Library's Research library system, and it is also one...

: "500 years of Italian Dance" (2006–07); "New York Story: Jerome Robbins and His World" (2008); and "Diaghilev’s Theater of Marvels" (2009). New York Times reviewer Anna Kisselgoff described "Dance for a City" as an "intelligent chronological sequence and an imaginative installation," although she criticized certain interpretive aspects of the installation. In May 2009, Garafola organized a major symposium on Diaghilev and the Ballets Russe as part of a city-wide cultural festival in Boston. She has also contributed to and collaborated on multiple other smaller exhibitions and presentations related to dance and its history, such as "America's Irreplaceable Dance Treasures: The First 100" presented by the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts in 2005.

Personal life


Lynn Garafola is married to the historian Eric Foner
Eric Foner
Eric Foner is an American historian. On the faculty of the Department of History at Columbia University since 1982, he writes extensively on political history, the history of freedom, the early history of the Republican Party, African American biography, Reconstruction, and historiography...

. They have one daughter.
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