Where are the edges of dance, what are the borders of its embodiment?

To look at dance among histories of ideas is to see an ever-contested site. Dance has been and can be (either metaphorically or actually) almost anything: The movement of the stars, the wayfinding of bees, the generative energy of creation, the spiritual march toward death, as ritual and communion with spiritual forces, or (perhaps in its least exciting form) the choreographed artwork. In some senses, dance is an agitator. It kicks up the dust around some particularly difficult questions about the relations of moving bodies and the world (which, itself, is a moving body).

DANCE, MODERNITY, AND THE HISTORY OF THE BODY.

Hi. I am an historian and performance studies scholar, trained as an early modernist, who works at the crossroads of dance, art history, and philology. My research coalesces around the history of the body and critically addresses historical relations between colonial sciences and art/performance modernities, transmediation between visual art, performance, and literary forms, migrations and Indigeneity, and the visual cultures and cultural history of dance and embodied performance. Major topics of interest include the history of dance anthropology, colonial collection and restitution of performance regalia and visual art works of Indigenous peoples of the “far” north, histories of legal regulation of dance and performance, and the scientistic use of dance and the dancing body within colonial theories of civilizational progress. To do so, I blend historically rigorous storytelling with fieldwork, archival research, and Digital Humanities methods. Alongside my historical work, I keep engaged in the lively study of contemporary practices of art and performance across its “disciplines”. As an immigrant researcher in Germany, I’m also ever trying to improve my deutschkenntnisse.

Bio. — CV.

What’s New:

RECENT PUBLICATIONS:

2026. “Travelling into the Dark: The Circumpolar North, Indigenous Art, and Settler Aesthetics of Remoteness“ in: ARTS Journal 15, 44: Artistic Imagination and Social Imaginaries, Laura Hellsten and Eduardo Abrantes, eds.

2025. “Pellicle and Portrait: A Historiography of Face, Race, and Interface in Media Theory (Thinking into the Cracks Between Lavater, Dagognet, & Galloway)” in: Interface Critique Vol. 5: Conversing the Book. 

2025. “Cannibal Choreographies: Anthropology, Anthropophagy, and Modernist Dance in the Americas“ (proof PDF linked here). In: Moderner Tanz – revisited, Miriam Althammer, Anja K. Arend, Eike Wittrock eds. Bielefeld: Transcript Verlag, pp. 119-132.

Other News:

  • The opening symposium of the three-year collaborative research project Studies in Remoteness, titled “Duplicity/Duplicität: Betwixt intimates and strangers”, was held in Berlin at the Institut für Theaterwissenschaft, Freie Universität on 29-31 January 2026. Further information here.
  • The three year project Studies in Remoteness has been selected by the Nordic Summer University as a part of its study programme for 2026-2028. I’ll be co-coordinating the project with the artist Helena Hildur W.
  • I’ve been awarded a short-term fellowship at the Herzog August Bibliothek, where I will be in residence March-April and September-October 2026, working on my second book project.
  • Stay tuned for the massive two-volume publication on embodiment and the history of imagination co-edited by Elizabeth Claire, Beatrice Delaurenti, Roberto Poma, and Koen Vermeir to be published with Brepols. The first volume will include my chapter on Paracelsus’s late writings on the St Vitus’ Dance.