Lindsey Drury is an early modernist historian and performance studies scholar who works on critical/digital research approaches to colonial history and the ethnological archive. She holds a PhD from the Freie Universität Berlin and University of Kent-Canterbury and currently works as a Postdoc within Critical Dance Studies at the Freie Universität Berlin, where she researches, teaches, and organizes the Valeska Gert Visiting Professorship program. Her research has been funded by the Cluster of Excellence “Temporal Communities: Doing Literature in a Global Perspective”, an Erasmus Mundus Fellowship, an Irene H. Chayes Travel Grant, the German Academic Exchange Service / Federal Ministry of Education and Research (FUBright), and with a Graduate Research Fellowship (University of Utah). Her artistic practice has been supported by the Queens Art Fund, the Brooklyn Arts Council, and through residencies at Pioneer Works, the Brooklyn Arts Exchange, Gibney Dance, and Cora Dance in New York City. Drury’s performance works have been called “performance from an unknown civilization” (Hyperallergic), “compelling new performance” (Huffington Post), and as “staging the death of patriarchal modernism” (PAJ, MIT Press).
Current Academic Position
Postdoctoral Researcher & Junior Faculty (2023- )
Critical Dance Studies
Institut für Theaterwissenschaft, Freie Universität Berlin.
Supervisor: Prof. Dr. Lucia Ruprecht
Previous Academic Position
Postdoctoral Researcher & Research Area Coordinator (2019-2023)
EXC Temporal Communities, Freie Universität Berlin.
Research Area 5, “Building Digital Communities”
Supervisor: Prof. Dr. Anita Traninger
Education
PhD Erasmus Mundus Consortium PhD Program, 2015-2019
“Text and Event in Early Modern Europe”
Consortium programme, Geschichts- und Kulturwiss, Freie Universität Berlin and Centre for Medieval and Early Modern Studies (MEMS), University of Kent at Canterbury.
Supervisors: Prof. Dr. Claudia Jarzebowski and Dr. Freya Vass.
MA Liberal Studies, CUNY Graduate Center, 2013-2015
Supervisor: Prof. Dr. Tanya Pollard
MFA studies in Modern Dance, University of Utah, 2005-2008
Supervisors: Prof. Stephen Koester and Prof. Jon Scoville
BA Interdisciplinary Arts, Western Washington University, 1999-2004
University and Community Teaching
#DANCE in Popular and Public Discourse, MA Critical Dance Studies, Frie Uni. Berlin, Winter Semester 2024/2025
Sounding Bodies: The Science of Practice, MA Critical Dance Studies & MA Performance Sound and Music, Freie Uni. Berlin, Winter Semester 2024/2025
Performance Analysis: The Body on Display, BA Theater Studies, Freie Uni. Berlin, Summer Semester 2024.
Critical Dance Anthropology, MA Critical Dance Studies, Freie Uni. Berlin, Winter Semester 2023/2024.
Project Colloquium: Fictional Realism, cross-listed in MA Critical Dance Studies and MA Cultural Management, Freie Uni. Berlin, Winter Semester 2023/2024
Performance Analysis: Ways of Witness, BA Theater Studies, Freie Uni. Berlin, Summer Semester 2023
Guest Lecture, Dance History Course, Western Washington University Dance Program 2021
Guest Lecture, Art Studio MFA program, University of Kentucky, 2021
Practice & Theory Workshop Instructor, croxhapox & Astrid Collectief, CAT Cologne 2019 – 2020
Guest Lecture, Seminar Haine de la Danse, Université Paris Sorbonne, 2019
Guest Lecture, Seminar History of Imagination. L’École des hautes études en sciences sociales, 2019
Performance Art Instructor, Transcultural Art Lab, Jubi Juist, 2017
Workshop & Technique Instructor, Performática Festival (weeklong intensive), Universidad de las Americas, 2012, 2014
Thesis Coordinator and Teaching Assistant to Ishmael Houston-Jones, Hollins University MFA Program, 2011
Instructor, Introduction to Dance. University of Utah, 2005 – 2007
Teaching Assistant, Western Washington University, 2003
Theses and Dissertations
“Three Imagined Dances: the Somatics of Early Modern Textual Mediation”, July 2019
PhD dissertation, University of Kent, Freie Universität Berlin.
“The Inconstancy of Bodies: Yvonne Meier’s Works, 1985-2012”, September 2015
MA Thesis. Graduate Center, City University of New York.
Book Projects / Special Issues
Forthcoming est. 2027. Arrested Loss: Dance objects and colonial science between Germany and the American West (working title). In progress, estimated completion 2026.
Forthcoming, est. 2025. Cosmic Body Dancing Plague: Performance and cosmology in the work of Paracelsus. Under contract.
Forthcoming, est. 2025. Dances for the Potter’s Wheel: Body, time, and world in early print (working title). In review.
Forthcoming January 2025. Vol. 5 of Interface Critique, guest editor with Nina Tolksdorf and Elvia Vasconcelos (print as well as digital Open Access). Contributions by Johanna Drucker, Alexander Galloway, Roberto Simanowski, Beatrice Gründler, Marian Dörk, and others. (Heidelberg: Arthistoricum Verlag)
2017. Matters of Act: A Journal of Ideas, co-editor with No Collective (Brooklyn: Already Not Yet Press)
Book Chapters
Forthcoming 2024. “Memory, Ceremony, Sacrifice: Gene Weltfish, the Pawnee Nation, and the Settler State”. Marginality and Resistencia, Miguel Rivas Venegas and Martina Weisz, eds (Berlin: De Gruyter).
Forthcoming 2025. “Imitation de la foi: Matérialité, imagination et croyance dans l’écriture tardive de Paracelse sur la danse de St Vitus”
Le Corps et les Pouvoirs de l’Imagination, Elizabeth Claire, Beatrice Delaurenti, Roberto Poma, and Koen Vermeir, eds. (Turnhout: Brepols). Accepted book chapter – Peer Reviewed
Forthcoming 2025. “Pellicle and Portrait: Face, race, and interface in media theory (from Lavater to Dagognet to Galloway)” Vol. 5 of Interface Critique (Heidelberg: Arthistoricum Verlag).
2021. “When is a House? In Seven Figures”
Institution is a Verb: A Panoply Performance Lab Compilation, Esther Neff, Ayana Evans, Tsedaye Makonnen, Elizabeth Lamb, eds. (New York: The Operating System)
2014. “Ellen C. Covito’s Performer Pedagogy.”
Ellen C. Covito: Works After Weather, No Collective, eds. (New York: Already Not Yet Press)
Articles
August 2023. “The Transhistorical, Transcultural Life of Sausages: From medieval morescas to New Mexican Matachines with Aby Warburg”. Postmedieval, special issue “Legacies of Medieval Dance” guest edited by Kathryn Dickason. -Peer Reviewed-
April 2022 “What’s in a Name? Somatics and the Historical Revisionism of Thomas Hanna” Dance Research Journal.
March 2022. “The Blurred Bodies of Matachines: Warburg’s Notes on a Colonial New Mexican Dance Drama” In Lightning Symbol and Snake Dance: Aby Warburg and Pueblo Art, Uwe Fleckner and Christine Chavez, eds. Berlin: Hatje Cantz.
September 2021. “The Double-Life of ‘Pagan Dance’: Indigenous Rituality, Early Modern Dance and the Language of US Newspapers” European Journal of Theatre and Performance, No. 03. Essays Section, “Language and Performance: Moving across Discourses and Practices in a Globalised World”, Małgorzata Sugiera, Karel Vanhaesebrouck, and Timmy De Laet, eds. (Peer reviewed).
2017. with Dee Ali, “The Judson Dancers”. Matters of Act: A Journal of Ideas,Drury & No Collective, eds. (Brooklyn: Already Not Yet Press)
2014. “Mobilizing the Ineffable: Yvonne Meier” Learning to Love Dance More: A Performance Journal. Volume 8, Displacement (Summer 2014), 8-12.
2012. “Interview with Yvonne Meier” Learning to Love Dance More: A Performance Journal. Volume 5, Back to School (Fall 2012).
2011. “Emergence: Watching and being early-career artists in New York City dance” Critical Correspondence, Movement Research (NYC).
Academic Presentations
“Modern Dance Ancestry and Colonial Reckoning in the work of Keith Hennessy”, November 2023
American Society for Aesthetics Annual Meeting, Arlington, Virginia. Funded by an Irene H. Chayes Travel Grant.
“Bodies of Empire, Bodies of Others: Dance in Medieval Asia, through the Lens of the Period’s European Authors” November 2023
Invited speaker, “Transforming a Medieval Saga Into a Contemporary Ballad and Dance Performance” organized by Irmela Hijiya-Kirschnereit.
“Response to Evelyn Schuler-Zea’s ‘Knots, Stones and Living with the Dead’”, July 2023
Invited short response presentation for the Cluster of Excellence “Temporal Communities” Annual Conference: “Constant Change: The Temporal Dimensions of Materialities in the Arts” Staatsbibliothek, Berlin, Germany.
“A Dancing Bear: Plastic Shamanism and Settler Modern Dance ‘Ancestry’” , October 2022
Invited presenter to INSPIRED hub curated by Alexander Schwan,“Dancing Resilience” Dance Studies Association Annual Conference, Vancouver, Canada.
“Dancing Bodies between Political Activism and Indigenous Survivance”, September 2022
Invited participant in panel “Analyzing Activist Bodies” curated by Alexander Schwan and Nina Tolksdorf,“Matters of Urgency” Congress of the Gesellschaft für Theaterwissenschaft, Berlin.
“Captive Material Histories of Indigenous Dance: Ethnological Museums, Repatriation Efforts, and the field of Dance Studies” Dancing with Decolonization International Conference. Online, August 2022.
“It’s not a Tacit Decolonial. Artistic Research, practice-based knowledges, and European research”, July 2022
At the Nordic Summer University. Study Circle 7: Experiencing Artistic Research through the Senses, Oslo.
“Texturing Space – Towards an Exponential Cartography”, May 2022 Panel with Christoph Brunner (Leuphana University Luneburg), Knut Ebeling (weißensee – kunsthochschule berlin), and Marius Förster (Designer), MissRead book fair, Berlin .
“Neither Field nor Forensic, neither property nor sovereignty” November 2021Introduction of the workshop Depth of Field: Decolonization and the Grounds of Art(istic) Research, hosted by EXC 2020 “Temporal Communities”, Freie Universität Berlin.
“‘We’re not Pagan’: Indigenous Discourses on Dance and Religion in US newspapers around the turn of the turn of the 20th century”, October 2021
As a part of a panel series organized with Alexander Schwann and Kathryn Dickason titled Radical Religion for the Dance Studies Association Conference, Rutgers University.
“What is the Digital Doing?”, November 2020
Introductory session for the What is the Digital Doing? workshop organized with Nina Tolksdorf
“Vulnerability for Open Science”, May 2020
Freie Universität Open Science Working Group, “Digital Humanities and Open Science”
“A Cosmic Dance of Miraculous Forgery: the St Vitus dance, imagination, and the sidereal body”, July 2019
European Society for the Study of Western Esotericism, Amsterdam
“Immersed in reading / reading as immersion” , January 2019
Bodies of Design Somaesthetics Conference, Florida
“Paracelsus and the Veitstanz in Four Parts”, January 2019
Herzog August Bibliothek Wolfenbüttel
“Amnesia of Acts: toward a history of physical practice”, August 2018
Nordic Summer University, Fårö.
“Ennobling the Body at War: Anti-Dance Treatises on the Lineage of Phyrric Dance“, July 2018
Dance Studies Association 2018 Conference, Malta.
“Passing Time, Pastimes and Past Times: in Two Arrested Dances of Hypnerotomachia Poliphili and Tramutatione Metallica Sogni Tre”, September 2017
Shape of Return conference, the Institute of Cultural Inquiry, Berlin
We Added Nothing of Our Own:’ the ethics of two women publishers in mid-16th century Paris”, April 2017
Othello’s Island 5th Annual Conference
“What is Walking and How to Do It: Textual Estrangement and Experiential Anatomy in the Work of John Weaver“, April 2016
Oxford Annual Dance Symposium
“Disease Knows No Borders: St. Vitus Dance and the Ambiguity of Infection”, March 2016
Early English Drama & Performance network symposium
“Implicit and Mutually Implicated: Embodiment, Disability, and Dissent in the Works of Yvonne Meier”, April 2014
York University Theatre & Performance Studies Symposium
Co-Organized Academic Conferences and Workshops
Depth of Field: Decolonial Praxis in Artistic Research, Berlin, November 2021
Körper in Gemeinschaft (Body in Community) Berlin, November 2021 (forthcoming)
25th Digital Research in Humanities and Arts Conference, Berlin September 2021
What is the Digital Doing? A Workshop in the Interface Berlin, November 2020
Begin with an Object: Matters of Representation, Canterbury, October 2017
Curatorial Projects
Zugetextet – Literatur als intermediale Praxis, Humboldt Labor, Berlin, 2021
Chloë Bass: This is a Film, Zentrum für Kunst und Urbanistik, Berlin January 2019
Matters of Act in 4 Acts Berlin & Cyprus, March — April 2017 Already Not Yet Press
Post-Dance Series, Brooklyn International Performance Art Festival, Brooklyn, 2012
Selected Performance Works
When is a House? Berlin, 2017-present
Isomorph Droste, Pioneer Works, New York, 2019
We, Body of the People, Center for Art and Urbanistics, Berlin, 2018
Atelierhaus Droste, the old Australian Embassy of East Berlin, 2018
Real Virtual IKEA, Portland Media Group & Xhurch, Portland, Oregon, December 2015
House Music, Berlin and Helsinki, December 2014 — June 2015
Aftermath, Groundwork Festival, Brooklyn, November 2014
Vesna’s Fall New York City, North Carolina, Puebla (Mexico), 2012 — 2014
Any Size Mirror is a Dictator, Momenta Art, Issue Project Room, Flux Factory, Firehouse Space, and Chashama, New York City, 2012 — 2014
Run Little Girl, Cunningham Studio, New York City, 2012
I am my Shitty Little Box, St. Mark’s Church, New York City, 2011
Selected Works Performed
Immaculate Conception by No Collective and Ensemble Mise-En, Brooklyn, January 2016
An Evening of Works by Ellen C. Covito, 18-m Salon, Berlin, November 2014
If I Tell Myself… created by Diana Crum, Prospect Park, Brooklyn, September, 2012
Performance Installation by Megan Byrne, Brooklyn Museum’s GO, Brooklyn, September, 2012
Scores of Yvonne Meier, duet with Arturo Vidich, New Museum, NYC, July 2012″
The Works of Ellen C. Covito presented by No Collective, Vaudeville Park, NYC, May 2012
Scores of Yvonne Meier, American Dance Festival, duet with Jesse Zarritt, Durham, July 2011
H to Oh by Pele Bausch Chocolate Factory, NY, November 2010
Mapa/Corpo by La Pocha Nostra. Pickle Company Arts Space, Salt Lake City, March, 2007
Beseeching on You Own Behalf by Cynthia Oliver, University of Utah Salt Lake City, November, 2006
Residencies
Newberry Library Visiting Scholar Chicago, Illinois, March 2023
Warburg Institute Guest PhD Researcher London, UK, June 2019
Pioneer Works Tech Resident Artist Brooklyn, NY, January 2019 — March 2019
Cora Dance Resident Artist Redhook, Brooklyn, April 2014
Brooklyn Arts Exchange Upstart Program Brooklyn, 2010 — 2011
Momenta Art Resident Brooklyn, September 2013 — November 2013
Gibney Dance Resident Artist New York City, 2011 — 2012
Awards & Grants
Artist Grant, Queens Art Fund, 2019
Research/Mobility Funding, FU/DAAD/Bundesministerium, 2018-2019
Erasmus Mundus Fellowship, Sept 2015 – August 2018
Travel Grant, Nordic Summer University, July – August 2018
Artist Grant, Queens Council on the Arts, January 2014 – May 2015
Graduate Research Fellowship, University of Utah, August 2006 – August 2007
Monica Gutchow Dance Scholarship, Western Washington University, 2004
Service
Einstein Thematic Semester: Scales of Temporality, organisational team for a Digital Humanities Spring School, Freie Universität Berlin 2022-2023
EXC 2020 “Temporal Communities” Board, Deputy Postdoc Member 2021-2022
Diversity Arbeitsgruppe at EXC 2020: “Temporal Communities”, member, 2020-present
Association for Performance Art – Berlin, board member, 2019-present
The Woods Cooperative (artist-run rehearsal space), co-founder and central organizer, 2011-2015
No Wave Performance Task Force (feminist arts activism project), co-organizer, 2012-2015
Reviews and Press
September 2021. “Polyphonie und Widerstand” campus.leben
October 2020. ”From the Stage into Research” Research in Germany
May 2016. Covito, Ellen C. “The End of Choreography as We Know It.” PAJ: A Journal of Performance and Art. Volume 38 Issue 2, p.41-49
June 2015. Eikman, Cody. “Exchange Mechanism.” Performance Club.
September 2014. Nichols, James. “Any Size Mirror is a Dictator Dance-Opera Running in Brooklyn.” The Huffington Post.
October 2014. Cata, Li. “Closing Today: Holy Roughness// Acceptable Objectives for Watching This Opera.” Posture Magazine.
October 2014. Barnacle, Jay. “This Opera Doesn’t Need You,” Hyperallergic.
July 2013. Vartanian, Hrag. “Choreographing a Discussion About Labor, Feminism, and Performance.” Hyperallergic.
Languages
English (native), German (B2), French (B2) Latin (reading)
References
By request.
lindsey drury 