Bio

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. She is the 2022 Honorable Mention for the Gertrude Lippincott award for best article in the field of dance studies, was previously awarded a prestigious Erasmus Mundus Fellowship (2015-2019) for her PhD research and was the first MFA student in dance at the University of Utah to be awarded a Graduate Research Fellowship (2007-2008). Her research work has been funded by Irene H. Chayes Travel Grant, as well as two grants from the German Academic Exchange Service / Bundesministerium für Bilding und Forschung (FUBright). Forthcoming works include a special issue of the journal Interface Critique (co-editor, 2024), and two chapters in co-edited books to be published in 2024 through Brepols and De Gruyter. Recent publications include a peer-reviewed article in the first dance-focused special issue of Postmedieval (edited by Kathryn Dickason, 2023), an article on the historical revisionism of Thomas Hanna in Dance Research Journal (April 2022), an essay and numerous shorter texts in the MARKK Museum exhibition catalogue Lightning Symbol and Snake Dance: Aby Warburg and Pueblo Art (Berlin: Hatje Cantz, 2022), a peer-reviewed article for the European Journal of Theatre and Performance (Sept. 2021), and an essay for Institution is a Verb: A Panoply Performance Lab Compilation (Operating System, 2021). She has been a guest speaker in many contexts, including at the Universität Hamburg, Sorbonne Université, the University of Kentucky, École des hautes études en sciences sociales (EHESS) and Le Centre national de la recherche scientifique (CNRS). She has been a guest researcher at the Warburg Institute and the Bibliothèque interuniversitaire de Santé (Paris).  

Drury has danced improvisational scores of “Bessie” and Guggenheim award-winning choreographer Yvonne Meier and performed as a guest artist in the work of La Pocha Nostra led by MacArthur “genius” awardee Guillermo Gómez-Peña. Her artistic practice has been supported by the European Cultural Foundation, 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. Her works have been presented at the Queens Museum, St Mark’s Church, Issue Project Room, Judson Church, ZK/U Berlin, Brooklyn Arts Exchange, Momenta Art, Chashama, and elsewhere. Drury’s performances have been featured internationally in Budapest, Berlin, Cologne and at the University of the Arts Helsinki and Universidad de las Américas Puebla, Mexcio. Her 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). 

Drury has been a co-organizer of workshops and conferences on the history of the body, decolonization and artistic, research, and digital arts, humanities, and theories. With Dr. Laura Hellsten, she co-coordinates the study circle, “Praxis of Social Imaginaries” through the Nordic Summer University, focussing on collaborative and community-based research practices of the textual history and European legacy of otherisation. She curated the first series on Post-Dance (Brooklyn International Performance Art Festival), curated an exhibition of the work of the 90’x Collective (Tbilisi) and presented an evening with artist Chloë Bass (NYC). Drury sat on the board of the Association for Performance Art Berlin until the organization was dissolved in 2022. Previously, she co-founded the Woods Cooperative (an artist-run rehearsal and performance space in Queens) and initiated the feminist working group No Wave Performance Task Force (2012-2018). Present and previous collaborators include Sima Ehrentraut, Nina Tolksdorf, Esther Neff and Brian McCorckle (Panoply Lab, NYC), Lichen Bouboushian (Chicago/Austin), Matthew D. Gantt (NYC), No Collective (Japan/USA), Samira El Khadraoui (croxhapox, Belgium), and Joël Verwimp (Berlin).