Elizabeth Bergman Assistant Professor, Dance |
Education
Teaching Interests
I teach a variety of movement forms, dance studies and interdisciplinary media-centered courses focused on popular culture. In both the dance studio and seminar room, I highlight how the politics of race, gender, class, sexuality and dis/ability manifest in different contexts and invite students to practice critical reflexivity about their engagement with various movement forms and cultural practices.
Research, Scholarship or Creative/Artistic Interests
I am a dancer-scholar interested in how the past informs our embodied experiences in the present. All my creative work is rooted in historical research, critical theory and reflection on my corporeal practices and lived experiences; projects variously take form as improvisational performances, collaboratively produced screendances and stage choreographies, and written scholarship.
My performance work often engages the topics of embodied subjectivity, feminist agency and the surveilling male gaze as they relate to the histories of ballet, vaudeville and burlesque, hatha yoga, and American modern dance. In my written scholarship, I examine the complex dynamics of race, gender, sexuality, class and power within the US commercial dance industry in the 1970s and 1980s; I am particularly interested in the ideological intersections of celebrity, multiculturalism and capitalism in popular dance media.
Professional Website