Dance, Gender and Nation: 1930–1960

Raquel Alarcón Saguar has a bachelor’s degree in Spanish Dance, a degree in Philosophy and Educational Sciences and an M.A. in Performing Arts. She teaches Spanish Dance Methodology and Didactics, Performance Techniques and Workshops at the Conservatorio Superior de Danza María de Ávila. As a dancer she has worked with the choreographers Antonio Gades, José Granero, Rafael Aguilar, Luisillo and Antonio Márquez, among others, and has been invited to the IDD (International Dance Day) galas to perform pieces as a bolero school soloist, for instance Puerta de Tierra, by Antonio Ruiz, and Alberto Lorca’s Intermedio de los Burladores. Her own creations include Sueño, Escenas de Ida y Vuelta, De paso… paseo and Cuestión de t(i)empo. She is part of the team from the R+D+I project Danza durante la Guerra Civil y el franquismo (1936-1960): políticas culturales, identidad, género y patrimonio coreográfico (Dance during the Civil War and Francoism (1936–1960): Cultural Politics, Identity, Gender and Choreographic Heritage).

Cristina Cruces Roldán is head professor of the Department of Social Anthropology at the University of Seville. Specialised in flamenco research, she has directed a Doctoral Programme specialised in this subject and she is the author of more than ninety publications in books and magazines, both in Spain and internationally, most notably the two volumes Antropología y Flamenco. She is the director of two R+D projects from the Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs on the relationships between flamenco, the market, ethnicity and gender, and she is a researcher on the R+D+I project Danza durante la Guerra Civil y el franquismo (1936-1960): políticas culturales, identidad, género y patrimonio coreográfico (Dance during the Civil War and Francoism (1936–1960): Cultural Politics, Identity, Gender and Choreographic Heritage).

Isabelle Launay is a professor of History and Aesthetics in Contemporary Dance at the University of Paris 8. She has published À la recherche d’une danse moderne, Rudolf Laban et Mary Wigman (1996), with Boris Charmatz; Entretenir, à propos d’une danse contemporaine (2002); Undertraining, on a Contemporary Dance (2012); Les Carnets Bagouet (2008), with Sylviane Pagès; Mémoires et histoire en danse (2011), and with Marie Glon, Histoires de gestes (2012). She has also taught at the National Centre of Contemporary Dance, Angers, and has collaborated in a wide range of contemporary dance and art projects. She has worked for a number of years with the artist Latifa Laâbissi and has explored memory in choreographic pieces.

Beatriz Martínez del Fresno is head professor at the Department of Art History and Musicology at the University of Oviedo and a specialist in music and dance from the first half of the twentieth century. In 1996 at Universidad Española she opened up a new line of research on the history of dance, a field in which she has directed five national research projects. She has also coordinated the book Coreografiar la historia europea: cuerpo, política, identidad y género en la danza (2013), and currently directs the Research Group Music, Dance and Cultural Studies (MUDANZES) and is head researcher on the R+D+I project Danza durante la Guerra Civil y el franquismo (1936-1960): políticas culturales, identidad, género y patrimonio coreográfico (Dance during the Civil War and Francoism (1936–1960): Cultural Politics, Identity, Gender and Choreographic Heritage).

Guadalupe Mera Felipe is a professor of Dance Theory and History at the Conservatorio Superior de Danza María de Ávila de Madrid. She also holds a PhD from the University of Oviedo, a degree in Spanish Studies and Modern and Contemporary History from the Autonomous University of Madrid, and in performance from RESAD. She is also a graduate in Spanish Dance from the Royal School of Dramatic Arts and Dance, Madrid. She has performed as a dancer in a number of Spanish dance companies and worked as a dance teacher, as well as collaborating on a range of scientific publications with contributions on the history of dance in Spain. She also forms part of the R+D+I project Danza durante la Guerra Civil y el franquismo (1936-1960): políticas culturales, identidad, género y patrimonio coreográfico (Dance during the Civil War and Francoism (1936–1960): Cultural Politics, Identity, Gender and Choreographic Heritage).

Madeline Ritter is a lawyer, arts manager and dance curator. Between 1989 and 2004 she was the artistic director of Tanz Performance Köln (Cologne, Germany), an international production and programming platform for contemporary dance and new media. In 2004 she proposed national financing programmes for dance at the core of the German Federal Cultural Foundation (Tanzplan Deutschland, Tanzfonds Erbe), where she directs projects. In 2014 she launched Dance On, an initiative focused on the promotion of artistic excellence in dancers over forty years of age, whereby projects related to dance and age are addressed and developed. Moreover, she teaches cultural management classes at a number of European universities, and is the administrative vice-president of the Pina Bausch Foundation and a member of the Deutsches Tanzarchiv Advisory Board.

Margarita Tortajada Quiroz has a PhD in Social Sciences from the Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana and she has been a researcher at the National Centre for Research, Documentation and Information on “José Limón” Dance from the National Institute of Fine Arts, Mexico, since 1988. Her career combines her experience as a dancer and her academic training. Her publications have seen her offer reflections on dance theory, particularly on the history of Mexican dance, and she is a pioneer of gender studies in dance and the author of benchmark monographs such as Danza y poder (1995), La danza escénica de la revolución mexicana (2000), Danza y género (2001) and Las mujeres en la danza escénica (2001).