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Discussion

When Dancers Make History

11.04.2024 05:00 PM

Event Summary

Black and white photo of Jennifer Homans seated.

Image courtesy of Jennifer Homans.

This event will feature Jennifer Homans, New Yorker dance critic and founding director of the Center for Ballet and the Arts at New York University, in conversation with historian Tara Zahra and dancer Meredith Dincolo. The discussion will center on Homans’ acclaimed biography of George Balanchine, Mr. B: George Balanchine’s 20th Century (2022), as well as the broader questions of what dance can teach us about history and what history can teach us about dance. What is the role of an ephemeral art form in understanding and commemorating the past and present?


A livestream of this event will be available via Zoom.

About the Speaker

Jennifer Homans is the dance critic for The New Yorker. She is the author of Mr. B: George Balanchine’s 20th Century (2022), finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award; and Apollo's Angels: A History of Ballet (2010). Homans was a professional dancer before completing a PhD in Modern European History at New York University, where she is now a Global Distinguished Professor and the founding director of the Center for Ballet and the Arts.


Organized by the Neubauer Collegium in partnership with the Gray Center for Arts and Inquiry at the University of Chicago.