Moving in Parallel: Ancient and Modern Dance Makers

Classics scholar and former Royal Ballet dancer Tom Sapsford examines the cultural impact of dance in classical and modern contexts. By putting the professional and personal lives of dancers from the ancient Mediterranean world and early twentieth-century Paris side by side, this lecture explores how these temporally disparate dance makers gained their specific expertise, practiced their art, and realized their aesthetic aims. In addition, the talk examines how—with their respective presentations of Greco-Roman material through a choreographic medium—both ancient and modern performers radically changed their audience's understanding of the power of dance.

Tom Sapsford is a Spring 2019 Resident Fellow at the Center for Ballet and the Arts at New York University. He is an Early Career Associate at the Archive of Performances of Greek and Roman Drama at the University of Oxford.

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