a selection of my publications

Note - The following list does not, for now, includes the material I published on this blog and its alter ego in Italian.

BOOKS

Letter to the World: Martha Graham danza Emily Dickinson [Letter to the World: Martha Graham dances Emily Dickinson], Rome, Aracne, 2015.

ESSAYS

"Afrofuturist Degas", Roots-Routes - Research in Visual Cultures, Year IX, N 31, September-December 2019, www.roots-routes.org, available online: http://www.roots-routes.org/afrofuturist-degas-by-rosella-simonari/ 
 
"Martha Graham's Letter to the World: A dance adaptation of Emily Dickinson", Journal of Adaptation in Film & Performance, Vol 12, Ns 1-2, 1 June 2019, pp. 33-48.
 

"The Ancestress figure: Puritanism in Martha Graham's choreography", The European Journal of American Culture, Vol 33, issue 2, June 2014, pp. 131-145.

"The p.s. (la studiosa precaria): Raccontare la precarietà della ricerca attraverso una striscia a fumetti", in Mappe della precarietà, vol II, Bologna, Odoya, 2012, pp. 191-210.

"Identità che s/ballano in rete: pratiche di interazione e collaborazione con il sito www.ballet-dance.com!, Scritture di donne fra letteratura e giornalismo Conference Proceedings, Società Italiana delle Letterate (SIL), published online here.

“La seducción que danza: relación entre coreología y estudios de género en el mito de Carmen”, Atti del Convegno La disciplina coreologica in Europa: Problemi e Prospettive, Cecilia Nocilli e Alessandro Pontremoli (eds.), Rome, Aracne, 2010, pp. 105-120.

“Sulle tracce di Letter to the World: lo studio di una coreografia di Martha Graham fra ricostruzione e precarietà”, in La danza fuori dalla scena – Cultura, media, educazione, Conference Proceedings, Ornella Di Tondo, Alessandro Pontremoli, Francesco Stoppa (eds.), La Rivista Abruzzese, no. 81 (monographic no.), 2010, pp. 81-94.

"'Is a Word Dead When it is Said?': Relationship between Text and Performance in Martha Graham’s Letter to the World”, in Expression in the Performing Arts, Inma Álvarez, Héctor J. Pérez e Francisca Pérez-Carreño (eds.), Cambridge, Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2010, pp. 151-166.

“‘After Great Pain, A Formal feeling Comes’: Emily Dickinson’s Poetry and Figure in Martha Graham’s Letter to the World”, in USA: Identities, Cultures, and Politics in National, Transnational, and Global Perpsectives, AISNA (Italian Association of North American Studies) XIX Conference Proceedings, Marina Camboni, Valerio Massimo De Angelis, Daniele Fiorentino, Tatiana Petrovich Njegosh (eds.), Macerata, Edizioni Università di Macerata, 2009, pp. 539-552.

“The p.s. (precarious scholar): using the concept of precarity as a creative tool”, Conversations Across the Field of Dance Studies – Dancing Economies, Society of Dance History Scholars Newsletter, vol XXIX, 2009, pp. 14-17.

““Accade in letteratura…e non solo: New Italian Epic, letteratura, danza e altre arti”, online essay in four parts: 

1) http://dancescriber.blogspot.com/2009/04/accade-in-letteratura-e-non-solo-new.html,
2) http://dancescriber.blogspot.com/2009/04/accade-in-letteratura-e-non-solo-new_29.html,
3) http://dancescriber.blogspot.com/2009/05/accade-in-letteratura-e-non-solo-new.html,
4) http://dancescriber.blogspot.com/2009/05/accade-in-letteratura-e-non-solo-new_06.html.

“Danzare il cante jondo: ipotesi di contaminazione fra Martha Graham e il flamenco”, Corpi danzanti. Culture, tradizioni, identità, Conference Proceedings dedicated to Giorgio Di Lecce, Ornella Di Tondo, Immacolata Giannuzzi, Sergio Torsello (eds.), Nardò, Besa, 2009, pp. 209-230.

 ““New Italian Epic e gender: riflessioni sparse”, Leggere Donna, n. 140, May-June 2009, pp. 29-30, avbailable online at: http://www.carmillaonline.com/archives/Rosella_Simonari_New_Italian_Epic_e_gender.pdf

“Bringing Carmen Back to Spain: Antonio Gades’s Flamenco Dance in Carlos Saura’s Choereofilm”, Dance Research, vol. 26, n. 2, Winter 2008, pp. 189-203.

Sappiano le mie parole di sangue e New Italian Epic”,
http://www.carmillaonline.com/archives/2008/09/002794.html, 28 settembre 2008.

“Looking Back at Martha Graham’s Letter to the World: Its Genesis, Its Reception, Its Legacy”, in Looking Back/Moving Forward, SDHS (Society of Dance History Scholars) Conference Proceedings, 2008, pp. 52-57.

“Alberto Spadolini e la danza”, in Bolero-Spadò: Alberto Spadolini, una vita di tutti i colori, Marco Travaglini (ed.), Modigliana, Litografia Fabbri, 2007, pp. 118-126. Exhibition Catalogue, Sala Imperatori, Porto San Giorgio (Fermo), 10 August – 9 September 2007.

"Spadolini: danzatore primitivista o pittore di ballerine?”, www.albertospadolini.it, April 2007.

  

ARTICLES

“Dead or Alive?: Martha Graham’s Legacy Twenty Years After she Passed Away”, http://www.ballet-dance.com/201201/GrahamJan2012.html, January 2012.

 “Moving Fabric: Costumes and Movement in Tero Saarinen’s Dances”, http://www.ballet-dance.com/200911/articles/feature_tsaarinen_20091002_simonari.html, November 2009.

“Martha Graham atti di luce con Emily Dickinson”, Danza&Danza, n. 195, December 2006, p. 18.

“In Search of Alberto Spadolini: the Incomplete Mosaic Behind an Extraordinary Life”,
http://www.ballet-dance.com/200608/articles/Spadolini20060700.html, August 2006.

“Dancing Carmen, Dancing Freedom: Antonio Gades’ Dance Adaptation in the Light of a Long and Enduring Genealogy”,
http://www.ballet-dance.com/200607/articles/Carmen200606.html , July 2006. 

“Henri Oguike Dance Company: Open Rehearsal for Tiger Dancing, plus extracts from Front Line, Finale”, http://www.ballet-dance.com/200603/articles/Oguike20060127.html, March 2006.

“Tero Saarinen Company, Open Rehearsal: 'Borrowed Light'”,
http://www.ballet-dance.com/200410/articles/Saarinen20040728.html, October 2004.

"Lilith, The Pioneering Woman, The Woman in White…Examples of 'Knowing Figures' in Martha Graham's Dances",
http://www.criticaldance.com/features/2003/mgdc_knowing_20030900.html, October 2003.

"Lettera al mondo: Martha Graham danza Emily Dickinson", Leggere Donna, n. 93, July – August 2001, pp. 38-39.

REVIEWS

“Nobody Knows and “I Lost Something on the Hill”: Fernando Suels Mendoza and Luna Dance Company”, http://www.ballet-dance.com/201105/Luna11Dec2011.html, December 2011.

“Menhir Company: Nina e le nuvole (Nina and the clouds)”, http://www.ballet-dance.com/201105/Menhir21May2011.html, Summer 2011.

“Anne Bogart and Martha Graham Hand in Hand Across America – SITI Company and Martha Graham Dance Company ‘American Document’”, http://ballet-dance.com/201011/articles/sitimgdc_american_20100611_simonari.html, November 2010.

“Fists Up and Moving. Dance is a Weapon – Martha Graham Dance Company”, http://ballet-dance.com/201010/articles/mgdc_joyce_20100609_simonari.html, October 2010.

 “Martha Graham reinventata da Anne Bogart”, Danza&Danza, July – August 2010, p. 12.

“Venice Biennale ‘Degree Zero’ – International Colloquium of Contemporary Dance”, http://www.ballet-dance.com/200908/articles/venicebiennale_colloquium_20090626_simonari.html, Summer 2009.

“Emio Greco / PC – Hell”, http://ballet-dance.com/200906/articles/greco_hell_20090505_simonari.html, June 2009.

"First Position: A century of Ballet Artists – book by Toba Singer”, http://www.ballet-dance.com/200811/articles/book_firstposition_20081000_simonari.html, November 2008.

“Painting the Stage Conference – Examining the interrelationship of painting and the performing arts”, http://www.ballet-dance.com/200711/articles/paintingthestage.html, November 2007.

“Alberto Spadolini Exhibition – Bolero-Spado': Una Vita Di Tutti I Colori”, http://www.ballet-dance.com/200710/articles/albertospadoliniexhibition.html, October 2007.

“Waving good-bye to Manon - Alessandra Ferri's Final Season with ABT”,
http://www.ballet-dance.com/200707/articles/ABT20070611.html, July 2007.

“Il danzatore che dipingeva la danza”, Danza&Danza, 201, July – August 2007, p. 19.

“Putting it Down in Words: Dance Theatre Journal Writing on Performance Conference”, http://www.ballet-dance.com/200705/articles/DTJ20070331.html, May 2007.

“Errand into Graham’s Maze: The Martha Graham Dance Company in Italy”,
http://www.ballet-dance.com/200704/articles/MGDC20070216.html, April 2007.

“500 Years of Italian Dance: Treasures from the Cia Fornaroli Collection”,
http://www.ballet-dance.com/200703/articles/ItalianDance2006.html, March 2007.

“Compagnie Linga: When a Table is Centerstage”,
http://www.ballet-dance.com/200702/articles/Linga20061222.html, February 2007.

“Homage to Milloss”, http://www.ballet-dance.com/200610/articles/Milloss20060610.html, October 2006.

“Takao Kawaguchi’s D.D.D.: Dancing to the Rhythm of the Heart”,
http://www.ballet-dance.com/200608/articles/Kawaguchi20060609.html, August 2006.

“Enlightened by Death: Ismael Ivo’s Illuminata”,
http://www.ballet-dance.com/200608/articles/Ivo20060610.html, August 2006.

“What is There Under the Skin of the Dancing Body?: Underskin – Venice Biennale Dance Symposium”, http://www.ballet-dance.com/200607/articles/Underskin20060609.html, July 2006.

“When Art Dances: The Dance of the Avant-Gardes Exhibition”,
http://www.ballet-dance.com/200606/articles/AvantGardes20060421.html, June 2006.

“Between Present and Future: Cullberg Ballet’s New Route”,
http://www.ballet-dance.com/200605/articles/Cullberg20060319.html, May 2006.

“Aterballetto: Mozart, Love and the ‘Colours’ of the South of Italy”,
http://www.ballet-dance.com/200604/articles/Aterballeto20060223.html, April 2006.

“Shen Wei Dance Arts’ Conntect Transfer: When Dance Paints Movement”,
http://www.ballet-dance.com/200602/articles/ShenWei20051126.html, February 2006.

“Tero Saarinen Company: “Borrowed Light”, The Light of Community”,
http://www.ballet-dance.com/200508/articles/Saarinen20050409.html, August 2005.

“Henri Oguike Dance Company: The Energy Between Light and Sound”,
http://www.ballet-dance.com/200508/articles/HenriOguike20050712.html, August 2005.

“Tanya Khabarova - 'Reflection': Eve, evolution, and the journey into life”,
http://www.ballet-dance.com/200501/articles/Khabarova20041216.html, January 2005.

“Yolande Snaith Theatre dance - 'Jardin Blanc': The white garden of movement”,
http://www.ballet-dance.com/200411/articles/Snaith20041025.html, November 2004.

“Tero Saarinen Company - ‘Westward Ho!’, ‘Wavelengths’, ‘Hunt’”, http://www.ballet-dance.com/200408/articles/Saarinen20040716.html, August 2004.

“Graham Pleasing and Political, Martha Graham Dance Company”, http://www.ballet-dance.com/200403/articles/Graham20040222.htm, March 2004.

“Satyric Festival Song, Martha Graham Dance Company”,
http://www.criticaldance.com/reviews/2003/MarthaGrahamDanceCo20031100.html, December 2003

“Oh my Goddess!”, Micheal Clark Dance Company,
http://www.criticaldance.com/reviews/2003/Clark20031004s.html, November 2003.

INTERVIEWS

“Pina Bausch and Beyond: Interview with Fernando Suels Mendoza”, http://www.ballet-dance.com/201201/MendozaJan2012.html, January 2012.

“Ritmo di parola e gesto: intervista a Valeria Simone”, http://dancescriber.blogspot.com/2012/02/ritmo-di-parola-e-gesto.html, 22 May 2011.

“Albero, ecologia dell’anima: intervista a Elisa Latini”, http://dancescriber.blogspot.it/2011/07/albero-ecologia-dellanima.html, 31 May 2011.

"An Interview with Susan Sentler: Exploring Martha Graham’s “Primitive Mysteries””, http://www.ballet-dance.com/200612/articles/Sentler200609.html, December 2006.

“Tero Saarinen: Dance that H(a)unts, Dance that Enchants”,
http://www.ballet-dance.com/200503/articles/TemoSaarinen20040724.html, March 2005.

"Visioni di/da donna tatuata: intervista a Betti Marenko",
http://www.donneinviaggio.it/articoli2.asp?id=96 (no longer available), October 2004.

(updated on 16 September 2019)

lecture performance (brief reflection)

Teaching is one of my vocations. I have taught the Dance and Mine undergraduate course at the University of Macerata for four years (2003-2007) and I believe that teaching dance history could become a subject open to more people than university students.
For this reason I created a different way, in fact a spectacular way, to deal with the topics of my research. I termed this way 'lecture performance' because while I deliver a dance history lecture, I interact with other languages such as music and dnace itself.
It is a format I experimented for the first time in 2006, when I delivered a paper at a conference organised by myself (hope to be able to speak about it soon), in collaboration with dj Nooz (a great graphic designer as well as dj) who was mixing music of different kind as background to my presentation. At my back a series of videos related to my paper and in mute mode were being showed. The result was interesting and, for some people, alienating. My intent was to stimulate the audience from different points of view and give life to a multisensory experience of the event. 

Occupy Wall Street Adbusters Poster

On July 13^th 2011 this Adbusters poster appeared online to present the Occupy Wall Street protest. It features a dancer on the top of the bronze bull which is situated near Wall Street. At the back there is a group of people immersed in a foggy atmosphere and ready to fight.

There is a sharp contrast between the shape created by the dancer and that of the bull. The former, in fact, stands on one leg performing an attitude to the back (a ballet position on one supporting leg, with the other bent at the knee to a ninety degree angle) with her arms in a loose second position. Her focus is downward left, her hair is composedly combed and her sleeveless dress is tight and short. Her pose suggests a sense of balance and stability.

On the other hand, the bull is portrayed in a very dynamic manner, with its forefeet off-balance to the right and its tail curled upwards. The bull was created in 1989 by artist Arturo DiModica as a Christmas present to the city of New York to praise its endurance after the 1987 stock market crash. Since then, it has become Wall Street mascot.

According to Wray Cummings, there is an interesting parallelism between this picture and one of the Major Arcana in Tarot decks, that is Strength. This card presents the figure of a woman with her hands on the jaws of a lion. It is not clear whether she is opening or closing them, but the usual interpretation of the card refers to humans’ ability to tame instinctual forces. The parallelism is quite appropriate as in the case of the Adbusters poster, the dancer tames the charging bull with her steadiness and grace. It is as if non violent protests could really make a difference in a world dominated by economic powers. So far the Occupy Wall Street movement has become an almost mainstream motto to be used in numerous protests’ activities in different parts of the world. In Italy, for example, it has recently been used to promote a campaign against animal testing (see here).

Watching this image, I asked myself why did Adbusters choose a classical dance pose and not, say, a hip hop one. But then maybe the contrast would not be as sharp as this one. Classical dance is a technique based on tough discipline and rigour and in the poster it is used to exemplify grace and steadiness (Cummings refers to the dancer’s pose atop the bull as improbable though) which are also its characteristics. 

Interestingly, classical dance has been used in another kind of political visual message, that is on the cover of Francesco Raparelli’s La lunghezza dell’onda – Fine della sinistra e nuovi movimenti (2009) [The wave length – The end of the left and the new movements], a book which analyses the Italian students’ protests (nicknamed ‘the wave’) from 2008 to 2009 as a new political agent in a country where the Berlusconi government repeatedly tended to erase the students’ rights. The cover is an interesting mix of ballet and activism as it presents the coloured drawing of a dancer performing an attitude to the back. However, if her legs are in the correct position, her arms escape ballet grammar in that they are placed one straight downward and the other bent upwards, with both hands in a fist. They eloquently express strength and the will to fight. At the back replicates of this figure announce an army of people ready to fight. The effect is further enhanced by the sense of perspective given by the baby blue rays that stem from the right low corner of the image.  

Ecstasy and the Demon

This review also appears in one of my other blogs, www.dancescriber.blogspot.com, at this link.

Susan Manning, Ecstasy and the Demon – The Dances of Mary Wigman [1993] (Minneapolis: Minnesota University Press, 2006).


Manning’s book is not just a groundbreaking analysis on Mary Wigman (1886-1973), but it also represents a fundamental shift in perspective in the field of dance studies. Manning does not take a mere biographical approach, but investigates the social and political events that shaped Wigman’s career as dancer, choreographer and teacher. Thanks to her research, we find out about Wigman’s influence on Rudolf Laban and his considerable influence on her, her work as choreographer of solo as well as group pieces, her controversial relationship with the Nazi Regime and her neglected reception in the United States.

Wigman emerges as a prominent figure in German modern dance (the so called Ausdruckstanz, 'expressionist dance'), a figure who often had to struggle for the survival of her art. The initial phase of her career was very much influenced by the sense of community and freedom experienced at Monte Verità, “an artists’ colony in the Swiss Alps where Wigman spent the years of the First World War in voluntary exile with Rudolf Laban and his circle of dancers”. There she experimented her movement approach and managed to canalise her energy into a “working method”. The solo pieces resulting from this practice were quite radical and innovative. An example is Ecstatic Dances (1917), where Wigman presented the transformations of a character into, among other things, a nun, a dervish and a temple dancer. Through these transformations, she blurred the line between what was perceived as masculine and feminine, thus posing the question of gender construction.

“The twenties were the great decade of Wigman’s career”: she opened a school in Dresden and successfully moved “from solo dancing to group choreography”. In this period her group was formed by women only (men began to be included in 1928). There she developed an approach to dance based on improvisation, Laban’s movement scales, spinning and circles. Group pieces from this period comprise The Seven Dances of Life (1921) and Scenes from a Dance Drama (1924), where the traditional narrative structure was eliminated in favour of a ritual-like vision, where she analysed the notion of (female) community. One of her most renowned solo piece from this period is her reconstruction of her 1914 Witch Dance (1926), where she wears a mask and a loose dress, seating on the stage floor. “Wearing a mask, the female dancer objectifies herself rather than allowing herself to be objectified by the (male) spectator”.

1930 was a critical year as Wigman passed “from a modernist to a fascist aesthetic”. This crisis reflects the larger crisis the Ausdruckstanz (expressionist dance) movement was undergoing. At stake was the survival of the movement, the preservation of its origin in physical culture and its relationship with “the discipline and theatricality of ballet”. In addition to this, economic problems were beginning to become a major issue and, when the Regime came to power, both the movement and Wigman had to face the difficult choice of either accommodating to its aesthetic or succumbing. With regards to this, Wigman’s proto-fascist work, Totenmal (1930), represented perhaps the first step towards what would always be her ambiguous relationship with National Socialism. Conceived as “a multimedia spectacle memorializing soldiers killed in the First World War”, it was done in collaboration with Albert Talhoff.

The change in the political climate in the 1930s and beginning of the 1940s, led Wigman to shift her vision and turn it towards a more Duncanesque imagery, in that she staged a more traditionally seen feminine persona: “woman as wife and mother, woman as mourner fro the war dead, woman as heroic martyr”. Significantly, among these were the series of dances named Women’s Dances. As Manning herself states, “did her choreographic ambivalence serve as a limited resistance to fascist aesthetics or as a means of coming to terms with her accommodation?”. This remains an open and crucial question.

The last part of Wigman’s career was characterised by a decrescendo, with her retirement from the scene in 1942 and the closing of her school in 1967. In 1957, however, she was given an important commission by the Berlin Minicipal Opera, to choreograph her version of the Rite of Spring, a landmark piece in dance history, first choreographed by Vaslav Nijinsky in 1913 with the music by Igor Stravinsky. Wigman inserted a female figure to replace the old sage. She called it a Mother Figure and surrounded her with two other female ‘mothers’, thus giving a unique taste to the piece. Manning highlights how this work embodied Wigman’s “self-mythologisation as the survivor, the victim of fate”.

Wigman died in 1973, but her legacy survived in the rise of another movement approach to dance, that is Tanztheater, with figures such as Pina Bausch and Susanne Linke. The final chapter of this book explores the reception of Wigman in the United States, a reception filled with neglect and distortions caused by the North American strife to create a national dance idiom.

Done into Dance

 This review also appear in one of my other blogs, www.dancescriber.blogspot.com, at this link.

Ann Daly, Done into Dance – Isadora Duncan in America [1995] (Middletown: Wesleyan University Press, 2002).

This is a masterpiece of cultural history. Ann Daly manages to bring to life an iconic figure such as Isadora Duncan in a fresh and stylish way, going beyond the romantic stereotypes surrounding her legend and tracing an exceptionally well-researched portrait.

This is not a biographical work, but rather a monograph that looks at Duncan’s life and work from “a massive void” in what we could call the Duncan Studies, that is her body. As is known, in fact, there is basically no video available of her performances and most of the photographs we have were taken in a studio and were, therefore, carefully constructed.

Daly focuses on Duncan’s body from different angles. She dedicates a chapter to her dancing body which was the result of three interconnected “American movement traditions: social dance, physical culture, and ballet”. From the first tradition, Duncan gained the idea of dance “as a model of social, sexual, and moral behaviour”; from the second, the belief that dance could improve individual as well as collective body-and-mind conditions; from the third, she obtained material she could go against.

Another chapter is dedicated to the dancer’s natural body, a pure and powerful construction. Duncan repeatedly talked of the Greek culture as a culture in close connection with nature and “narrativized the origin of her identification with ‘Nature’”. This was a kind of nostalgic and bucolic response to the rise of modernity. In this sense, a famous painting from the Italian Renaissance, Botticelli’s Primavera, is used by Daly to exemplify Duncan’s complex relationship with what she saw as Nature.

Daly’s book is also highly informative of the period and cultural movements that influenced Duncan’s work, such as the so called “Delsarte System of Expression”, which

Established a harmonious theory of the human system: first, life, the sensitive state of the vital realm, expressed through the limbs and excentric (outward) motion; second, soul, the moral state of the moral realm, expressed through the torso and balanced motion; third, mind, the intellectual state, expressed through the head and concentric (inward) motion.

Delsarte’s theories were reshaped in the United States by his follower, Steele MacKaye and, more successfully, by MacKaye’s student, Genevieve Stebbins, whose work was quite influential among, besides Duncan, other modern dancers like Ruth St. Denis.

Through Daly's analysis, Duncan emerges as still a fundamental figure in dance and cultural history, but with a more refined and detailed contour. Daly’s study is also filled with beautiful photographs and artworks inspired by Duncan's dancing image.

a couple of things about myself

I am an independent scholar speacialied in dance and cultural history, literature, gender and postcolonial studies. I am also a language teacher (English, Italian and Spanish), a translator (mainly English to Italian), a self-taught cartoonist, a blogger and an activist.

Rosella Simonari, photo M.T. De Roberto.

I was temporary lecturer (docente a contratto) of the Dance and Mime course at the University of Macerata, Italy from 2003 to 2007. In 2012 I completed a PhD in literature at the University of Essex, UK, with a research project on Martha Graham’s Letter to the World, supervised by Marina Warner. Before that, in January 2006, I had completed a Master’s Degree at the same university, with a thesis on two dance adaptations of Carmen.

After the degree in foreign languages and literatures gained in 1999 from the University of Macerata, Italy, and supervised by Marina Camboni, I moved to London where I continued my research on dance at Laban (now TrinityLaban), attending the Dance Research Programme (2000) and worked as teacher of Italian in places such as Cryodon College and CityLit.  In July 2002 I returned to Italy for family reasons and decided to stay there teaching English and Spanish as a private teacher and substitute teacher in public schools. In spite of this, I managed to frequently travel to the UK to continue to work on my research projects attending both the MA and the PhD as a part-time student.

In September 2003 I attended the NOISE Summer School, an advanced course in Women’s Studies promoted by the University of Utrecht, the Netherlands, organised by philosopher Rosi Braidotti. In 2006 I began a research on Italian music-hall dancer and painter Alberto Spadolini, research which is still in progress.

Roberto Lori in Simonari's lecture performance on Spadolini, photo M.T. De Roberto.

I have presented papers at conferences in Italy, Sweden, The Netherlands, England, Scotland, the United States and Spain. I have published essays and articles in English, Italian and Spanish mainly on Martha Graham, Carmen and Alberto Spadolini. I have organised dance-related events, such as conferences, workshops, meetings with choreographers and lecture performances. My research method is based on cultural and dance history and gender studies. In particular, I am interested in the relationship between dance, culture and literature. 

I was part of a Collective called Via Libera 194 that fought for women's reproductive rights. I was part of a Book Club called Libera la Lettura tied to the Centro Studi Libertari Luigi Fabbri and its rich historical, political and sociological archive.I am part of a Book Club tied to the Independence bookshop, Sabot.

At present I am a member of  SDR (Society for Dance Research) and was a member of AAS (Association of Adaptation Studies) and other Societies. I collaborated in Italian with the cultural journal Leggere Donna, in English with www.ballet-dance.com.

I have four other blogs:

www.storiadelladanza.blogspot.com

It is in Italian and represents a kind of alter ego to this blog, but it does not necessarily contain always the same material.

www.dancescriber.blogspot.com

It is in English and Italian and has exsisted since 2008. I use it to experiment new ways to talk about dance writing and relfect on my research, with poems, cartoons and articles among other things. With time I have began to insert other questions only loosely related to my studies. 

rosiesbookclub.wordpress.com

It is in Italian and was born on January 2014 as a blog dedicated to my language (especially English) teaching activity following a new method based on great stories mainly taken from literature. 

www.theps09.blogspot.com 

It is in English and Italian and has exsisted since 2008. It was born out of dancescriber.blogspot.com and is dedicated to a strip whose protagonist is the p.s. (precarious scholar). It is the result of a research I am conducting on the concept of precarity in the academic and not only academic world. 

You can also find me on:

Facebook

Flickr

Anobii

LinkedIn
Academia

(updated on 9 October 2015;
updated on 16 September 2019)