Brenda Dixon Gottschild's Publication on Joan Myers Brown Released

Brenda Dixon Gottschild's book, Joan Myers Brown and the Audacious Hope of the Black Ballerina: a Biohistory of American Performance, was published in 2012 with support from The Pew Center for Arts & Heritage.

Upon its release, publisher Palgrave Macmillan wrote that "founder of the Philadelphia Dance Company (PHILADANCO) and the Philadelphia School of Dance Arts, Joan Myers Brown's personal and professional histories reflect both the hardships and the accomplishments of African Americans in the artistic and social developments through the 20th century and into the new millennium. Dixon Gottschild uses Brown's career as the fulcrum to leverage an exploration of the connection between performance, society, and race, beginning with Brown's predecessors in the 1920s and a concert dance tradition that had no previous voice to tell its story from the inside out."

Brenda Dixon Gottschild, Professor Emerita of Dance Studies at Temple University, received a 2011 grant from the Center to support her research and publication of the book. Dixon Gottschild's career has spanned the divide between performance and scholarship, and she defines herself as an "artist-scholar." In her words, as Dixon Gottschild "goes about [her] work as a cultural scholar/researcher, [she] use[s] performance—specifically, dance—as a measure and paradigm of society." Read more about Dixon Gottschild >

To learn more about the book and to order it online, click here.

Joan Myers Brown and the Audacious Hope of the Black Ballerina also received media attention on the Tavis Smiley Show, NPR, and WHYY's Newsworks.

Tavis Smiley Show interview of Dixon Gottschild


NPR's interview of Dixon Gottschild

WHYY's Newsworks interview of Dixon Gottschild