HANNAH SCHWADRON

HANNAH SCHWADRON, MFA, Ph.D

Hannah Schwadron is Associate Professor of Dance History at Florida State University where she teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in dance history, cultural politics, choreography, and performance. Her creative and scholarly research focuses on dance humor, migration, and jail/prison abolition.

Hannah’s first book, The Case of the Sexy Jewess: Dance, Gender and Jewish Joke-work in US Pop Culture (Oxford University Press, 2018), which tells the story of contemporary Jewish female parodists across contemporary stage and screen genres. Related essays have been published in Oxford Handbook of Jewishness and Dance (2021), Shofar (2021), Theater, Dance, and Performance Training (2020), The International Journal of Screendance (2018), PARTake: The Journal of Performance and Research (2018), Dance and American Perspectives (University of Florida Press, 2018), Oxford Handbooks Online in Music (2017), the Oxford Handbook of Dance and Politics (2017), Liminalities: A Journal of Performance Studies (2017), Choreographic Practices (2017), and Dancer-Citizen journal issues 3 (2016), 4 (2017), and 6 (2018).

Her second book, co-edited with Marta E. Savigliano, is a first-ever volume on the subject of dance humor and is entitled, Funny Moves: Dance Humor Politics. The collection includes ten original essays, including her own, from authors writing across stage and screenic disciplines. Chapters address what may be considered (miraculously or devastatingly) funny in Germany, Argentina, Pakistan, Trinidad, South Asia/Asian America, the US/Mexico border, and the United States as global takes on the especially delightful expressive politics of liberation, however brief or fleeting.

As part of ongoing theory-practice research, Hannah curates Field Studies, a creative development lab that allows performer-writers the space to workshop new projects with live audiences and peer review. From 2013-2019, Field Studies took place in NYC, with iterations since then in Berlin, Tallahassee, and Oakland.

Her collaborative dance film Klasse (2015), made with director Malia Bruker and a cast of middle school students, won the Production Grant from Dance Film Association (NYC), and has been shown at American Dance Festival (Durham and Boone), Antimatter [Media Art] (Victoria, BC), Tiny Dance Film Fest (SF), Israelitische Töchterschule (Hamburg), Third Coast Dance Film Festival (Houston), where it won the Spirit of the Festival award, and ScreenDance Miami, where it won the Audience Choice award. Her second dance film Between I and Thou (2017) documents an improvisation dance practice with collaborators from Afghanistan, Sierra Leone, Germany, and the US on the subjects of migration, relationship, and exchange.  It has been shown at Docs without Borders (online), Richmond International Film Fest (VA), and Toronto Short Film Festival, and Little Mexico Film Fest (Chicago), where it won an Award of Merit.

Hannah is current President-Elect of Dance Studies Association and serves on the active boards of the Tallahassee Bail Fund and Ayoka Afrikan Drum and Dance.