Welcome!

Vintage Pointe is where to locate me: Dr Caitlyn Lehmann. I’m a cultural historian specialising in the reception and development of ballet in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Although I have a particular interest in British theatrical history, I undertake research across various aspects and periods of dance on commission.

For some years now I’ve been a regular writer for The Australian Ballet, contributing specialist research-based programme articles and online content. I also dabble in dance journalism, penning articles and interviewing for publications including Dance Australia. From 2012 to 2022, I was Australian critic for the UK’s Dancing Times. 

Alongside these activities, I’m affiliated with the University of Melbourne as a Research Assistant. It is currently my privilege to work alongside Professor Clara Tuite in the School of Culture and Communication, having previously served as RA to the brilliantly incisive Professor Gillian Russell.

While maintaing my toehold in academia, much of my research is undertaken as an unfunded independent scholar. I am currently (slowly!) working on a monograph based on my PhD research to be published by Routledge. In addition, my work on dance at Astley’s Amphitheatre is the subject of a forthcoming article in the Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies.

In 2020, it was a special pleasure to be an invited speaker for the ‘Ballerina’ symposium hosted by The Museum at FIT in New York (held to accompany the Museum’s fashion exhibition of that name). In the same year I was awarded ‘The ‘John M. Ward Fellowship in Dance and Music for the Theatre’ by the Houghton Library, Harvard University, USA. After international borders reopened, I was delighted to take up the fellowship in May-June 2022.

More quirky highlights along the way have included being a (minor) research contributor to the 2015 BBC documentary The King Who Invented Ballet, and curating an open-house exhibition of historical ballet prints, titled ‘From Court to Kitsch: Images of Ballet from the 17th to 20th Century‘. 

In between times, I’m a keen Pilates enthusiast, a wishful interior designer, and slightly obsessed with wisteria, ferns and moss. If you’re reading my online posts, you might also discover I’ve written the odd scenario for a full-length ballet!