Current research interests

The projects listed below reflect my particular focus on British dance history and my ongoing interest in the decades from 1770-1830. The gendering of ballet and ballet spectatorship, the parameters of Romantic ballet, and the influence of moral panic on the representation and patronage of ballet in Britain are all areas of interest to me.

  • Fashionable Society and ballet at the King’s Theatre 1770-1800. Work on the revamp of my doctoral thesis remains ongoing (intermittent, but will get there eventually).

Also in the pipeline…

  • A project looking at the expansion of the market for mirrors in the mid to late eighteenth century and the influence of this on dance training and theatrical dance. The focus will be on the mirror’s power as a ‘commentator’ on bodies and sociable practices.
  • The influence of Marie Taglioni’s celebrity on nineteenth-century fashions (women and men).
  • The Romantic ballet in Britain. This project will focus on the early Romantic ballet from 1790-1830, rather than after 1830 which is generally considered to mark the flowering of ballet’s ‘Romantic’ epoch. Key areas of interest include the phenomenon of the Anacreontic ballet, and the representation of zephyrs, cupids and sylphs onstage.

Keen to hear from…

  • Academics, professional writers and potentially graduate students interested in ballet’s translation of literary texts to the stage and the art form’s relationships with written language and word-based expression more broadly.

And other rainy day projects…

  • The Hullin family and their dance careers in France and England – and specifically the “poisoning” case of Virginie Hullin.
  • The social and material life of Eva Maria Garrick, nee Veigel (also identified as “La Violette”), wife of English actor and theatre manager David Garrick.
  • Moral rehabilitation of ballet by reformers within the Church of England between 1850 and 1890. Figures of interest include the Rev. Stewart Headlam, Rev. Hugh Reginald Haweis and his wife Mary Haweis, and Charles Dodgson (Lewis Carroll).