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People → Faculty of Education academic staff → Rosie Gerhard

Rosie Gerhard

Lecturer in Dance Studies

Before becoming a lecturer in dance studies, I taught modern foreign languages in secondary schools for twelve years, running a department and organising visits and exchanges abroad.

After formalising my dance training, I worked for Bird College of Performing Arts tutoring dance history and analysis modules for both diploma and undergraduate degree students, as well as supervising dissertations and delivering study skills sessions. Since joining the staff of the Faculty of Education in 2009 I have built on this experience by delivering modules that focus on history and analysis but also include philosophy and combine practice and theory.

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Qualifications

  • MA in Dance Studies
  • Professional Diploma in Dance Studies
  • Postgraduate Certificate in Education
  • BA (Combined Honours) in Modern Languages (German and Russian)

Teaching and management

  • BA (Hons) Ballet Education
  • MA in Education (Dance Teaching)
  • Study Skills Co-ordinator

Research interests and projects

Research interests include dance history and analysis, preservation of repertoire, reconstruction, adaptation, constructed identity of the ballerina/ballerina-audience relationship, dance criticism and andragogy. Currently, Rosie is researching gender fluidity in ballet. Rosie writes a blog entitled British Ballet Now & Then. This was set up in 2017 to open a discussion of what is happening in British ballet right now and how these events connect with the past.

Conference presentations

  • 2022: “British Ballet at War”, European Association for Dance History
  • 2019: ‘Cathy Marston: a British Choreographer at home and abroad’, Theatre and Performance Research Association.
  • 2018: ‘Capturing the Sylph’, On Criticism, Royal Central School of Drama and Speech
  • 2018: ‘Organising our Ignorance in the Age of Forgetfulness’, Dance in the Age of Forgetfulness, Royal Holloway, University of London.
  • 2016: ‘Dance Adaptation: Romeo and Juliet’: Dance and Adaptation, De Montfort University.
  • 2013: ‘Adult Ballet Practice: a personal reflection’. Dance and Lifelong Wellbeing, Royal Academy of Dance.
  • 2011: ‘Labanotation as a Research Tool’, International Council for Kinetography Laban.

Research supervision

Recent dissertations have investigated developing a model for assessing how a dance company peaks and declines, Romantic elements in the work of Kenneth MacMillan, and concepts of abstraction in Wayne McGregor’s choreography.

Publications

Delaney, Julia and Rosemarie Gerhard “Reflections on Moving from the Barre”, Focus on Education, Issue 20 (March 2018).

Gerhard, Rosie. “The Adult Learner: a personal reflection”. The Song of the Body, edited by Dr Anne Hogan, Royal Academy of Dance, 2014, pp. 145-52.