Lynn Garafola

Lynn Theresa Garafola (born December 12, 1946) is an American dance historian, critic, curator, and educator, based in New York City. Her research and writing focus on twentieth-century dance history in Europe and the United States, with an emphasis on Serge Diaghilev's Ballets Russes, its contemporaries and descendants, and dance in New York City.

She is a professor emeritus of dance at Barnard College, Columbia University. and has received fellowships from the Social Science Research Council, National Endowment for the Humanities, Getty Research Institute, John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, and the Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers. She is also the recipient of a 2016 Dance Magazine Award in addition to prizes for several of her publications.

Early life and education Born in New York City, Garafola grew up in the Upper Manhattan neighborhood of Washington Heights. Her parents were Louis Salvatore Garafola, a printer and public school teacher, and Rose Joan Marchione; both were children of immigrants from Southern Italy. As a child she attended P.S. 189 and studied ballet under Seda Suny, a teacher from the Russian-Armenian diaspora, who taught and lived in the neighborhood. At Hunter, she studied modern dance with Alice Halpern and, in her senior year, took outside classes with Alvin Ailey.

Upon graduating from high school in 1964, Garafola entered the freshman class of Barnard College. Throughout her college years, she continued to study dance and to take part in theatrical productions, including some in Spanish. Following two summers of intensive language study abroad, she graduated from Barnard with an A.B. with departmental honors in Spanish in 1968.

She spent the following year in Quito, Ecuador, on a Fulbright Fellowship, studying Latin American literature, teaching English, and traveling extensively. She returned to New York in 1970, working as a translator and beginning work on a Ph.D. at the City University of New York Graduate Center initially in Spanish and subsequently in comparative literature.

Scholarly works

Early works In the 1980s and 1990s, Garafola did freelance writing and editing for a number of publications. She contributed reviews, features, and news items to Dance Magazine and wrote on historical and other subjects for Ballet Review, The Nation, The Times Literary Supplement, and The Dancing Times.

She gathered material for a book on Rubinstein that was never published (although it led to talks, articles, and a chapter in her biography of Bronislava Nijinska);

She published Diaghilev's Ballets Russes in 1989. What began as a narrow topic – the influence of Diaghilev's Ballets Russes on writers and intellectuals – gradually broadened to include contemporaneous companies such as the Ballets suédois and figures such as Ida Rubinstein.

Diaghilev's Ballets Russes was followed by a series of edited works and articles in scholarly journals, anthologies, encyclopedias, and popular magazines. The Diaries of Marius Petipa, which she translated from the original French and published for the first time in their entirety, reflected her growing interest in Russian ballet of the late nineteenth century. Jose Limon: An Unfinished Memoir reflected both her interest in New York-centered modern dance. In 1999 an award from the Congress of Research in Dance recognized the book as the year's outstanding scholarly dance publication.

Beginning in 1986, when she served as historical consultant for Nancy Van Norman Baer's exhibition Bronislava Nijinska: A Dancer's Legacy at the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, Garafola has worked on a number of exhibitions. Among these was the 1999 exhibition Dance for a City: Fifty Years of the New York City Ballet at the New-York Historical Society, which she curated and for which she edited the accompanying volume with her husband, historian Eric Foner. With Norton Owen, the Director of Preservation at Jacob's Pillow, she curated America's Irreplaceable Dance Treasures: The First 100, a traveling exhibition sponsored by the Dance Heritage Coalition.

Later works She also did several exhibitions at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts – 500 Years of Italian Dance: Treasures from the New York Public Library's Cia Fornaroli Collection (with Patrizia Veroli) (2006-7); New York Story: Jerome Robbins and His World (2008); and Diaghilev's Theater of Marvels: The Ballets Russes and Its Aftermath (2009). She curated another New York City-centered exhibition in 2018 at Columbia University's Wallach Art Gallery, called Arthur Mitchell: Harlem's Ballet Trailblazer. It was the first major exhibition focused on Arthur Mitchell, the founder of the Dance Theatre of Harlem.

Garafola served as a content consultant for two later exhibitions on the Ballets Russes: Hymn to Apollo: The Ancient World and the Ballets Russes (2019) at New York University's Institute for the Study of the Ancient World, and Crafting the Ballets Russes: Music, Dance, Design: The Robert Owen Lehman Collection (2024), at the Morgan Library & Museum. For the latter, she wrote an essay titled "Diaghilev Man of Music."

Since 1981, when she reviewed Bronislava Nijinska's Early Memoirs, Garafola had wanted to write a book about Vaslav Nijinsky's underrecognized sister. La Nijinska: Choreographer of the Modern was published in 2022. Tracing Nijinska's career across continents was made possible by the digitization of many materials Garafola used, to assess of the impact of her choreography and examine the role that sexism played in her life and work. The biography examines Mitchell's career as the first Black principal dancer of the New York City Ballet and as the founder of the Dance Theatre of Harlem in 1969. Set against the backdrop of the civil rights and Black Arts movements, the book explores Mitchell's efforts to expand opportunities for Black dancers and his role in linking ballet with broader questions of racial equality and cultural representation.

Academic career In 2000, Garafola began teaching dance history and research courses in Barnard College's Dance Department. Her courses ranged across centuries of U.S. and European dance history, with a focus on ballet and concert dance. In all her courses she included research components, aiming to introduce students to dance literature and to the sources used in writing dance history. She also taught the Senior Seminar in Dance, directing original research projects by senior dance majors. and Dancing the Cold War (2017). In 2011, she founded and continues to direct the Columbia University Seminar "Studies in Dance", the first such seminar to focus on dance. Open to members of the university and the broader metropolitan community, the seminar hosts 7-8 speakers each year presenting on a range of topics.

Her other projects include an edited volume based on the Russian Movement Culture of the 1920s and 1930s symposium organized with Catharine Theimer Nepomnyashchy at the Harriman Institute in February 2015, published by the Harriman Institute in fall 2015; and Dancing the Cold War, an edited volume based on a symposium sponsored by the Harriman Institute in February 2017, published by the Harriman Institute in winter 2018.

In addition to her teaching in the Dance Department, Garafola also directed thesis projects in American studies and Slavic studies and theses combining dance with American studies, Africana Studies, and European studies.

Over the years she has served as a manuscript reader for several academic presses; sat on the jury for the Dance Magazine Awards ; reviewed proposals for the American Council of Learned Societies fellowship program, the Getty Center for the History of Art and Humanities, and the National Endowment for the Humanities; and served as an external examiner for various college programs and departments.

Personal life Garafola married historian Eric Foner in 1980 and is the mother of art historian Daria Foner. She lives in New York City.

Publications Books 1989. Diaghilev's Ballets Russes. New York: Oxford University Press. 1991. André Levinson on Dance: Writings from Paris in the Twenties. Editor with Joan Acocella. Wesleyan University Press. 1991. The Diaries of Marius Petipa. Translator and editor. Society of Dance History Scholars. 1993. The Origins of the Bolero School (eds. Javier Suárez-Parajes and Xoán M. Carreira). Translator with Elizabeth Coonrod Martinez and Aurelia de la Vega. Editor. Society of Dance History Scholars. 2006. "Making Dances: Process and Practice in Diaghilev's Ballets Russes." Culture Teatrali: Studi, Interventi e Scrittore sullo Spettacolo 14 (Spring 2006), special issue edited by Rosella Mazzaglia. Reprinted in Denkfiguren: Performatives zwischen Bewegen, Schreiben und Erfinden (Conceptions of Interactions between Movement, Writing, and Creativity), edited by Nicole Haitzinger and Karin Fenbock (Munich: Epodium Verlag, 2010). 2006. "Serguéi Diághilev: La Creación del Ballet Moderno" ("Sergei Diaghilev: The Creation of Modern Ballet"). La Tempestad 8.50 (October 2006). 2011. “Crafted by Many Hands: Re-Reading Bronislava Nijinska’s Early Memoirs.” Dance Research 29.1 (Summer 2011). 2011. “An Amazon of the Avant-Garde: Bronislava Nijinska in Revolutionary Russia.” Dance Research 29.2 (Winter 2011). 2015. “Interlude oubliée: la danse rythmique à l’Opéra de Paris.” Translated by Marina Nordera. Recherches en Danse (January 2015).

Selected lectures and public readings 1985. "Remaking Ballet in the Diaghilev Era: The Choreographic Revolution of Fokine, Nijinsky, Massine, and Nijinska." The Houston Seminar, Texas. 1991. "Nijinsky and Nijinska." Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, Lisbon. 1993. "Writing the History of Dance." Pembroke College History Society, University of Oxford. 1996. "Léonide Massine: Symphonic Choreographer." New York Public Library for the Performing Arts. 2000. "George Antheil and the Dance." Cooper Union, New York. 2002. "Stravinsky and Ida Rubenstein." University of British Columbia, Vancouver. 2003. "On Your Toes, or The Americanization of George Balanchine." Popular Culture Association, New Orleans. 2004. "Balanchine and the Many Roots of Abstraction." Hermitage Theatre, Saint Petersburg. 2006. "A Model of Female Empowerment: Isadora Duncan and the Early Choreographic Career of Bronislava Nijinska." Harriman Institute, Columbia University, New York. 2009. "Crossing Borders, Transcending Boundaries: Diaghilev's Ballets Russes and the Birth of Ballet Modernism." Macalester College, Saint Paul. 2011. "The Ballets Russes and Twentieth-Century Dance." Waseda University, Tokyo. 2013. "Making Ballet Modern: Modernism and Diaghilev's Ballets Russes." George Washington University Summer in Paris. 2013. "A Century of Rites: The Making of an Avant-garde Tradition." Emory University, Atlanta; University of Dayton, Ohio; and Institut fŭr Theaterwissenschaft, Free University of Berlin. 2013. "Discourses of Memory: The Marginalization of Bronislava Nijinska." Gender and Creation in the History of the Performing Arts, Paris. 2015. "Dancing through Adversity: Bronislava Nijinska's Théâtre de la Danse, 1932–34." Athens, Greece. 2017. "Concealments and Revelations of the First Person:Bronislava Nijinska's Diaries." Seminério Internacional de História da Dança, Federal University of Goiás, Brazil. 2017. "Amazon of the Avant-Garde on a Global Stage." Dance and the Avant-Garde in Central and Eastern Europe, Adam Mickiewicz Institute, Lublin. 2018. "Bronislava Nijinska y el nacionalismo coreográfico de 'Rusia en el extranjero'" (Bronislava Nijinska and the Choreographic Nationalism of "Russia Abroad"). Jornadas de investigación de danza XI, Buenos Aires. 2018. "Bronislava Nijinska – from Kyiv to Hollywood." America House, Kyiv. 2019. "Pilgrimage to an Imagined West: Antiquity and the Early Ballets Russes." Institute for the Study of the Ancient World, New York. 2019. "The African-American Presence in Postwar American Ballet." University of California, Santa Barbara. 2019. “The Long History of Bronislava Nijinska’s Bolero.” Repensar El sombrero de tres picos: cien años después, Madrasa of Granada, Granada. 2020. "Gendered Selves and the Melancholy of Being: Francis Poulenc and Bronislava Nijinska." Within and Without: ‘Les Six’ at 100, Princeton University. 2020. "Anna Pavlova: A Ballerina for All.” Ballerina: Fashion's Modern Muse, Fashion Institute of Technology. 2024. "Diaghilev—Man of Music." Crafting the Ballets Russes: The Robert Owen Lehman Collection, Morgan Library & Museum.

Selected exhibitions 1986. Historical consultant. Bronislava Nijinska: A Dancer's Legacy. Curated by Nancy Van Norman Baer. Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco. 1988. Historical consultant. The Art of Enchantment: Diaghilev's Ballets Russes, 1909–1929. Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco. 1999. Guest curator. Dance for a City: Fifty Years of the New York City Ballet. New-York Historical Society. 2000. Guest curator. Dance at the White Barn. White Barn Theater Museum, Westport, Connecticut. 2004–2005. Guest curator, with Norton Owen. America's Irreplaceable Dance Treasures: The First 100. Traveling exhibition sponsored by the Dance Heritage Coalition, Washington, D.C., and mounted in four venues: San Francisco Performing Arts Library and Museum (Winter 2004); Blake's Barn, Jacob's Pillow Dance Festival, Beckett, Massachusetts (Summer 2004); Music and Dance Library, Ohio State University (Autumn 2004); and New York Public Library for the Performing Arts (Summer 2005). 2006–2007. Guest curator, with Patrizia Veroli. 500 Years of Italian Dance: Treasures from the New York Public Library's Cia Fornaroli Collection. New York Public Library for the Performing Arts. 2008. Guest curator. New York Story: Jerome Robbins and His World. New York Public Library for the Performing Arts. 2009. Guest curator. Diaghilev's Theater of Marvels: The Ballets Russes and Its Aftermath. New York Public Library for the Performing Arts. 2018. Guest curator. Arthur Mitchell: Harlem's Ballet Trailblazer. Wallach Art Gallery, Columbia University.

Awards and fellowships 1968. Fulbright Fellowship 1978. Social Science Research Council fellowship 1986. Getty Foundation fellowship 1990. De la Torre Bueno Prize for Diaghilev's Ballets Russes 1991. Getty Research Institute Scholar-in-Residence 1993. National Endowment for the Humanities fellowship 1999. Congress on Research in Dance Award for José Limon: An Unfinished Memoir 2000. Independent Publisher Book Award for Dance for a City: Fifty Years of the New York City Ballet 2005. Kurt Weill Prize from the Kurt Weill Foundation for Music for The Ballets Russes and Its World 2008. Emily Gregory Award from the trustees of Barnard College for excellence in teaching 2013. New York Public Library for the Performing Arts Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers fellowship 2013. Guggenheim Fellowship