Biography
Sarah Gutsche-Miller researches nineteenth-century dance and dance music, nationalism, and women in music. She completed her Ph.D. at McGill University in 2010 with a Canadian Graduate Scholarship from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, then pursued postdoctoral research in dance with Lynn Garafola at Columbia University/Barnard College supported by a SSHRC fellowship. She has published essays in edited collections and articles in Dance Research and has presented papers on dance, nationalism, Nielsen, and Ravel at conferences in North America and Europe. Her first book, Parisian Music-Hall Ballet, 1871–1913, brings to light a forgotten ballet culture and repertoire, challenging the myth that Diaghilev and the Ballets Russes were responsible for a ballet revival in early twentieth-century Paris.
Gutsche-Miller is currently working on two SSHRC-funded projects. The first examines the modernist ballets created by the forgotten but once illustrious choreographer Madame Mariquita for the Paris Opéra-Comique between 1898 and 1918. The second explores the hundreds of ballets integrated into Parisian boulevard-theatre spectacles in the second half of the nineteenth century in relation to ballets at the Opéra, Opéra-Comique, and music halls. The broader goals of both projects include: recovering an art form that held a central place in fin-de-siècle French culture; tracing networks of creative and performance artists across commercial entertainment venues and subsidized theatres; and studying popular genres and institutions as significant players in a complex web of cultural transfer.
Recent publications
“Parisian Music-Hall Ballet Through the Eyes of Its Critics.” Dance Research, 36, no. 1 (Summer 2018): 67-90.
“Liberated Women and Travesty Fetishes: Conflicting Representations of Gender in Parisian Fin-de-Siècle Music-Hall Ballet.” Dance Research 35, no. 2 (Fall 2017): 187-208.
“Pantomime-Ballet at the Folies-Bergère: A Case Study.” In Beyond the Stage: Musical Theatre and the Performing Arts Between the Fin-de-Siècle and the Années Folles, eds. Michela Niccolai and Giuseppe Montemagno. Bologna: Ut Orpheus Edizioni, 2017, 229-251.
Parisian Music-Hall Ballet, 1871-1913. Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, 2015.