Faculty

DANIELLE ROBINSON

BS (Vanderbilt), MA (Northwestern), PhD (University of California, Riverside)
Associate Professor: Dance Studies
Department of Dance, York University

drobin@yorku.ca

Areas of Research and Teaching

Dance Ethnography, Cultural Studies, Dance History, Critical Race Theory, Social Dance Reconstruction, Multicultural Dance Education, Popular Dance Practices, African Diaspora within the Americas, Latin American Dance Cultures


Danielle Robinson is a dance scholar who researches the cross-cultural movement of Afro-Diasporic popular dances within the Americas. Her research has been recognized with awards from the Society of Dance History Scholars, the Congress on Research in Dance, and the American Theatre focus group of the Association for Theatre in Higher Education.

Dr. Robinson's book manuscript, Modern Moves: Blackness and American Ragtime Dancing, currently in process, examines how notions of modernity were embodied in early 20th century social dancing and the nascent dance industry that supported it.

Her articles on ragtime, jazz and swing dancing in the United States have been published in Dance Research Journal, Dance Chronicle and the edited collection I See America Dancing (with Juliet McMains). She has recently presented papers at the Congress on Research in Dance, Society for Ethnomusicology, Society of Dance History Scholars and the Symposium on Popular Dance and Music (UK).

Professor Robinson is currently leading a collaborative, interdisciplinary research project in Bahia, Brazil with funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC). This project explores samba de roda, a dance and music complex with roots in Afro-Brazilian slave cultures, which was recently recognized by UNESCO as a Masterpiece of Oral and Intangible Heritage. The project will culminate in a co-authored book, Roots Sambas: Collaborations and Conflicts in Dancing, Music and Culture, that explores the potential for decolonizing cross-cultural research. It will be published by Continuum Books (London) as part of The Harriet Tubman Series on the African Diaspora.

Dr. Robinson recently launched the series “Performing Diaspora: A Celebration of Black History Month through Dance and Music,” sponsored by York University's Harriet Tubman Institute for Research on the Global Migrations of African Peoples in partnership with numerous campus departments, faculties and organizations. In February 2009, this initiative brought seven internationally renowned artists - including practitioners of the Malian kora, spoken word poetry, North American jazz, and Guinean dance and drum - into close interaction with hundreds of local school children, community members and York students. The project was sponsored by a SSHRC Major Collaborative Research Initiative grant, “Slavery, Memory, Citizenship”.

Dr. Robinson taught at the Federal University of Bahia (UFBA) in Salvador, Brazil, University of California, Riverside, and University of Texas, Austin before joining the faculty in York University’s Department of Dance in 2005. She is cross-appointed to the Graduate Program in Communication and Culture and is a Fellow of York’s Centre for Research on Latin America and the Caribbean and of Winters College. She received the Faculty of Fine Arts Dean’s Teaching Award for junior faculty in 2009.

Photo: Andréa de Keijzer