FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE                                                    CONTACT:  Jane L. Anderson

(view PDF version)                                                                       jane.anderson@fulbright.org

                                                                                                                         (202) 347-5543

            WASHINGTON, D.C. (Oct. 31, 2005) -- The Fulbright Association announced today that Richard Semmens, associate professor of music at the University of Western Ontario, Canada, will present the 2005 Selma Jeanne Cohen Lecture in International Dance Scholarship on Saturday, Nov. 12, at the Radisson Plaza Lord Baltimore Hotel in Baltimore, Md.  Dr. Semmens will speak on “Moving Inside and Outside the Box:  Thoughts on the Graphic Notation of Baroque Dances for the Ballroom.”                   

            Dr. Semmens will discuss how ballroom dances were transmitted over time and in different geographic areas and how the transmission of choreographic and other information was accomplished.  He will consider how and why many scholars and performers have come to regard the ballroom dances preserved in Beauchamps-Feuillet notation as reasonably fixed objects that have been reliably preserved.

            “My work, broadly speaking, focuses on the history, theory, and practice of baroque music and dance, with a particular emphasis on France and England,” Dr. Semmens said.  “I have also published in the areas of late 17th and early 18th century acoustical theory, Mozart’s chamber music for winds, and the 15th century Burgundian ‘chanson.’”

            Dr. Semmens plays baroque recorder and performs baroque dances.  In both areas, he has presented a variety of recitals, lecture-demonstrations, clinics, and workshops.

            “When I learned I had been selected to deliver this year’s Selma Jeanne Cohen Lecture, I was thrilled.  Selma Jeanne Cohen has commanded such a presence in so many areas of dance research, my own included, that few scholars actively engaged in the discipline have not been touched by her impressive range of enquiry,” Dr. Semmens said.  “It is an honor to deliver a lecture named after such an important individual to such a distinguished audience.”

            Dr. Selma Jeanne Cohen, preeminent dance historian and founding editor of the International Encyclopedia of Dance, endowed the dance lecture at the Fulbright Association’s annual conference to highlight dance scholarship in a multidisciplinary, international forum.  Previous lecturers are Leslie Friedman, dancer, choreographer and artistic director of the Lively Foundation in San Francisco (2000); Robin Marshall Grove, senior lecturer in the Department of English with Cultural Studies, University of Melbourne, Australia (2001); Gretchen Ward Warren, professor, School of Theater and Dance, University of South Florida (2002); Wayne B. Kraft, professor of German at Eastern Washington University and director of the Erdély (Dance) Ensemble (2003); and Millicent Hodson, dance historian and choreographer (2004), who is based in London.

            The Fulbright Association is a private, non-profit organization that supports and promotes the Fulbright Program, an international educational and cultural exchange initiative created in 1946 by legislation sponsored by the late Senator J. William Fulbright of Arkansas.  There are now over 250,000 Fulbright alumni worldwide.

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