Lynn M BrooksArthur & Katherine Shadek Humanities Emerita Professor of Dance

 

Lynn Matluck Brooks, Arthur and Katherine Shadek Humanities Professor Emerita at Franklin & Marshall College, founded and led the Dance Program at F&M for 34 years. She holds bachelor’s, master’s, and doctoral degrees from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Temple University. Brooks is a Certified Movement Analyst through the Laban-Bartenieff Institute of Movement Studies. Her doctoral research was supported by a Fulbright/Hayes Grant for study in Spain, and she has held grants from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. At F&M, she received the Bradley R. Dewey Award for Outstanding Scholarship and Lindback Foundation Award for Distinguished Teaching. While chairing the Department of Theatre, Dance & Film at F&M, she helped spearhead efforts that brought the Roschel Performing Arts Center from vision to realization. Brooks has written performance reviews for Dance Magazine, served as editor of Dance Research Journal (1994–1999), co-editor of Dance Chronicle: Studies in Dance and the Related Arts (2007–2017), and senior writer-editor of thINKingDANCE.net, Philadelphia (2011-2020). She has served on boards of the World Dance Alliance, the Society for Dance History Scholars, the Congress on Research in Dance, the Dance Studies Association, the Journal of Laban/Bartenieff Movement Studies, and other organizations and publications. Brooks’ areas of expertise include modern dance, “early” dance and documentation, dance writing, movement analysis, and dance history (Spanish Golden Age, eighteenth-century Netherlands, early and antebellum U.S.). As a dancer, she studied at the Martha Graham School of Contemporary Dance, among others, choreographed many works for the F&M Dance Program and other groups, and performed and choreographed with Alonso Castro Dance Theatre (NY) and Grant St. Dance Company (Lancaster).

 

 

SELECTED PUBLICATIONS 

• Books authored: 

Theatres of the Body: Dance and Discourse in Antebellum Philadelphia (Temple University Press, forthcoming).

John Durang: Man of the American Stage. (Cambria Press, 2011).

The Art of Dancing in Seventeenth-Century Spain: Juan de Esquivel Navarro and his World (Bucknell University Press, 2003).

The Dances of the Processions of Seville in Spain's Golden Age  (Editions Reichenberger, 1988.)

• Books edited, with Brooks’ Introduction:

Dance and Science in the Long Nineteenth Century: The Articulate Body, edited by Lynn Matluck Brooks, Sariel Golomb, and Garth Grimball (University Press of Florida, 2025).

Preserving Dance Across Time and Space (Routledge, 2013). 

Women’s Work: Making Dance in Europe before 1800 (University of Wisconsin Press, 2007). 

• Articles:

“The Blackface and the Blanc in Antebellum America: A Style Analysis of Contrasting Movement Forms,” Journal of Laban/Bartenieff Movement Studies I/2 (2023): 7-24.

“So Revealing: Ballerinas on Antebellum U.S. Stages,” Dance Research 41/2 (Winter 2023): 253-74.

“Danza española en la escena americana temprana: una perspectiva desde Filadelfia,” 233-56, in Tras los pasos de la Sílfide: Imaginarios españoles del ballet romántico a la danza moderna, eds. Idoia Murga Castro, Carolina Miguel Arroyo, Irene López Arnáiz, Alejandro Coello Hernández (Madrid: Museo Nacional del Romanticismo, 2022). 

“Race, Rank, and Reform in Antebellum Philadelphia Social Dance,” Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography CXLIV/2 (April 2020): 147-78.

“Dance Writing – The Long and the Short of It [in Hebrew], Dance Today: The Dance Magazine of Israel, no. 25 (Feb. 2014), ed. Ruth Eshel.

 “The Dance Imagery of John Durang: Self-representation on the Early American Stage” (Chapter) in Imaging Dance: Visual Representations of Dancers and Dancing, eds. Barbara Sparti and Judy Van Zile (Germany: Olms Verlag, 2011). 

“A Meeting of Methods: Dance History and Laban Movement Analysis.” Movement News 26/2 (Fall 2001): 12-14.

"Juan de Esquivel Navarro." In the New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians (London: MacMillan, 2000). Also published in the The New Grove Dictionary of Music Online, ed. L. Macy,  <http://www.grovemusic.com>.

"Text and Image as Evidence for Posture and Movement Style in Seventeenth-Century Spain."  Imago Musicae XIII 1996 (published 1998). International Yearbook of Musical Iconography (Innsbruck, Austria).

"Mary Ann Lee" and "George Washington Smith." In The International Dictionary of Ballet (London: St. James Press, 1994).

"Harmony in Space: A Perspective on the Work of Rudolf Laban." The Journal of Aesthetic Education 27/2 (Summer 1993): 19-26.

"Emblem of Gaiety, Love, and Legislation: Dance in Eighteenth-Century Philadelphia." The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography CXV/1 (January 1991): 63-88.

"Dancing Masters in Eighteenth-Century Philadelphia." Dance: Current Selected Research 2 (AMS-- University of Maryland, 1990): 1-22.

"A Decade of Brilliance: Dance Theatre in Philadelphia, 1790-1800." Dance Chronicle 12/3 (1989): 333-365.

"Against Vain Sports and Pastime: The Theatre Dance in Philadelphia, 1724-90." Dance Chronicle 12/2 (1989): 165-195.

"The Philadelphia Dancing Assembly in the Eighteenth Century." Dance Research Journal  21/1 (Spr. 1989): 1-7. 

"Court, Church, and Province: Dancing in the Netherlands, Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries." Dance Research Journal 20/1 (Summer 1988): 19-28.

"Women and the Dance in Seville's Processions during the Golden Age." Dance Chronicle 11/1 (1988): 1-30.