About Ninotchka Bennahum

Santa Barbara, CA

Ninotchka Bennahum is Professor of Theater and Dance at the University of California, Santa Barbara. An interdisciplinary dance, art, and performance scholar, her areas of teaching and research include Spanish Modernism and feminist historiographies of flamenco, ballet, and contemporary performance. She is the author of two books: Antonia Mercé, ‘La Argentina: Flamenco & the Spanish Avant-Garde (2000), a biohistory of Mercé’s Spanish dance modernism, and Carmen, a Gypsy Geography (2013), a transhistorical study of the Gitana in Middle Eastern and Spanish cultural history. She has co-authored two global dance anthologies: The Living Dance: A Global Anthology of Essays on Movement & Culture (2012), coedited with Judith Chazin-Bennahum (mom), and Flamenco on the Global Stage: Theoretical, Historical and Critical Perspectives (2015). She co-curated Transformation & Continuance: Jennifer Muller & the Re-Shaping of American Modern Dance, 1959 – Present (2011); 100 Years of Flamenco on the New York Stage (2013); and Radical Bodies: Anna Halprin, Simone Forti and Yvonne Rainer in California and New York, 1955 – 1972 (2017). She has curated Radical Pedagogy: Margaret H’Doubler, Anna Halprin, and American Dance, 1916 – Present, a permanent installation for the University of Wisconsin-Madison (2019). Bennahum designed and taught the dance history curriculum for American Ballet Theatre from 1996 to 2012. Currently, she is writing a history of the company.