Rebecca Chaleff

PhD

Rebecca Chaleff.

Rebecca Chaleff

PhD

Rebecca Chaleff

PhD

Research Topics

Critical dance studies, performance studies, practice-based research, queer theory, critical race theory, reperformance and reenactment

Education

  • Ph.D., Stanford University
  • MA, Goldsmiths, University of London
  • BA, Barnard College

Bio

Rebecca Chaleff is a dance scholar, performer, and dramaturg. She received her Ph.D. from Stanford University and was a Chancellor’s Postdoctoral Fellow at UC Riverside. Rebecca’s research merges critical theory with practice to examine structures of time, feeling, and power. Her current book project, Choreographic Futures: Race, Sexuality, and the Politics of Reperformance, analyzes how reperformance and legacy building projects shape and are shaped by the politics of race and sexuality. In particular, the manuscript engages with the affective attachments of queer and racialized histories to question how choreographic claims to artistic afterlives participate in sociopolitical processes of dispossession.

Rebecca’s writing has appeared in numerous scholarly publications, including Dance Research Journal, TDR/The Drama Review, and The Futures of Dance Studies. As a dancer, she has had the pleasure of performing with GERALDCASELDANCE, Pat Catterson, the Merce Cunningham Dance Company Repertory Understudy Group, Douglas Dunn and Dancers, Molissa Fenley and Company, and the Margaret Jenkins Dance Company, among others. In 2020 and 2021, Rebecca was the Rehearsal Director for the restaging of Molissa Fenley’s State of Darkness at the Joyce Theater, which was which was named “Best Revival of 2020” by The New York Times and received a 2021 Bessie Award for “Outstanding Revival.” She continues to collaborate with Gerald Casel, and recently served as dramaturg for Not About Race Dance, which premiered at CounterPulse in 2021 and has toured nationally.