December 23: The Doyenne of Dance Scholarship

Selma Jeanne Cohen, editor of the six-volume International Encyclopedia of Dance, died on this date in 2005. Cohen devoted her career to the elevation of dance criticism and dance scholarship to equal rank with other forms of art criticism and history. Her decade of teaching dance history and writing at the American Dance Festival at Connecticut College led in 1970 to a training program for professional dance critics, and her editorship of Dance Perspectives encouraged dance scholarship throughout the world. Among Cohen’s many honors was a 2001 induction into the Dance Library of Israel Hall of Fame.

“Open to the world, she was able to attune American scholars to seeing beyond national borders.” —Jewish Women’s Archive