Clare Croft

Appointment: 2010 to 2013
Dance, Theatre

Clare Croft is currently working on a book project focusing on US State Department sponsorship of international dance tours as a form of cultural diplomacy. She uses oral history techniques, performance analysis, and archival research to explore individual dancers’ experiences on tours during the Cold War era and in the decade since 9/11. The project centers on interviews conducted with dancers who traveled on the tours. By seeing dancers as political and social agents, rather than only embodied tools for choreographers or government funders, the book examines dance and American national identity as collective practices forged from dancers’ diverse and complex identity positions.

Clare recently received her Ph.D. from the Performance as Public Practice program in the University of Texas-Austin’s Department of Theatre and Dance. Her academic writing on dance has been published in Theatre Journal and Theatre Topics. Clare is also an active dance dramaturg and dance critic. She has been a regular contributor to the Austin American-Statesman and The Washington Post, among other newspapers and magazines.