Nancy Lee Ruyter, B.A. and Ph. D in History. Dance historian, choreographer, teacher. Professor of Dance, University of California, Irvine, where she has taught since 1982. Practical training in dance has included ballet, modern, Spanish, East Indian, Balkan, and other world dance forms. Publications include
Reformers and Visionaries: The Americanization of the Art of Dance (1979);
The Cultivation of Body and Mind in 19th-Century American Delsartism (1999); and many articles on the Delsarte system and its uses, Spanish dance, Balkan dance, Latin American and Spanish theater, and theater movement.
Thomas Leabhart studied at Etienne Decroux's school from 1968-1972. He is the editor of Mime Journal and has authored over 35 articles, in addition to two books: Modern and Post-Modern Mime (1989) and Etienne Decroux (2007). He is a resident artist and professor of theatre at Pomona College in Claremont, California, and performs and teaches workshops regularly in Paris, Lyon, Aurillac, and other cities around the world.
Alain Porte is editor of Francois Delsarte, une anthologie, and is a leading Delsarte authority as well as a scholar of Indian religion and philosophy. Translated from the French by Lisa Molle.
Joseph Fahey has trained at the American Conservatory Theatre and interned as a movement coach at the American Repertory Theatre. He has taught graduate and undergraduate courses at The Ohio State University (Columbus), Ohio Dominican College, Denison University, Ohio University, and Case Western Reserve University. He currently serves as Director of the Theatre Program at The Ohio State University Mansfield.
Elena Randi is professor at the University of Padua (Italy), where she teaches Methodology and Criticism of Performance. She has written various essays, published in books and in dance and theatre periodicals, concerning: nineteenth-century stage-direction practices, theatrical acting lines in nineteenth-century France, Romantic drama and gesture theories.
George Taylor is Senior Lecturer in Drama at the University of Manchester. He has written articles on Delsarte, Svengali, anti-slave trade plays and theatre production. He is the author of Players and Performances in the Victorian Theatre (1989) and Plays by Samuel Foote and Arthur Murphy (1984).
Dr Rose Whyman is a Lecturer in Drama and Theatre Arts at the Univertiy of Birmingham, and author of The Stanislavsky System of Acting; Legacy and Influence in Modern Performance (2008).
Taylor S. Lake is an Assistant Professor of Communication at Indiana University Northwest. This essay was derived from her dissertation completed under the direction of Lauren Rabinovitz at the University of Iowa.
Selma Odom's research focuses on dance, music, education and gender in the 19th and 20th centuries. With a background in English literature and theatre history, she has published many articles and reviews over the past 40 years, and her programs on the arts and women's issues have been broadcast on educational television.
Karl Toepfer is Dean of the College of Humanities & The Arts at San Jose State University. He received his doctorate in Theatre Arts from UCLA in 1983, is the author of The Voice of Rapture: A Symbolist System of Ecstatic Speech in Oscar Wilde's Salome (1991), Empire of Ecstasy: Nudity and Movement in German Body Culture, 1910-1935 (University of California Press, 1997), Theater, Aristocracy, and Pornocracy: The Orgy Calculus (2001).
Hilary Hart received her Ph.D. from the University of Oregon in 2004. Her research interests include the nineteenth-century American sentimental novel, the history of rhetoric and speech education in the United States, early cinematic acting styles, and the films of D.W. Griffith.
