Marie-Louise Crawley

I’m a choreographer, artist scholar and Assistant Professor at the Centre for Dance Research, Coventry University. With an academic background in Classics followed by over a decade working as a professional dancer and choreographer, my work is situated at the intersection of dance, heritage studies and ancient history. My research interests include ancient dance and dance in the museum.

As an artist scholar whose research happens through the making and performing of dance, I’m interested in finding out what happens to our relationship with time and history when we dance, and when we view dance, in the museum. I call dance in the museum ‘radical archaeology’, which is also the title my forthcoming book with Routledge (Radical Archaeology: Dancing in the Museum). ‘Radical archaeology’ argues for the power and potential of dance in the museum as an action that can resituate previously marginalised bodies on the inside of our museums and cultural heritage institutions, but on their own terms, offering us new and powerful ways to read and understand history and culture. In the current time when museums are grappling with what to do with difficult histories and objects, my work responds to such ‘hot topic’ questions from the perspective of asking how dance might benefit our museums in helping us to think about collections in exciting, new ways.