As a percussive dance artist, scholar and teacher, Dance Alumna Janet Schroeder’s (PhD Dance Studies, 2018) interest in tap dance, Appalachian clogging and body percussion has led her to practice these rhythmic dance forms in the U.S. and Mexico. She has created and presented choreography, taken and taught classes in Mexico, Appalachia, Chicago, New York City, the Berkshires, Greece and France.
While she was a PhD student at Ohio State, Schroeder won several awards for her dissertation project, Ethnic and Racial Formation on the Concert Stage: A Comparative Analysis of Tap Dance and Appalachian Step Dance, including the Graduate School’s Presidential Fellowship, Alumni Grants for Graduate Research and Scholarship (AGGRS) and the Department of Women’s, Gender & Sexuality Studies’ Coca-Cola Critical Difference for Women Grant for Research on Women, Gender, and Gender Equality. “This project explores the shared aesthetics and historical trajectories of tap dance and Appalachian step dance, which have ultimately developed into two distinct forms of dance,” says Schroeder. “My research investigates the choreographic and representational strategies choreographers use to transfer the histories and legacies of these percussive dance forms to the stage, namely through a process I call concretization.” Her dissertation “proposes the cultural values of innovation and ongoingness as aesthetic philosophies of tap dance and Appalachian step dance respectively and investigates the stage as a site where choreographers and performers negotiate intersecting and sometimes competing ethno-racial projects.”
Schroeder currently teaches tap dance, modern dance for majors, tap dance repertory, and dance history as a visiting assistant professor of dance at University of North Carolina. She also dances with the tap dance company Movement Afoot in Columbus, Ohio.
