ASA Announces 2021 Selma Jeanne Cohen Prize in Dance Aesthetics

The American Society for Aesthetics is pleased to announce the winner of the 2021 Selma Jeanne Cohen Prize in Dance Aesthetics, Choreography Invisible: The Disappearing Work of Dance (Oxford, 2020), by Anna Pakes.

Dr Pakes is a Senior Honorary Research Fellow at University of Roehampton, having recently stepped back from her teaching role at the university which she held from 2003 to 2021. She previously taught at what is now called Trinity-Laban, where she also completed her PhD.

The review committee noted:

Anna Pakes's book - the first monograph on the metaphysics of dance to appear in a decade - makes significant and original contributions to the understanding of central aspects of dance of interest to the ASA dance community. It is truly exceptional in bringing out the importance of dance ontology both for assessing aspects of dance practice and for the ontology of art more generally, and does so in a way that provides a rich dance-historical context for the consideration of more abstract issues.

The prize was established in 2008 in memory of Selma Jeanne Cohen, and with enormous gratitude for her generous bequest to the ASA. The $1000 prize is awarded every year, for critical articles or books of distinction in dance aesthetics, dance theory, or the history of dance published in English.

Dr Pakes will be honored at the 79th Annual Meeting of the American Society for Aesthetics in Montreal, November 17-20, 2021, at the annual Dance Scholars Breakfast at the meeting.

For more information about the prize: https://aesthetics-online.org/page/CohenPrize
For more information about the Annual Meeting: https://aesthetics-online.org/events/EventDetails.aspx?id=1067550&group=