My colleague Andrée Grau, who has died unexpectedly aged 63, was professor of the anthropology of dance at Roehampton University. She helped establish the anthropology of dance as an academic discipline, continuing the trajectory she had started as a student of social anthropology at Queen’s University in Belfast, receiving her PhD in 1983.
Andrée grew up in a Swiss mountain village, daughter of Suzanne Durgnat, a herbalist, and André Grau, a pharmacist. She studied in Lausanne before moving to London to train in dance and was awarded an MA in Benesh dance notation in 1976. Her anthropological skills were enhanced by her expertise in notation, focusing on the significance of movement practices in different cultures. Her ethnographic work was vast, and included researching the Venda people in South Africa, the Tiwi people of the Melville and Bathurst islands, Australia, and many projects in India and London.
She taught MA and PhD students how to apply anthropological analysis and conduct ethnographic research into movement practices, rituals, ballet and other dance styles. She also helped teach BA students new concepts about dance, culture and society, and lectured at universities in Europe and Australia. In Britain she taught at the American International University, the Laban Centre, Goldsmiths College, the University of Surrey and the London Contemporary Dance School.
Based full-time at Roehampton’s dance department since 2000, Andrée was a driving force behind its growth into a leading research centre. Social justice and intercultural practices informed much of her work, including her post as assistant director of the Inter-Cultural Performing Arts Research project at Goldsmiths in collaboration with the Pan project (1986-1989).
From 2002 to 2007, Andrée was associate director of the Arts & Humanities Research Council’s Research Centre for Cross-Cultural Music and Dance Performance. In 2012 she helped establish the Erasmus Mundus-funded two-year Choreomundus international master’s in dance knowledge, practice and heritage. Scholarships have gone to students from more than 50 countries.
A keen observer of people, Andrée was also a great listener, treating students and colleagues with equal respect. She married her husband, Dominique Bernard, in 1984 and they had two sons, Julien and Aristides. She was also an honorary member of a Tiwi family.
She helped to make dance accessible across generations with children’s books and media work. Her legacy continues in publications in French and English, the institutions she helped shape and in the scholars and dancers she trained.
She is survived by her husband and sons, and her father.
