Dr Freya Vass is a theatre professional, researcher, and educator. A Senior Fellow with the Higher Education Academy (SFHEA), she brings specialisations in dance, postdramatic and physical theatre, dramaturgy, scenography, and interdisciplinary cognitive studies to the Drama, Theatre and Performing Arts department, which she joined in 2013. Prior to Kent, she instructed at the University of California Riverside, Saint Mary's College of California, the Frankfurt University of Music and the Performing Arts, and Hollins University’s European Study Programme. She is currently Assessment and Academic Misconduct Lead of the School of Arts and Architecture and was previously Director of Education for the School of Arts.
Freya's 16-year professional dance career included corps de ballet and soloist engagements with the Ballet Nacional de España (Madrid), Tulsa Ballet Theater (USA), Staatstheater am Gärtnerplatz (Munich), Salzburger Landestheater (Austria), and as a guest artist with the Teatro Massimo di Palermo (Italy) and the Theater des Westens (Berlin). Her training includes classical/neoclassical ballet, modern and contemporary dance, musical theatre (under Lee Theodore at the American Dance Machine), and improvisation, and her repertoire spanned classical and neoclassical ballets (Petipa, Balanchine, Tetley, Massine and others), modern and contemporary works (Jooss, Cullberg, Limón, Linke and others), and musicals including Cabaret, My Fair Lady, Fiddler on the Roof, and Annie Get Your Gun. From 1995-98 Freya was Ballet Mistress and Choreographic Assistant at the Salzburg Landestheater and staged works for the Theater Mecklenburg Vorpommern, as well as choreographing freelance for dance ensembles, musical theatre productions, and the cabaret stage in Germany and Austria. She also has over 20 years experience as a freelance ballet instructor and master teacher for companies and professional development programmes in Germany, Austria, Italy, Norway and the US.
Following her dance career, she earned a BA cum laude in Linguistics and Cognitive Science at the University of California, Los Angeles (2001) before completing an interdisciplinary PhD in Dance History and Theory from the University of California, Riverside with the dissertation Audio-Visual Stress: Cognitive Approaches to the Perceptual Performativity of William Forsythe and Ensemble. From 2011 to 2015, she was an Associate Researcher with the Dance Engaging Science workgroup of the Motion Bank project (The Forsythe Company, Frankfurt).
Freya served as Dramaturg and Production Assistant to choreographer William Forsythe from 2006-13, collaborating closely with The Forsythe Company on the creation of over a dozen new works. She is currently active as a freelance Dramaturg for choreographers including David Dawson and was dramaturgical consultant for the Corpus experimental dance ensemble in Copenhagen. See www.freyavass.com.
Freya is the author of William Forsythe’s Postdramatic Dance Theatre: Unsettling Perception (Palgrave Macmillan series Cognitive Studies in Literature and Performance, 2023) and co-edited the Performance Research special edition “On Perception” with Pil Hansen. She has contributed chapters to Embodied Dramaturgy: Liminal Movement in Dance and Theatre (Routledge, forthcoming), Dance Dramaturgy: Modes of Agency, Awareness and Engagement (Palgrave), The Oxford Handbook of Contemporary Ballet, The Oxford Handbook of Shakespeare and Dance, William Forsythe and the Practice of Choreography (Routledge), and Theater Without Vanishing Points (Alexander Verlag) and has authored articles for Dance Chronicle and Journal of Dance and Somatic Practices.
Freya has served on the Board of Directors of the Congress on Research in Dance and as Secretary on the Executive Committee of the Society for Dance Research. She is a member of the Dance Studies Association, Society for Dance Research, and TaPRA and participates in working groups on dance and science, scenography, and dramaturgy.
Freya's research interests include cognitive dance and theatre studies, postdramatic physical theatre practices, visuo-sonority and the expanded scenography of contemporary dance, physical and perceptual dramaturgies, improvisational and devising practices in dance/theatre, performative installations, dance history and practice, embodied ethnography, musical theatre dance, and arts/sciences interdisciplinarity.
A further critical research strand examines the interdisciplinary interfaces and metacritical terrain between dance research and scientific research.
Freya holds a Postgraduate Certificate in Higher Education (PGCHE) and is a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (SFHEA). In 2016 she and a teaching and support staff team were jointly awarded the Barbara Morris Prize for Learning Support.
Freya teaches across the Drama curriculum with particular focus in physical practices and interdisciplinary studies. She currently convenes the Year 1 modules Making Performance 1: The Fundamentals and Making Performance 2: Staging Texts as well as the research-led modules below.
Psychology of the Arts
This interdisciplinary School of Arts-level module enhances interdisciplinary literacy across the arts and sciences by examining research on the creation, perception, and reception of visual and performing arts, music, film, and architecture. Topics include empirical, philosophical, and socio-cultural perspectives on aesthetics, arts-experimental design, perception of art, meaning in art, the psychology of the creative process, social and cultural issues, and the ramifications of arts-sciences research.
Introduction to Musical Theatre Dance/Musical Theatre Dance 2
Modules focused on the development of musical theatre/jazz technique as well as period dancing styles ranging from the early 20th century until today. Readings and discussions on race, culture, class and politics ground the dance practice firmly in theory. The introductory module is based in repertory performance, while MTD2 supports students in theatre dance choreography.
Previous teaching includes:
Graduate:
Freya welcomes discussion of PhD project proposals relating to:
Philippa Strandberg-Long (2019), Beyond Repetition: Investigating How Sanford Meisner’s Training Process Diminishes Self-consciousness and Enhances Spontaneity in Actors (co-supervisor)
Lindsey Drury (Freie Universität Berlin/Kent, 2019), Three Imagined Dances: The Somatics of Early Modern Textual Mediation (co-supervisor)
Sarah Passfield (2018), Affective Dramaturgies in Dance Theatre: Leaky Encounters and Turbulent Spectating (co-supervisor)
Robbie Wilson (2018), Towards a Ludic Ecology: Popular Participatory Peripatetic Performance (co-supervisor)
Judita Vivas (2016), The Pageantry of Western Bodies: Material Practices, Recycled Intercorporealities, and Dramaturgical Configurations in the Twenty-First Century (co-supervisor)
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