Selma Jeanne Cohen

Selma Jeanne Cohen (18 September 1920 – 23 December 2005) was a historian, teacher, author, and editor who devoted her career to advocating dance as an art worthy of the same scholarly respect traditionally awarded to painting, music, and literature. She was the founding editor of the six-volume International Encyclopedia of Dance, completed in 1998.

Born in Chicago, Illinois, Selma Jeanne Cohen was the only child of Frank and Minna (Skud) Cohen. She attended elementary and high school at the University of Chicago Laboratory School and then went on to matriculate at the university itself. As a student of English literature, she earned a bachelor's degree in 1941, a master's degree in 1942, and a doctorate in 1946. Her doctoral dissertation was on the poetry and religious thought of Gerard Manley Hopkins, who remained a favorite poet for the rest of her life.

During her school years, when a childhood friend began attending the ballet classes of Edna McRae, a respected Chicago teacher, Selma Jeanne went along, although she had no intention of becoming a dancer. After some months of training, she realized that her small body was not suited to the physical demands of classical ballet technique, and she stopped going to classes. Instead, she found a new, intellectual interest. Encouraged by McRae, she became enthralled with reading books on dance history. It was in Edna McRae's extensive library that she found her calling.

Upon receiving her doctorate, Cohen joined the faculty of the University of California at Los Angeles as a teacher of English literature, but after two years she recognized that her true interest lay in dance. For several years, from 1948 to 1953, she worked and taught at the American School of Dance in Hollywood, operated by Eugene Loring, a well-known choreographer and dance teacher. She then moved to New York, where she taught dance history at Hunter College and the High School of Performing Arts. During this time, she contributed articles and reviews to Dance Magazine, Dance News, and Dance Observer. From 1953 to 1965 she was the New York correspondent for The Dancing Times, published in London, and from 1955 to 1958 she was employed as assistant to John Martin, dance critic of the New York Times. In this job she wrote numerous reviews of dance performances for that paper as well as reports on sermons delivered from the pulpits in major churches in the city. She also served for a time as dance critic for the Saturday Review. In 1962, she began a decade of teaching dance history and writing at the American Dance Festival, held at Connecticut College in New London.

In 1959, Cohen joined forces with A.J Pischl, a fellow devotee of dance, to found Dance Perspectives, a quarterly journal specializing in scholarly monographs on a wide variety of dance topics. In 1966, she became sole editor under the aegis of the newly formed Dance Perspectives Foundation. The editorial board included editor and artist Karl Leabo, dance educator Martha Hill, university press editor José Rollins de la Torre Bueno, and dance critic Edwin Denby. Cohen served as editor of this influential journal until she closed it in 1976.

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