Mara Frazier is Assistant Professor and Curator of Dance at the Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee Theatre Research Institute, Thompson Library Special Collections, The Ohio State University. As Curator of dance and movement collections, she works to develop, preserve, teach with, and make accessible collections on dance and movement, including the papers of the Dance Notation Bureau, one of the largest collections of Labanotation manuscripts in the world, and collections of noted artists such as Twyla Tharp, Marcel Marceau, and Bebe Miller. Ms. Frazier supports teaching and research for undergraduate and graduate students, faculty, and the public with the vast archival collections at Ohio State and collaborates with dance and music subject librarians to liaise with the Department of Dance.
Mara has written articles, designed physical and virtual exhibits, and given many talks on the topics of Labanotation, restaging, and dance and movement archives. Frazier recently published “Labanotation is Creative: How a Systems Perspective Reveals Generativity in Labanotation and its Archives,” in the Journal of Movement Arts Literacy, an online, peer-reviewed journal for scholars and practitioners of movement notation. “Labanotation is Creative” draws on archival research to show that creativity has been evident throughout Labanotation’s history at the level of individual, society, and culture. She also recently published “On Tour with Limon: Lucy Venable and the U.S. State Department Tours,” an interactive story map introducing and engaging viewers with images of artifacts from Venable’s world travels as a member of the José Limon Company. Frazier restaged Albrecht Knust’s Walzer, a 1933 choral dance work nearly lost to time and not recorded on film, for a cast of 64 dancers, and has collaborated with Valarie Williams and Ambre Emory-Maier to restage major choreographic works such as Rooms by Anna Sokolow and Steps in the Street by Martha Graham. Mara is on the Board of Trustees of the International Council of Kinetography Laban as the U.S. Treasurer, a role which requires her to correspond and build relationships with notation scholars and practitioners across the world. She has worked with McGraw-Hill Education as a media designer, conceptualizing, coordinating, procuring, and editing photographs, animations and illustrations for educational texts and digital products. She views dance notation and creation as integrated movement literacy practices and has been a lifelong dance educator in higher education, public schools, studios and dance academies where she continues to teach children and adults at all levels.