sarma

Myriam Van Imschoot

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Myriam Van Imschoot started her professional life as a dance critic for the Flemish newspapers Gazet van Antwerpen (1993-1995) and De Morgen (1995-1998). Sarma collects 60 percentage of these writings. Special focus is on the articles that appeared in the weekly arts supplement in De Morgen, called Café des Arts, as they were instances of a new genre in dance journalism in Belgium that combined journalism with essay-writing. These journo-essays portrayed choreographers and dancers, but also approached issues such as nationalism in dance, stillness in ballet, improvisation in the nineties, etc. In 1998 Myriam Van Imschoot left journalism when she accepted a full-time research position at the University of Leuven, with the support of the Fund for Scientific Research.

Biography

Myriam Van Imschoot (1969) graduated in Germanic Philology and specialized in Performance Studies at the University of Leuven in Belgium. She was the dance critic for Gazet van Antwerpen (1993-1995) and De Morgen (1995-1998). From 1995 she was a staff member of the Institute of Cultural Studies at the University of Leuven. In 1998 she became a full-time researcher at this university, with the support of the Fund for Scientific Research. Currently she is finishing a ph.d. on improvisation in cultures of spontaneity and the post-war avant-garde. Van Imschoot is the initiator and founder of Sarma. Her work as a lecturer, writer and theoretician has enabled her to travel extensively in Europe and the U.S., which has given her a broad perspective on the business, doing, making and studying of the performing arts.