Anna Jayne Kimmel

Anna Jayne Kimmel is a PhD candidate in Performance Studies pursing a minor in Anthropology and graduate certificate in African Studies, with an emphasis in dance, memory, and public performance as politics. Her research intersects: race, national identity, and post-colonialism through moments of assembly, including festivals, protests, and parades. As a dancer, Kimmel has performed the works of: Ohad Naharin, Trisha Brown, John Jaspers, Francesca Harper, Rebecca Lazier, Olivier Tarpaga, Marjani Forte, and Susan Marshall, amongst others. She holds an AB from Princeton University in French Studies with certificates in African Studies and Dance, and serves on the Future Advisory Board to Performance Studies international, and as the Reviews Editor of Performance Research.

A current research project of Anna's centers the Le premier festival culturel panafricain d’Alger 1969, noting it as an exemplary instance of the power of performance at the nexus of political ideology, activist history, and the subsequent nostalgia for that era of liberation. This history—of entangled international relations fostered under the guise of a festive performance, a complicated trajectory of global politics which culminated in a remarkable event of celebration—remains understudied, a footnote to more ‘political’ concerns of Third World agendas, decolonial reorderings, and capitalist critiques.