Nena Couch

couch.1@osu.edu

614 292.6614
FAX: 292.3222

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Nena Couch

Curator, Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee Theatre Research Institute
Professor, Department of Theatre

Areas of Expertise
• Dance

Nena Couch administers the Institute collections. She serves on the OSU Libraries faculty and has a joint appointment in the Department of Theatre. Her publications include The Humanities and the Library (co-edited and Performing Arts chapter co-authored with Nancy Allen); "Dance Collections" in Managing Performing Arts Collections in Academic and Public Libraries; Sidney Kingsley: Five Prizewinning Plays (editor and author of introduction); articles on Twyla Tharp and "The Catherine Wheel" in The International Dictionary of Modern Dance; "Western European Renaissance and Baroque Dance" in A Core Collection in Dance; Dance from the Quill (with Karen Eliot, Tim Glenn and A. William Smith); and others. With Karen Eliot (OSU Department of Dance faculty), Ms. Couch adapted Alexander Pope's 1714 poem The Rape of the Lock as a Baroque-style ballet, reconstructing dance notations from the period as well as choreographing in the style. As a performer she has appeared in the United States and Canada, and is a founding member of the Baroque dance troupe Les Menus Plaisirs. Ms. Couch was the 2000 recipient of the Howard D. Rothschild Fellowship for Research in Dance, awarded by the Harvard Theatre Collection. She has served on the Theatre Library Association board, and is the OSU representative to the Dance Heritage Coalition.

Her recent activities include "Dressing the Part: On and Off the Stage," an exhibition which she co-curated with Gayle Strege and on exhibit until 17 May 2003 at the OSU Historic Costume Collection; and "Some Sort of Somebody: Ohioan Elsie Janis on Stage and in the Trenches," an exhibition at the OSU Libraries Thompson Memorial Library opening 6 January 2003. Ms. Couch attended the second Harvard Theatre Curators Roundtable sponsored by the Harvard Theatre Collection and including representatives from the San Francisco Performing Arts Library and Museum, the Ransom Center at University of Texas, the Robert L. Tobin Collection at the McNay Museum in San Antonio, Harvard University, and the British Library. Research projects underway include work on Spanish eighteenth-century engraver Pablo Minguet, eighteenth-century dance, and the influence of Delsarte in early twentieth-century drama instruction.

Education
• MLS, Vanderbilt University
• MM, George Peabody College for Teachers
• BA, George Peabody College for Teachers