Name: Jordan Lian

College: Clare College

Email: jl2174@cam.ac.uk

Supervisor: Dr Stanley Bill

Research Topic: Kyiv, Moscow, Warsaw – Bronislava Nijinska in Interwar Eastern Europe 

About:

As a teenager, I moved to Moscow, Russia from California to train at the Bolshoi Ballet Academy. I lived in Russia for two years, and had the great opportunity to perform numerous times on the stage of the Bolshoi Theatre as well as at the Rudolph Nureyev Festival. I also danced briefly at the Les Grands Ballets des Canadiens in Montreal. Prior to my doctoral studies, I completed a BA(Hons) in International Relations and Russian Studies and an MPhil in Modern Languages (specialising in Slavonic Studies) at the University of Oxford. I also worked in capital markets for two years in New York before moving to the UK.

Research:

My dissertation studies the renowned, yet understudied, Bronislava Nijinska— a Polish choreographer whose creativity in interwar Eastern Europe qualified her as a significant figure in the artistic modernisms developing in Kyiv, Warsaw, and Moscow. I use Nijinska’s choreographic career to argue for the interlinked histories of avant-garde revolutions in eastern European cities. I analyse Nijinska’s geographic movement and her choreographic innovations to consider how dance facilitated knowledge production and the movement of ideas between differing nations. Through close examinations of archival material, my research focuses on artistic collaborations and knowledge networks during this unique period of emerging nation-states and redefinition of collective identities in Eastern European history.

This study of Nijinska’s career is the first which attempts to use dance as a central discipline by which to examine differing artistic modernisms within Eastern Europe. Contemporaneous debates on the spatial alterations of national borders and identities, the reconciliation of tradition and modernity, and imagery of the human body contextualise my analysis of Nijinska’s dance theory from this period.

Languages:

Russian (near native)

Polish (intermediate, acquiring proficiency)

Ukrainian (basic, acquiring proficiency)

French (intermediate reading)

Mandarin (heritage speaker)

Scholarships/Prizes:

Clare-Yale Fellowship (2024)

American Councils Title VIII Combined Research and Language Training Grant (2023)

Zdanowich Prize for Polish Studies (2022-2025) US Fulbright-Hays Russian Programme (2022)

Santander Academic Travel Award (2021)

NYU Slavic Award (2018)

NYU Dean’s Undergraduate Research Grant (2017)

National Post-Secondary Russian Essay Contest, Second Place (2015)

Teaching:

SL14: Russian Culture from 1895 to the Death of Stalin

CS5: The Body