Jeremy Carter-Gordon grew up in the Northeast of the USA dancing traditional American and English folk dance. He has taught, organized and performed rapper sword dance, morris, longsword, contra, English country dance, and European couples dancing since 2004. Studying anthropology at Bard College, he wrote his thesis on inscription and transmission of social values in New England contra dancing. In 2011 h was awarded a Thomas J. Watson Fellowship to spend a year conducting the largest survey of European hilt-and-point sword dances in the past century. When not engaging with dance he plays banjo with his group Windborne, and teaches harmony singing. Jeremy's academic work deals with three major threads of investigation
His dissertation engages with questions of how people perceive dance and make aesthetic decisions and judgements, particularly in situations of adjudication. Using a new concept of "temporal-aesthetic mapping" he seeks to explore the underlying structures of cultural aesthetics.
He is also interested in the revival of rapper sword dance in the USA and UK from 1970 to the present and understanding the discourses by which rapper was constituted change and keep rapper relevant as the transitioned from a local, place-based, male, working class tradition practiced by “heirs” to a (inter)national, interest-based, mixed gender, middle-class, neo-traditionalist dance, practiced by "users."Finally, he explores the kinesthetic-technological rupture created in New England contra dance by digital technology in the first decade of the 21st century.
His dissertation engages with questions of how people perceive dance and make aesthetic decisions and judgements, particularly in situations of adjudication. Using a new concept of "temporal-aesthetic mapping" he seeks to explore the underlying structures of cultural aesthetics.
He is also interested in the revival of rapper sword dance in the USA and UK from 1970 to the present and understanding the discourses by which rapper was constituted change and keep rapper relevant as the transitioned from a local, place-based, male, working class tradition practiced by “heirs” to a (inter)national, interest-based, mixed gender, middle-class, neo-traditionalist dance, practiced by "users."Finally, he explores the kinesthetic-technological rupture created in New England contra dance by digital technology in the first decade of the 21st century.