Julia Sutton (dance historian)

Julia Sutton (July 20, 1928 – July 1, 2012) was a musicologist and historian of early dance and music. She was professor at New England Conservatory of Music, teaching in the Music History and Musicology department, which she chaired for more than twenty years. She also taught in NEC's Performance of Early Music department, and directed the Collegium Terpsichore. Sutton was active in the founding of the Society of Dance History Scholars. She received her PhD from Rochester University's Eastman School of Music in 1962.

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• Works
• Encomium
• References

Sutton was a dance enthusiast and also a teacher of living dance traditions, including American square dance, American contradance, international folk dance, and English country dance. Her scholarship explored the relationships between music and dance in Western culture. She directed and reconstructed dances for the New York Pro Musica's cross-country tours of An Entertainment for Elizabeth, the Pennsylvania Orchestra Association's Renaissance Revisited, the Ensemble for Early Music's Renaissance Revels, and a production of the great Florentine Intermedio of 1589, The Descent of Rhythm and Harmony (Cavalieri). She was a guest lecturer at many universities and colleges, and led workshops and courses of study about Renaissance dance and music.

Sutton wrote numerous articles on Renaissance music and dance for scholarly publications including The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians and The International Encyclopedia of Dance. She published a new edition of the French dance manual by Thoinot Arbeau, Orchesography, and translated and edited the Italian manual by Fabritio Caroso, Nobiltà di dame. Her most recently published work was a teaching video, Il Ballarino. She was the editor-in-chief of a scholarly edition of Dances for the Sun King: André Lorin's Livre de Contredance, which was completed in 2009.