Oral History Techniques for Ballet Class follows the career trajectories of three Cuban ballet teachers who have migrated to the United States, exploring how they have adapted and translated Cuban technique for the American dance studio. This thesis examines how the culturally specific form of Cuban ballet mutates and reassimilates as it encounters new and different social and political environments. Through experimental oral history methods, including dancing with my narrators, I seek to interrogate and recontextualize the ballet class as a space in which memory and embodied cultural knowledge are being transmitted on a daily basis. The framework of oral history opens up the potential to see generations of pedagogical lineage on display in the dance studio, and to recognize the ballet class as a space of continuous co-creation and reinvention.

Sacks_OHMA-Thesis_January-2026

Samantha Sacks is a classical ballet dancer, oral historian, and arts worker born and raised in Chicago. She holds a B.A. in Comparative Literature and an M.A. in Oral History from Columbia University, where her ongoing research uses oral history to ask how the body expresses and transmits memory through dance. She has cultivated relationships with artists across New York, Cuba and Puerto Rico, collaborating on research, writing, and public programs with a range of arts institutions. She is the Researcher and Special Projects Coordinator at the Clemente Soto Vélez Cultural and Education Center and a company dancer with the New York Theatre Ballet.