Associate Professor Emerita Janet Descutner

Janet Descutner, an Associate Professor emerita in dance, passed away in late July. She graduated Phi Beta Kappa and cum laude with a B.A. from Ohio State University, majoring in French literature with minors in art history and dance. While teaching at Ohio State, she completed an M.A. in Dance, presenting the first choreographic master’s thesis in the OSU dance program.

She subsequently was a dance faculty member at the University of Michigan and at Kent State University before joining the UO faculty in 1971. In her research, Descutner focused on modern dance and tap choreography and performance, and reconstruction of dances recorded in Labanotation, particularly the work of Doris Humphrey.

From 1989–96, she was co-director of the NorthWest Tap Consort, a semi-professional company that toured Oregon and Washington. She was on the Asian Studies faculty, teaching Dance in Asia, and collaborated with UO Theater Arts colleagues on several Asian/Western fusion productions, inspired by Japanese and Balinese artistic traditions. Descutner served as chair of the dance department from 1988–92, and retired from full-time teaching in 1999.