Renée Camus

Renée Camus is a dancer, writer, and teacher who has taught many styles of dance, including English country dance, English and Appalachian clogging, Irish step dancing, morris, ballroom, swing, and historical dance styles, especially those from the Victorian and Ragtime eras (waltz, schottische, mazurka, one-step, tango, maxixe, etc.). She has a bachelor’s degree in musical theatre from the University of Michigan and a master’s degree in dance history from American University. She has performed with Orion Longsword, Ha’Penny Morris, the Commonwealth Vintage Dancers, Footworks, PedAntics, and a brief stint with Dancing on Common Ground. She also founded and directed her own dance company dedicated to preserving and presenting historical social dance, called Centuries Historical Dance, and produced the DVD Dancing through the Centuries: Dawn of a New World, serving as writer, director, narrator, choreographer, and dancer.

Renée has taught at colleges and dance studios and at many dance camps around the country, including Pinewoods, Berea, Cumberland, Heydays, Terpsichore’s Holiday, Flying Cloud Academy’s Vintage Dance Week in Cincinnati, and the Newport Vintage Dance Week in Rhode Island. She is a regular caller (not to mention designed and maintains the website) for Culver City English Country Dance, and she recently began writing her own English country dances (published on her website). During the pandemic, she offered virtual classes in ECD style and technique and in clogging, as well as teaching for Russian dance festivals.

As a writer, she’s been published in Los Angeles Times, Los Angeles magazine, LA Weekly, Entertainment Weekly, New York Observer, The Toast, and Nicki Swift, and she recently published a chapter on “Joss Whedon and the Geek Musical” in the Routledge Companion to the Contemporary Stage Musical. She also co-founded and runs the San Gabriel Valley Women Writers group.