Léon Pressouyre

Biography

I owe my encounter with medieval dance to Léon Pressouyre. At the end of my bachelor's degree in Art History and Archaeology, I was looking for a dance-related subject for my master's degree. Léon Pressouyre, who was then teaching medieval archaeology at the Institut d'Art de Paris I, suggested that I find out more about medieval dance, which he felt had not yet been seriously studied. I agreed, and he became my supervisor for my master's degree and then my thesis. His support, his enthusiasm, his kindness and his unrivalled teaching have given me a taste for research, combined with rigour and enthusiasm. For all this, thank you Sir, from the bottom of my heart! I'll let his former students speak for themselves, who, like me, loved and appreciated his teachings: "We drew from the fruitfulness of his seminar in the 1980s the substance of our methods and activities today" and "we made the most of the bridges built between disciplines and knowledge, we fed off his openness, his infinite culture and his rigor. He was a "...beloved teacher at the Institut d'Art de Paris I, leading the seminar that founded many vocations, at the crossroads of art history and medieval archaeology: through the high standards to which he accustomed us, his attention to respecting who we were and his gift of letting us weave links beyond himself, he revealed us to ourselves. Our professional and personal lives have been profoundly marked by this master who knew how to establish a special relationship with each and every one of us". (Tribute to Léon Pressouyre, in Bulletin Monumental, Tome 168-2, 2010)