From a dance perspective, considering rights and virtues means looking at the dance field in a very different light from what has too often been the norm. Dancers, administrators, choreographers, teachers, students, and parents would be encouraged to work collaboratively to determine common values, principles, rights, and responsibilities for any studio, school, program, class, or company. Doing so would help to provide greater clarity and a sense of shared responsibility, moving us toward a more humane dance world.

I started writing about dance in the mid-2000s. I won’t say that the state of professional arts journalism was exactly sanguine at the time, but as I remember it now, it was at least possible to think of arts journalism as a profession with a future. I had lots of senior colleagues then, people I […]

The brilliant dance writer Sally Banes, who pioneered a new way to write about dance as a social phenomenon, died on June 14, 2020 of ovarian cancer. Banes visited New York in October 1973 with a standard assignment: to write a book on modern dance for Chicago Review Press. Because of her curiosity about choreography, […]

When I started writing about dance professionally a decade ago, the experience was akin to taking baby steps among giants. There was something profoundly humbling—not to mention terrifying—about reviewing a new Odette/Odile in the same pages as Clement Crisp, who saw his first performance in 1942 and famously quipped: “I want to hear from someone […]

When I first came to dance criticism in the 1970s, the professional critics were predominantly much older than me. I didn’t know them personally and, as the wide-eyed new kid on the block, I assumed most had little or no physical training in the art. As slightly intimidated as I felt at the time—you try […]