Trends in dance criticism - four NY women writers

"Four American women, Marcia Siegel, Deborah Jowitt, Arlene Croce and Nancy Goldner, are writers who became dance critics partly by accident and partly by design and who came of age as dance critics during the ‘heyday of formalism’ in New York.(1) The ‘heyday’, from 1965 to 1985, gathered momentum as a ‘golden age’ of choreography (as Croce coined it). In responding to the age, these critics were informed by a mission to publish ‘serious’ writing about dance and to consciously generate and promote a distinct development in the discipline of dance criticism through the profile of their work and teachings. Although they have rarely shared dialogue, exchanged views in public forums, or aligned themselves in any formal way (2), I nevertheless proceed cautiously but confidently with the notion that this pas de quatre of women writers form the core of a New York School of dance criticism..."

Article by Diana Theodores, first published in: Dance Theatre Journal, December 1995

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