Amen! Twin Cities dance critic Camille LeFevre talks sense in Culturally Relevant? A Dance Critic Looks to the Territory Ahead. To read her complete essay, click here.
Here are a few things I'll add to LeFevre's rundown of the issue:
People who are disturbed about the current purging or demotion to freelance status of dance critics by major publications like The Village Voice need to know that dance critics have always been dispensable to these publishers. Yes, The Village Voice offered 40-year veteran staffer Deborah Jowitt the insulting status of freelancer but, a few years prior, they decreed that actual freelancers with talent, expertise and similar track records (Tobi Tobias and, to a lesser extent, myself) were no longer welcome. Dance editor Elizabeth Zimmer was ordered to cease assigning reviews and features to freelancers. To the best of my knowledge, no one in any position of consequence at the Voice at that time lifted her voice in protest. And that's why I wrote in this blog that now the final shoe has dropped.
Moreover, decreasing space and pay were early signs of the dwindling status of dance writers--on staff or freelance--at the Voice, and this entire matter is a story of disrespect and disempowerment that the dance community, if it is indeed one, will have to address if we are ever to have safe, supportive and encouraging conditions for able writers in our field in this city.
Do we want dance journalism? If so, what do we want from it? What are the goals and objectives of good dance journalism? What form or forms should this journalism take? These are questions we will need to answer as we move forward.
My purely personal response is to ride with this opportunity to evolve new forms and new relationships with the art of dance--something that, in any case, has been silently pulling at my heart for the past few years. While I do not know where this will lead, I do know that the role of critic--at least, as it appears to be officially practiced here in New York--interests me less and less. Like LeFevre, I'm after something "integral, relevant, aesthetically necessary" that rocks the world, and sometimes we need a good swift kick in the butt in order to get there. Over the years, haven't most of us expressed dissatisfaction with the shape of dance writing in our town? Sometimes good and necessary change is first heralded by decline.
Anyway, that's how I'm looking at it today. There are plenty of conditions out in the world that genuinely disturb me. This is no longer one of them.