I couldn't have said it better!

For those of us who spend many of our waking hours in theaters, this time of year can feel like staring down the chute at the start of a long, daunting obstacle course: the shows are coming, and fast, more than we can ever possibly see. How to make it to the winter holidays and take in most of them? How to remain sane while doing so?

--Claudia La Rocco, "When Perceptions Are Performance," The New York Times, Spetember 12, 2008

I deeply empathize with Ms. La Rocco, who opened her review of Jérôme Bel with this telling plaint. I, for one, have decided to opt for sanity. And since I have now completed my three-year term on the Bessie Awards committee--see you at the awards celebration on Monday?--it should be easier for me to achieve that sanity and some balance in my life (I have one) and my dance-going (which is still a very nice part of a privileged life). I've been at this dance criticism thing for 32 years, and I've come to learn that it has its limitations, many of them.

I want to spend less time "staring down the chute at the start of a long, daunting obstacle course" and more time staring through camera lenses and binoculars at the wondrous world. It would be nice to have more time to stare at my cats and my wife and to stare at other forms of art and science and other beautiful and rich places on our planet. I'm also due for a little navel-staring--or is that gazing?--some loving, renewed attention to my spiritual life and work and my own creativity. I also have to do some serious staring (without flinching) at what's going on politically in this country with its serious choice between a road of reactive retrogression, arrogant lying and aggression and a road of progress and healing, because if we're not careful, we'll be staring at something far worse than what we've stared at for the past eight years.

So, bear with me as you find me perhaps staring a little less--or a little less fixedly--at dance in the coming season. I might not get around to a lot of your shows, but I still care deeply about you and your work and about this field, and I hope to serve it more through the medium of sound, through Body and Soul podcast, a medium for many creative, authoritative voices as opposed to one critical one.

All the best,
Eva