The New Yorker's Alex Ross on the decline of arts criticism

THE FATE OF THE CRITIC IN THE CLICKBAIT AGE
by Alex Ross, The New Yorker, March 13, 2017

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FABnyc launches The Sustainable Artist Toolkit

The Sustainable Artist Toolkit

 (#ArtistToolkit)

Artists, Cultural Workers, Revelers & Explorers of creative expression: DON’T PANIC.

FAB is excited to bring to you The Sustainable Artist Toolkit – a series of workshops led by A. Nia Edwards-Austin, Eva Yaa Asantewaa, Kendra Ross, and Sydnie Mosley, for artists, cultural workers, creativity seekers… and everyone in between. Learn to tell your stories, share resources, activate the community, cultivate thoughtful responsiveness — all while working towards a generative and caring ecosystem.

And I'm excited to be part of the team bringing this new initiative to our arts community. You'll hear more about my part of it in coming months but, first up:

Sydnie L. Mosley
(photo: Ferima Faye/F.F. Visual)

BodyBusiness Resource Sharing: getting what you NEED with what you HAVE

led by Sydnie L. Mosley and SLMDances

Wednesday, Sept 21, 7-9pm

Through a series of artist-guided activities, SLMDances will share practices that work towards a cooperative economy based on trust, value transparency and accountability, all while honoring individual voices. In school, in our jobs, in society, we are taught “resources are scarce” — but what if the skills, goods, services, and/or opportunities we already possess becomes the central resource of worth instead of money?

Artists, cultural workers, makers: let’s fully embody a vision of a community that has mastered the art of sharing in order to negotiate obstacles and achieve common goals! In this session, reflect on what you have & what you need, equitably distribute resources, experience how a cooperative economy operates, and together, find ways to shift the culture in our day-to-day.

This model was co-conceived with Our Goods and elevates a vision that values artists’ creative labor and production while decentralizing money as the only source of real worth.

For more #ArtistToolkit programming details and to register for this and other events in the series, click here.

And connect with FABnyc on social media:

Facebook: @FABNYC 
Twitter: @fourthartsblock
Instagram: @fourthartsblock

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"Her Fishtrap": a reflection from Ni'Ja Whitson

Choreographer Paloma McGregor
in Building a Better Fishtrap
(photo: Whitney Browne)

In Her Fishtrap, dance artist and guest writer Ni’Ja Whitson reflects on Building a Better Fishtrap, a work presented at BAX/Brooklyn Arts Exchange this month by choreographer Paloma McGregor in collaboration with visual artist Sara Jimenez, installation designer Vassi Spanos and sound designer Everett Saunders.

Photos by Whitney Browne

***

Her Fishtrap

Cold jar swings
from the ceiling.
Coating
its translucence
interior
thick
off white spill.
A residue
memory, and time.

Paloma McGregor
in Building a Better Fishtrap
(photo: Whitney Browne)

It is another of McGregor’s portals.

Building a Better Fishtrap commands its audience receive and witness with the same stamina the soloist McGregor rigorously expels. The performance takes place between three floors of Brooklyn Arts Exchange, a spatial expanse that mirrors the vast locations of physical, object, and media vocabularies embodied. She is wielder/welder/poet/cyclone/octopus/child/magician/dreamer.

Fishtrap’s audience becomes her ocean-bound garden, being toiled and rooted as the piece unfolds. One of the work’s most striking and successful elements is the manipulation of object and/in space. Among all three floors, her unique world is made by the ways in which the calculated manipulation of objects installed in the performance space are activated. On the first floor, mason jars are rolled and spun, opened and emptied, carried with care and abandoned. McGregor, at one point, makes a clever emptying roll of a jar, releasing a swell of aromatic ground mint, then proceeds to further make her/self a conjurer, shifting the air through the sense of smell. She then wafts the jar to the witnesses, puts mint grounds in hand, over body, head and floor. She cleanses and reopens. The doing in this work is its magic. And McGregor does both the subtle and grand with such intention, the magic hypnotizes.

Paloma McGregor
in Building a Better Fishtrap
(photo: Whitney Browne)

She breaks
through time. Strung
as a clothesline
the years hang.
With back wing
spread the ocean
sorceress stops
let light wonder over
body.
She sings her birth.
Dances a life
from the deep.

It was born to her.

McGregor is a masterful constructionist; her choreographic structure is tightly considered, thus where she “plays” she, too, devises. Strategically and uniquely working within a grounded knowledge of African diasporic vocabularies (and beyond), Fishtrap makes meaning in the employment of improvisation as a virtuostic practice. And the lines where presumably “set” or improvisationally set material live, exist here as wonderfully blurred. The dance of this performance is as much in the spaces of (brief) stillness as it is in McGregor’s turns, arm curves, undulations, and foot pounds. This is critical to the work; there are no disposable gestures.

Paloma McGregor
in Building a Better Fishtrap
(photo: Whitney Browne)

Black mama joy

spin her.
Wave skirt and dive
into.
She wet.
We dry. But we all swim.
Black mama child girl
cross a net sea
to the other side.
We wait
at the shore
she our people
bones in the dark.

Paloma McGregor’s Building a Better Fishtrap is an embodied poem and slicing exposition of memory. It, at times lullabies in quiet movement or task, then within an instant destabilizes through near-cinematographic staging and striking movement. Fishtrap gifts what it inquiries: play and recall.

Her Fishtrap
©2016 Ni’Ja Whitson

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John Chilton, 83

John Chilton, Jazz Musician and Historian, Dies at 83
by Peter Keepnews, The New York Times, March 3, 2016

American dance criticism: RIP?

The Death of the American Dance Critic
Why are there so few mainstream outlets covering the art form?
by Madison Mainwaring, The Atlantic, August 6, 2015

******

My comment:

If mainstream dance criticism is dead, the appropriate question is: What's next? Not all dance blogs are ballet-centric or inaccessible in language. Mainwaring could have explored a little further and discovered US dance writing in venues like The Brooklyn Rail and my own blog, InfiniteBody, that continues sensitive observation, documentation, analysis and sharing of meaningful experiences with dance. Dance writing in mainstream media has withered, yes, for all of the reasons that Mainwaring details, but dance writers are still out here, using our knowledge and skills in service to an art we greatly respect and love. We would appreciate your acknowledgement and support.

William Zinsser, 92

William Zinsser, Author of ‘On Writing Well,’ Dies at 92
by Douglas Martin, The New York Times, May 12, 2015

Andrew Porter, 86

Andrew Porter, New Yorker Classical Music Critic, Dies at 86
by Margalit Fox, The New York Times, April 3, 2015

New York Times now has zero Black culture writers

Following Layoffs, NYT Culture Section Devoid Of Black Reporters
by Jackson O'Connor, The Huffington Post, December 19, 2014

New York Times shows veteran music critic the door

A terrible mistake at the New York Times
by Norman Lebrecht, The New York Times, December 18, 2014

Remembering Ana's beautiful life

A Wrenching Grief Assuaged With Beauty
Jimmy Greene’s 'Beautiful Life' Is a Eulogy to a Daughter
by Nate Chinen, The New York Times, November 26, 2014

Charles Champlin, 88

Charles Champlin, Critic and Memoirist, Dies at 88
by Bruce Weber, The New York Times, November 18, 2014

Reports say arts journalist Randy Gener attacked, recovering from surgery

Theater Journalist Randy Gener Recovering From Brain Surgery After Assault
by Broadwayworld.com, January 24, 2014

Get to know "Black Dance Magazine"

What's new on the horizon? How about a print and online magazine dedicated to the work of dancers of color?

Get to know the up-and-coming Black Dance Magazine, published in partnership with the International Association of Blacks in Dance.

Norma Porter Anthony of Black Dance Magazine

Publisher/Editor Norma Porter Anthony writes:

In 2003, I began pursuing a degree in Journalism. I left the dance world, and began writing on everything from local and national education issues to business to community news.

Almost 15 years later, media coverage of the dance industry still fails to address the fact that there are viable, professional dancers of color, companies and teachers doing amazing things in the field.

I realize now that if there was a publication dedicated to “chasing the rhythms of dancers of every hue,” I probably would not have made the decision to abandon dance and pursue a “more stable” career. If I knew that there were opportunities for dancers of color, with different body types, maybe I would have made a different choice.

To subscribe or read articles online (current cover story: Hope Boykin of the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater), click here.

LEIMAY-CAVE seeks writers for new online publication

LEIMAY-CAVE is currently seeking writers for its online publication,conectom. The aim of the project is to report and comment on new developments in visual arts performance, contemporary performance, hybrid stage and installation works.

As a writer, you will make contributions ranging from interviews, reviews, essays, and development journals. You will be in contact with LEIMAY-CAVE’s local and international network in addition to any individual projects you are interested in proposing. A strong concentration for conectom is the adaptation of critique style to contemporary works. This means doing away with traditional theater or visual art criticism when writing about contemporary performance, visual performance art or other hybrid works. As such, you will be expected to learn a new perspective when writing about performative works, be it considering your position as a spectator or situating the works you are writing about within their proper context.

We are seeking persons with a strong interest in contemporary performance and visual art performance. Writing experience is preferred, but a strong ambition to become involved in the performance medium is just as important. Our tentative launch date for the writing series is September 15th. From then on, we aim to maintain a well-updated publication, therefore we ask that you submit one article every three weeks (Occasional writers are also called please feel free to apply and specify your interest).

conectom is an artist/audience network and online publication focusing on visual arts performance, contemporary performance and hybrid stage works. conectom features an artist directory with a permanent and rotating portfolio display, community forums, interviews, written and photographic essays, development journals, and an ever-updated, curated calendar of performance events in New York City.

Please send your resume, a writing sample, and a brief cover letter to raul@leimay.org by August 25, 2012.

In the absence of a writing sample, please describe your interest in becoming a staff writer for LEIMAY-CAVE as well as your interests in visual arts performance, contemporary performance and hybrid stage works. Additionally, we are also interested in photo essayists and an editorial intern. No monetary compensation is available for these positions.

Sherri Kronfeld: Should theater makers critique theater?

Many thanks to my colleague in Philadelphia, Lisa Kraus of thINKingDANCE, for recommending this piece. 

Where is our Tiki Barber? Theater Makers As Theater Critics
by Sherri Kronfeld, HowlRound, July 22, 2012

Write now: NYLA seeks Context Noters

New York Live Arts Request for Proposals
2012/13 Context Note Writer | New York Live Arts Blog

Each season New York Live Arts (Live Arts) curates three (3) writers to produce written pieces known as “Context Notes” to accompany each show on the season. Context Notes are published in Live Arts programs and are intended to frame questions, spark discussion, and explore/expand the experience of seeing work on the Live Arts stage.  This year, Live Arts seeks to include new voices and diverse perspectives by issuing an open call for writers.

For further information and application guidelines, continue reading here.

DEADLINE: May 21, 5pm. No late applications will be accepted.

QUESTIONS: Sarah A.O. Rosner, Manager of Engagement at SRosner@newyorklivearts.org

Meetup group hosts panel on arts blogging

State of Art Blogging Panel - Arts, Culture and Technology (New York, NY) - Meetup

Thursday, March 29, 7pm

This month ArtsTech is proud to welcome Hrag Vartanian of Hyperallergic.com as co-organizer and moderator of a panel examining the current state of art blogging. Together we've assembled a diverse group representing today's top art bloggers — ranging from the scrappy, indie blog to institutional and news sites. They'll discuss the current landscape of contemporary art criticism on the Internet and the challenges and opportunities art bloggers face today.

Learn more here.