The Institutes for Dance Criticism and the Emergence of an Alternative Critical Writing

Extract

First I would like to thank Deborah Jowitt and CORD for inviting me to participate in this panel. I have known Marcia for many years and I am delighted to be here today to honor her. This also gives me a chance to speak about the Institutes for Dance Criticism (sometimes unofficially called the critics' conferences) started by Selma Jeanne Cohen in 1971 at Connecticut College and then expanded to the West Coast for several years in the mid-1970s. I met Marcia at the 1974 West Coast institute, which she was directing at Mills College. The next year I attended the East Coast branch at Connecticut College, which Deborah [Jowitt] directed and where Marcia served on the faculty.

In their early years the institutes were of tremendous importance to dance criticism. Nothing like them had ever been attempted. They came at the beginning of the dance boom, when publications were suddenly expected to cover what, for many editors and writers, was a little-known art form. The institutes were sponsored by the National Endowment for the Arts specifically to train dance critics. A number of people passed through the institutes who went on to important careers in criticism and academe, including Sally Banes, Janice Ross, and Mindy Aloff.