This interview originally appeared in the Movement Research Performance Journal #25 in Fall 2002. For more information about Movement Research, please visit their website at www.movementresearch.org.

Sarah Michelson: Why did you become a critic?

Deborah Jowitt: I think by accident. A friend of mine worked at WBAI Pacifica. He had the idea that critics had set vocabularies – like, „the work lacked focus.“ He wanted to get together with a group of his friends, who were all quite young, and once a week we would sit around a table at the radio station and each of us would do a five-minute review, either written or off the cuff, of something we had seen. After each review, there would be a ten-minute discussion because other people were supposed to have tried to see-

SM: the same thing?

DJ: Yes. Or read the same book. It was called „The Critical People“, and my husband did the music and I did the dance. It lasted for several years. It was fun. Marcia Siegel, who was then editing an extinct publication called
Dance Scope, heard me on the radio and said she was looking for writers. She asked if I would review Edwin Denby‘s Dancers, Buildings and People in the Streets. That was my first piece of dance writing. Also at that time, my neighbor was Letitia Kent, a political writer for the Village Voice. She said, „I think you should write for us.“ This was at the time when Jill Johnston wrote the column, „Dance Journal“. At that point, she was writing about the art world and about her own experiences, so they felt another dance column would be fine. Letitia told me to write a dance review, and that she would put it on the arts editor‘s desk. I wrote one and thought, Well, that one probably wasn‘t very good. I asked her if she thought I should try another one, and she said yes. So after I had written the second one, Letitia called me and she said, „Go look at the paper!“ And they were both there. I was very excited!
Letitia sort of marched me down to the Voice, which had its offices on the
corner of Sheridan Square, and introduced me to the arts editor, Diane
Fisher, and the editor and the publisher. It was sort of like a welcome
aboard. I was saying, „You mean, you would like me to write more...?“ And
they said, „Yes, yes.“ They gave me a long speech about how they couldn‘t
pay their writers very much – that everybody got the same amount: $35 per column. I said fine. There was no contract – every week that I could, I turned in something, and if I went away with some dance company to perform, I just didn‘t write anything. But if I did write, it was always printed, and it was never edited (laughs). Diane would look at it, and that was it. She made one suggestion to me, which was very interesting. She asked me, „Isn‘t dancing really about movement?“ I said, „Yes.“ She said, „Well, I think you should try to write about that.“ So in my next review I really tried to say something about what the movement was like. That was very useful.

SM: When you were part of „The Critical People“, what were the discussions like? Were they polite or did things get heated between people?

DJ: I don‘t remember them getting too heated. There were differences of
opinion. It didn‘t get heated in the sense that today‘s talk shows seem to
thrive on. We never did that. We would say, „I have a wholly different
perspective.“ We would agree, too. We thought of ourselves as young
intellectuals – but playful and offbeat. I suppose we were sometimes
controversial.

SM: Did you guys read established critics who were writing at the time and
discuss that in relationship to your opinions?

DJ: No. We got right in there and talked about the work, trying not to use clichés.

SM: What is a dance critic, in your opinion? Have the parameters changed?

DJ: I can‘t speak for everybody, because it depends a lot on the individual and the publication and the expectations. I‘ve spoken and even written about this, but there are various stances that a dance critic either
assumes or is maybe expected to assume –

SM: – by the publication?

DJ: Yes, which in turn, thinks, This is what the public wants. There are a lot of guises that a critic can assume – an arbiter of taste, a consumer
guide, a teacher to the artist. Take a critic like Anna Kisselgoff; she‘s superbly committed to giving the background of a company, where it came from, what the choreographer has done – I think that that kind of authority and context is very important to her and to the New York Times. It might not be so important to somebody else.

SM: How do you see yourself?

DJ: I think of myself as an intelligent, knowledgeable observer, who is trying to convey what the experience is like for me. And to put it in some
kind of context or perspective. That‘s all. Ranking a performance in terms
of whether or not it‘s bound to go down in the annals of history or not is
not part of my business. I can be critical – I can say what I think is or is
not pleasing about something – but that‘s an opinion, rather than a grading system. I think there are several levels of observation; there‘s that kind of gut level „they seem to be moving in squares a lot“, or „there‘s a lot of clutter“ (which isn‘t always bad). And then there‘s a second level of
perception: „What are the feelings and impressions coming out of this? “The third level is where you‘re really interpreting: „This is about a woman who‘s lost her mind.“ (laughter) If I‘m going to the New York City Ballet, and everybody around me is very well dressed, and I know what the performance is, there‘s still a lot I can‘t expect, but there‘ s also a lot that I know. Probably no dancer is going to sit on the floor and pick her nose. Whereas if I go and stand in a long line on a crumbling staircase going into a loft, and everybody‘s pulling out foam-rubber cushions, I know I‘m probably not going to see Swan Lake. Wendy Perron wrote a wonderful review years ago; there were lit candles placed everywhere, and as, I remember, Barbara Dilley came out stark naked and started to spin.When you went to events like that in the `70s, as soon as you saw what the situation was, you said to yourself – and I think this is along the lines of what Wendy wrote – „Maybe this is all that‘s going to happen for the next hour, and you‘d better slow down your breathing a little bit and get comfortable. “So you do adjust to a situation. Then, in terms of how you‘re looking at the dance, you try to be completely open: You are taking it in, you are feeling it, and you are seeing what‘s going on, and, in some corner of your brain, you are analyzing it.

SM: And then you call up the critical faculty?

DJ: Yes. But you mustn‘t ever shut off the observer. You can‘t ever say, „I know what this is, and this is just not something I like.“ A lot of young
dancers will do that they go to something. They don‘t have any critical
responsibility, so they say, „This is a piece of crap. What are we doing here? Is there an intermission? Let me go!“ But I can‘t do that! (laughs) I have to stay and see it through. There‘s always this interchange between my perception, my sensual response, the kinesthetic response, the interpretive faculty, and the critical/analytical faculty that is trying to see why this piece is what it is. I think that‘s one of the things I try to do. It doesn‘t do any good to look for passionate uses of weight in a Merce Cunningham dance.

You know what it is? You don‘t go to look for something,
you go to look at what‘s there and to draw out what seem to be the
salient characteristics. It‘s not that you come with a checklist. So
there‘s this constant negotiation going on within different, connected
areas of your brain. It‘s a very relaxed kind of transaction.

SM: When I read your reviews, I feel like your stance as a critic is of a documentarian in some way. I always feel like there‘s a way in which your
work in the Village Voice does create a library of, this is what is happening, this is what has happened, this is what is going on.

DJ: But it can only be partial. I hope it‘s accurate and truthful, but I don‘t purport to give a complete account of a dance. I just give a response that tells or captures something about the work because one of the problems that dance faces is its ephemerality. We have video now and that helps a lot. but when I started to write, video was not widespread. I felt more of a duty to try to be descriptive. I feel it now, too, but that‘s how I started, and it‘s hard to break a habit.

SM: All the dance critics have seen the classical ballets – like Swan Lake – many times.

DJ: Well some people, like Clive Barnes, have seen it many more times than I have, because that was his beat for years. I don‘t have that luxury of seeing things a lot, not even ballets – although of course I‘ve seen Swan Lake many times (laughs) – because my beat has become very wide. It‘s not downtown only anymore. I like to write about Asian dance-theater, and I haven‘t gotten that much of a chance to see it recently. My schedule is so full. But going back to an event a second time is almost unknown. Sometimes I think maybe I would like certain works less if I saw them more often. They appeal on a certain level, but I might find them rather shallow after I saw them a few times.

SM: I‘ve been reading a lot of visual arts criticism recently. I‘m
compelled by the way the criticism seems to locate the works over time,
within their contexts. Why is dance criticism so slight in comparison?

DJ: It‘s a big issue. When I started to write criticism, it wasn‘t
something I thought about very much. Some of us were very influenced by
Susan Sontag‘s Against Interpretation. We wanted to confront the work
without considering anything but its sensuous apparition. I began to change my idea as the work began to change. We had less people inventing new systems of movement. Now, we have this post-modern dance-theater, and yes it needs to be put into some kind of context. I‘m always finding that I fall short on this. I blame it on lack of space, but I shouldn‘t probably do that.

SM: That does seem to be an issue.

DJ: It used to be that I could devote a whole page to one event, or I could do two and have eight hundred words for each. Now we have less space, and there a sort of (sigh) -- I don‘t know, whether it started out as advice from my editor Elizabeth Zimmer or my own duty, but it‘s the sense that we have only a page now and somehow we have to represent the whole field. Often I find myself with three hundred words for each performance, so I get frustrated. In the early days I wrote a lot of pieces about certain aspects of dance. or was able to ponder what the new works were all about. I occasionally do those, but all too seldom. I think it‘s very important to really notice a trend, and I have done that a bit in lectures and alluded to it in reviews, but it would be nice to do more.

SM: It seems that the media could help with some analytical criticism.

DJ: Sometimes I‘ve heard the dance world saying that dance criticism isn‘t on a high intellectual level. On the other hand, if you hear dance history scholars read academic papers, that doesn‘t quite do what we want. To talk about dance on a higher intellectual level can be accomplished in some
ways, but very dense scholarly papers, full of allusions to French literary theory, is not the only way. We‘re trying to catch up. Art has a long history of erudite criticism. Film criticism now has a fair history, but dance criticism? John Martin was the first professional dance critic at the Times. He said that when he was getting interested in reviewing dance somebody would come to the city room, where all the writers were, holdup two tickets and say, „Who wants to review the kickers?“

SM: Is there a community of critics? What do you talk about?

DJ: Well, it depends on where we talk.

SM: Who are your friends? What‘s your community?

DJ: Among critics? All of them – well not all of them. For nine years, I taught criticism workshops in the summer.

SM: And where are the people who were in those workshops?

DJ: All over the country (although some of them dropped out of dance criticism). So I know an enormous number of critics. We have the Dance Critics Association, which has annual meetings over a weekend in summer.

SM: What do you do at the meeting?

DJ: There are panels, there are lectures and lecture demonstrations. Sometimes small groups will discuss issues like print space. It depends on the conference. Marcia Siegel is one of my best friends. When she was based in New York, we used to talk all the time (actually, we still do).We would say things that would probably horrify dancers, like „What did you think was going on in that?“ There are friends whom I call to check factual information. Robert Greskovic has a mind like an encyclopedia.

SM: Do you think that despite saying – as you did when I told you about this issue – that you hoped it wouldn‘t turn into a dancers‘ complaint session, that there are any justified complaints?

DJ: There are legitimate complaints. Of course. There are the people who say, „You never reviewed me,“ or „you don‘t understand me.“ The strongest criticisms I get are from the people I haven‘t written about, and that‘s the painful part. How are there people I‘ve never seen? Whose names I know, whom I‘ve never seen? I don‘t know quite what to do about that. It‘s hard. I rely on my editor‘s feelings about what needs to be covered, but I do make a lot of decisions myself. Sometimes I don‘t go to see somebody‘s debut concert. I don‘t write about somebody who‘s been a student mine for at least two or three years, until I‘ve gained some distance. There are a lot of decisions that people probably don‘t like, and I‘m sure there are people who feel I have misrepresented them, or that I don‘t understand their work, but the problem is they don‘t often say that to me, because they seem to have this fear that that the critic will then be vindictive.
Remember when Sondra Loring had the publication Juice? She wrote me a letter about something I had written about a piece of hers. I had said „I don‘t get it,“ and she wrote to me that that was an abdication of critical responsibility, and an art critic wouldn‘t say something like that. We had a back-and-forth exchange, and she printed it all. I liked that, and it made me think about [the fact that] I don‘t often get mail. Sometimes when I do it‘s just: „You were so unfair, and I‘m not signing my name
because then you won‘t like me.“ I don‘t get a lot of those. I occasionally
get really nice letters, saying „You really saw what I was doing.“ I sense
that there are people out there who resent me, but I don‘t know it. And I‘m
sure there are people who admire me, and I don‘t know that either.

SM: Okay, here‘s a big one. The term „modern dance“ has not really been updated. How can we talk about what‘s happening using the terms we have now?

DJ: You can think of classical modern dance, obviously – people like Erick Hawkins and Martha Graham. And then you can think of choreographers who are following more or less in those traditions, yet being innovative in some way. Mark Morris. The term post-modernism has has been applied in so many ways, I think. Sally Banes, in the preface to her Terpsichore in Sneakers, attempted to distinguish between the early radical post-modern dance („post“ as in „after“ modern dance) and some of its later manifestations. I tend to use those terms; however, I think that a lot of today‘s dance-theater pieces are really much more in keeping with post-modernism as it has been defined in the visual arts, architecture, and literature. That preoccupation with historical reference and mixing materials seems to me post-modern.

SM: How do you juggle the boundaries between being a critic and being a friend of the community in a certain way?

DJ: I think it‘s different for me because I did come from dance. I still think of myself as being part of that community. I did continue to
choreograph fairly extensively for the first few years that I wrote. I never wanted to have my own company, and my own choreography was pretty terrible at first. I was working my way through to doing something that I thought was decent around the time I was also beginning to write. So I did show my work for quite a while. I was part of it in that I continued to choreograph. Also, the fact that I have recently done some performing was very interesting to to the community, because people felt I was putting myself out there.

SM: People really respect that. We were just talking before about the community having justified complaints with critics. In your opinion, how is the downtown dance community not being served by the press?

DJ: I think that there‘s just not enough print space to serve everybody adequately, and I think decisions are made: Will I see this concert or not? Not just by me but by everybody. Will we cover it or not? It‘s often unfair. Elizabeth used to have a system where she would pay people to go and scout; the person would write a review, but it wouldn‘t be published. However that report might influence her to have someone review that choreographer next time around. So I think one legitimate complaint is,
„Nobody‘s writing about us in as much depth as we would like.“ Another,
which is very subjective, is „they didn‘t understand my work,“ or „they were
flippant“ or „they didn‘t take me seriously all“ – all those things that one
tries not to do. Or „This criticism wasn“t deserved – she didn‘t understand
what I was trying to do“-

SM: – like the choreographer was smarter than the critic?

DJ: So some of these some grievances are genuine and others are just understandable gut reactions. When I was getting reviewed, I had that same feeling sometimes.

SM: I feel like I know that for myself. Nobody likes to get a bad review but it isn‘t a bad review that bums me out as much as the
feeling – especially in the New York Times – that the critics seem to have no basis to talk about work. I wonder if they see anything other than ballet
sometimes. Do they go to see art? Do they educate themselves about the
artistic climate in general? Should they?

DJ: Well, I don‘t want to go on record as saying anything about other critics. There are critical stances – for instance, I would never say something like „This work should be cut“, but I would say, „It feels long, it lets your attention wander...“ That kind of thing. Sometimes people would rather have you say that than have you be in outer space, as if you hadn‘t even seen the work and were discussing it on some other level. I think the worst thing for artists to feel is that their work has been dismissed for – I can‘t really say the wrong reasons, but based on a misapprehension. When somebody tells me, „You really captured what I thought I was doing“ – that feels so good.

© By Sarah Michelson (Editor-in-Chief), published in Movement Research Performance Journal (N°25).