Reviewing Reviews.

I have gotten fairly sick of dance reviews that aren't really reviews but simply recounts of what happened on stage any given day. To me a dance review should consist of not only critiquing the dancers’ execution but the choreography they are dancing as well. With a season such as ours where six different women may go on in a single part any given week it seems like it is ideal for comparing and contrasting their different takes on the roles. This doesn't seem to happen too much though and while I understand that any art is subjective there comes a point where a reviewer has to take an objective point of view and dig deeper in an effort to understand what is going on on stage. This is precisely what I have discovered over the past week reading Joan Acocella's incredible reviews in The New Yorker.

I find that the more I write the more I am looking through every single newspaper, book and magazine I read for examples of really beautiful writing. “The New Yorker” is a magazine with brilliant writing on every page that is both insightful and relevant. On top of having articles about current events, art, science and fiction in every issue, the reviews of movies and theater are outstanding. In the last two consecutive issues Joan Acocella has offered her season reviews of NYCB and ABT. Whether or not I agreed with everything that she said is irrelevant because the way she said it was so articulate and knowledgeable. You know when reading one of her reviews that she has done her research.

Obviously I have witnessed everything she talks about in the ABT roundup but I was struck by how I felt like I had witnessed City Ballet’s season just by the way she described it. Instead of merely saying, “the boys around the stage partnered her” she says “Three men partner her, but they are not men; they are just the arms that support her quest, and block it.” It is so refreshing to hear an artistic description of art.

Art invites discussion but it cannot be judged in black and white parameters like a sport so reviews cannot be written like they are doing a play-by-play analysis. The reviews of Acocella’s were so well written they prompted ideas in my head of things I want to write about, not a usual outcome of reading a review.

I think the success comes in her unusual approach to reviewing dance. She doesn’t write about it as if she is documenting it, instead she seems to be investigating it. With the ABT review she attempts to paint a portrait of an artist (Diana Vishneva) as a way to not only get to know the artist better but also the role (Giselle) that she is creating. She realizes that dance, like life, isn’t always about right or wrong seen in black and white but it is something that must be analyzed to find the depth beneath the surface.