Dance
ONWARD TO 2010
When moving forward, it helps to consider where one has been. On the cusp of a new decade, in my new role as Dance Editor for the Brooklyn Rail, I revisited great dance writers’ thoughts on their professions. Many acknowledge the enduring difficulty of describing dance (“obviously impossible,” “like nailing Jell-O to the wall”), but this gem from Sally Banes carried me into the future: “it is partly through writing and talking about dancing that we, as a culture, collaborate in producing it.”
Since those words were written, dance has continued to expand its horizons, broaden and complicate its definitions, and connect with new audiences. The conversation around dance, too, has grown. My hope is to further that conversation in the tradition of the Brooklyn Rail—with a collective of passionate writers and a sense of bold purpose. I am delighted that the pages of this issue give a sense of the breadth of New York dance today—and tomorrow—and I aim to continue bringing readers diverse experiences and new perspectives.
Editing this section holds particular significance for me, as the women that have performed this task include former teachers and friends. I am deeply grateful for all that they have shared with me.
Happy New Year, Brooklyn. Keep writing, talking, dancing, and creating.
RECOMMENDED ARTICLES
Some Thoughts on a Constellation of Things Seen and Felt
By Adrienne EdwardsNOV 2020 | Critics Page
This summers persistent melee of images and videos circulating in news reports and on social media of the extrajudicial, gratuitously violent deaths of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor and the collective uprisings they incited under the mantra Black Lives Matter drew me out of the intensity of that present moment and into a descent imbricated and wedded by the beholding of the inextricable combinatory assembly that is embodied Blackness, acts of barbarity, and a yearning for intimacy.

Ron Gorchov: At the Cusp of the 80s, Paintings 1979–1983
By David CarrierNOV 2019 | ArtSeen
Eight of Ron Gorchovs classic paintings on shields, executed in the late 1970s and early 1980s, are currently on view in the new uptown gallery of Cheim & Read. Two of them arch out vertically, while the others are horizontally oriented. None, needless to say, are either rectangular or flat.
Oceanic, porous, and monstrous thoughts
By Diane LimaNOV 2020 | Critics Page
While squeezing us in the search to give you a perfect performance, another great chance, she reminded me that today I had forgotten, both my inner child and my love for having relearned with her two years ago, to be brincante
Second Thoughts
By David PagelSEPT 2019 | Critics Page
Rather than putting myself in the picture, I instead imagined that Majolis paintings were all about her fantasies. I also thought that she had no business painting gay men having sex with one another. Treating her as a voyeurand an opportunistI blinded myself to the complexity of what her works were up to.