ONWARD TO 2010
Print
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
Thoughts on Mies’s Lemke House: Architecture—Feminism—Philosophy
by Joseph MasheckOCT 2018 | 1 by 1
The Lemke House, built between 1932 – 33 for Karl and Martha Lemke, who had no children, on a pair of lots in the Berlin suburb of Hohenschönhausen (now Berlin-Lichtenberg), is modest. It’s the last house that Ludwig Mies van der Rohe built in Germany, before closing the Bauhaus, owing to Hitler, and moving to Chicago. Karl Lemke, who ran a graphic arts business that catered to the art world, was a friend of the architect. That this work entailed a great deal of thought on Mies’s part is attested to by a huge quantity of preliminary drawings, starting from much more ambitious ideas.3 The economy was taking its toll; yet something excellent was envisioned. Two significant features of the project do not seem acknowledged, however: the role of a woman designer, and the fact that the house, small as it is, is an extraordinary example of the influence on Mies of his most admired living philosopher, Romano Guardini.
Cosimo Tura 1430 – 1495 Notes—Thoughts
by James HD BrownJUNE 2018 | Critics Page
I first discovered Tura in London at the National Gallery so many years ago. The colors alone, this palette of pink and brightest of green, and then the three blues. Tura is a genius as far as color and unusual combinations.
Welcome to the Feminist Institute’s Guest Critic Edition of the Brooklyn Rail. We Hope You Stay a Long Time!
by Kathleen LandyMAR 2019 | Editor's Message
Women have shared their wisdom with one another for millennia, in oral histories that teach and inform subsequent generations of women about family, home, sex, power, politics, and survival. But patriarchal histories didn’t include these contributions. Huh!
Collective Creativity: A Few Thoughts on Filmmaking
by Rob CohenMAR 2018 | Critics Page
The dream, often formulated in the script development stage, has a purity of purpose, but that is the last time in the long, multi-year process of delivering a movie to the public that such shaping of a personal vision can be unilaterally created. After that, it’s the hoards.
RSS