Critical Gestures: Writings on Dance and Culture

by Ann Daly

Collects the far-reaching and influential work of an eminent dance critic and scholar.

Ann Daly ranks among the most insightful, articulate dance critics and scholars writing today. Spanning the divide between journalism and scholarship, this collection offers a double-sighted view of dance in America from 1986 to the present, documenting the shift in experimental dance from formal to social concerns, and recording the expansion of dance studies in the academy from historical documentation to cultural criticism.

Daly examines performance art and visual art as they relate to and influence dance, with a look at the intersection of dance and history. Gender is the subject of the final section of the book. More than 80 reviews, features, essays, interviews and scholarly articles ― including extended considerations of Pina Bausch, Deborah Hay, Bill T. Jones and Ralph Lemon ― were originally published in venues ranging from High Performance to The New York Times to A Journal of Performance Studies.

378 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2002

Reviews

[Renée · Rating 5 out of 5]

Daly's prose is insightful, though-provoking and sincere, as she works through essays ranging from Pina Bausch, Bill T. Jones, and Balanchine. The introduction to the book, which reads like a creative non-fiction essay more than a critical essay on viewing dance, made me trust her observations about dancers, choreographers and the world they inhabit artistically. Although not a former dancer, Daly immersed herself in training and history as she delved into writing about dance. "I find it difficult to try to separate the perceiving from the writing," Daly states, "because it's in the writing that I figure out what I know about dance." Her introduction sets up all the challenges about writing dance, especially from a non-dancers perspective, and her ideas are fresh and engaging, even though some of the essays were originally published in the mid-1990s. Daly works quite a bit with ideas on gender in dance; a particular favorite selection of mine is her work on Balanchine's *Four Temperaments*.