Critical Gestures Writings on Dance and Culture [Paperback]

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 TDR: A Journal of Performance Studies. Collects the far-reaching and influential work of an eminent dance critic and scholar.Introduction
Looking Underneath the Itch to Criticize
Writing about Dance: An Urgent, High-Profile Opportunity
Review: Diana Theodore’s First We Take Manhattan, Jill Johnston’s Marmalade Me and Lynne Conner’s Spreading the Gospel of the Modern Dance
The Interested Act of Dance Criticism
Writing Dance: Choreographers
Pina Bausch: Tanztheater: the thrill of the Lynch Mob or the Rage of a Woman?
Pina Bauch Goes West to Prospect for Imagery
Love Mysterious and Familiar: Pina Bausch Brings Her Visceral Non Sequiturs to Austin
Remembered Gesture
Mellower Now, A Resolute Romantic Keeps Trying
Deborah Hay: Review: The Man Who Grew Common in Wisdom
The Play of Dance: An Introduction to Lamb, Lamb, Lamb, Lamb, Lamb…
No Exit: Deborah Hay’s Latest Work a Meditation and Celebration in Space and Time
An Experimentalist in Soul and Body
Horse Rider Woman Playing Dancing: Ann Daly Interviews DlÓ,