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ARENA
Caroline Palmer writes about the latest dance by ARENA, inspired by painter Gustav Klimt: The work begins with water, naturally -- droplets captured close-up on film and projected onto a white background. The dancers, bathed in Jeff Bartlett's morning-golden light, slowly engage the space, scouting their territory, hugging the walls, flexing their limbs and melting into one another's bodies. Janczewski is well known for his inventive partnering and the evidence of his skill comes early during a recent dress rehearsal. The dancers seamlessly wind and unwind around each other's bodies. They toss and flip one another, at times teasing the edges of a small pool on the far side of the stage with lifts that send partners back safely into waiting arms or tumbling in a controlled manner to the floor.
9 Reader Comments
Thanks for the post to Caroline's piece, Msgr. Sparber. I didn't realize the CP had let her start blogging reviews on dance. That's great news.
Caroline, if I'm not mistaken, is currently the longest-surviving writer at the 'Ges, having written for them for more than ten years, and she's a great asset to the small (and shrinking) community of TC arts critics. I'm hoping we'll see many more such reviews!
She has a great descriptive sense, and nobody else in town had written about dance for anywhere near the time she has. Actually, she may be pretty much it for dance coverage altogether.
Howdy,
This is something we've wanted to do for a while, but just started. Here's a link to Caroline's first blogged review. You'll likely see two or three items a month from her on our Culture to Go blog.
More is in the works for web-based coverage of dance and visual arts, and we're very happy to have Caroline writing for both print and web.
Well, actually, in addition to Caroline there are a few rather dedicated and good dance critics in town--namely, Camille LeFevre, Lightsey Darst, and Linda Shapiro--but, as publications are accepting less writing on dance, I get your point.
I recently blogged (if I may be so bold) about Caroline's (and other critics') struggles to keep writing , and this recent article on mnartists, by Camille, is a very interesting look at the struggles of one critic to keep writing in the current atmosphere.
Cool. Visual arts coverage. I whole-heartedly approve.
The link about critics' struggles to keep writing is an interesting one, and sobering. Shrinking news holes all around the industry -- which stem from shrinking advertising revenues -- are squeezing space in every print paper I know of.
A lot of that content is going to have to migrate to the Internet. Which is great, because we can do that. Unfortunately, I worry that a lot of excellent content is going to get lost in the shuffle during that transition, since most freelancers are used to writing for print and inertia is a powerful force. But we'll get past that, I hope.
Yes, adapt-to-survive is an increasingly common sentiment when people are discussing the struggles of print publishing in general, and niche writing (like arts criticism) in particular. That was somewhat the end conclusion of Camille LeFevre's piece (linked above), and it was an argument Seattle P-I art critic made a few months ago against one of my (ironically enough) blog rants about the impending death of art criticism.
Still, I don't know if it's exactly inertia that's keeping our most accomplished and experienced critical writers from fully embracing the web as a new medium for their work. Most writers I talk to are keenly aware of the oncoming sea-change, but still they prefer the less ephemeral (and therefore moresignificant) nature of writing for print. Also, even more importantly, writers are aware of the fact that web writing pays almost nothing--even compared to the (rather meagre) wages they used to make from print publications.
I'm guessing when someone figures out how to make the web pay decently for writing, then the writers will come to it.
It's a transitional time for the industry, to be sure. What's awful about that is many vitally important topics -- including but not limited to the arts -- tend to get cut out first when news holes start to shrink.
Lots of folks, art critics included, prefer print, and not just because of the pay factor. But I think that will start to change -- my budget's certainly not what I'd like it to be, and we certainly aren't able to pay people what I'd like to to write for the web site. But as the economics of this shift get sorted out, that will hopefully change too.
What you wrote in your last sentence is just so. There will always be a space for good writing, I think, and thoughtful art criticism is certainly something we want to help flourish.
I wouldn't be able to find a Klimt with a flashlight and a map.
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