The Stage and Page: Thinking Dance Authors Arrive

by Anna Drozdowski

We are a collection of people interested in translating between moving and writing. 

We are choreographers and academics;  poets and passionate audience members; 
journalists and teachers who talk shop in rehearsal.

We were overwhelmed with interest in the year-long program.   Who knew?

We are unsatisfied with the amount (and sometimes the amount of rigor) in writing on dance. 

We’d rather try our hand and practice than complain. 
Writing about dance is difficult, we're at the start of our year.
We've got lots to learn.

Half of us are ill at ease with reviews.  
Almost as many are already fit to print and oft published.

We are so eager to talk to one another.

We are opinionated and chatty about what it means to write about movement, 
how to go about it,  who should be doing it, and where it matters. 

We believe it matters. 

We care a lot.  
Occasionally more than is good for our writing.
We’re practicing the editing process too.   

Some of us bravely swallow 10 views on our recent performance during a workshop crit.
Some fiercely defend their comma choice.

We ask whether critical distance need be compulsory for critical discourse.

We are practicing wearing our hearts on our sleeves while maintaining an arms length with forms that are our bedfellows, and new ones we’ve just encountered.

We desperately practice economy over vebosity,
without letting meaning evaporate simply to meet word count. 
I’m at 234 right now.  

Often we are surprised at what our neighbor sees—occasionally because we missed it, just as often because we disagree and sometimes because we just don’t know.

Dance is a very small big word.

We are 21 people who have come to the stage and to the paper.  
The best case scenario is that one form is able to make sense of the other.

There is a lot to talk about.  
You are most welcome to come along. 

By Anna Drozdowski
November 22, 2011