Critical Correspondence
University Project
The University Project is an initiative of Critical Correspondence that aims to shed light on the shifting relationship between academia and working artists. More and more Universities are interested in bringing working artists on to their faculty, and many Universities now offer low-residency MFA programs to assist working artists in obtaining higher degrees. What are […]
Dr. Sally R. Sommer in Conversation with Abigail Levine
Sally Sommer has a unique eye on the history of post-modern dance. Arriving in New York in 1967, she fell immediately into the post-Judson scene, writing criticism and reviews for the Village Voice through the 70s and 80s. With a doctorate from NYU’s Performance Studies Department just as the discipline was forming, she went on […]
Dance and the Museum: Yvonne Rainer Responds
1) What are the most potent questions/ ideas prompted by the recent coming together of dance and the visual arts? Ethics and economics, to begin with. When my work is performed in a dance venue by another dance company, I am paid royalties. Why do the art museums not conform to this standard? They pay […]
On Clarinda Mac Low’s 40 Dancers do 40 Dances for the Dancers by Scott Thurston
In “40 Dancers do 40 Dances for the Dancers,” at Danspace Project in St. Mark’s Church on September 13-15, performance and installation artist and co-director of Culture Push Clarinda Mac Low assembled nearly 40 performers over the course of three nights to execute all 40 of her artist, composer and performance artist father Jackson Mac Low’s performance-instruction poems from his 1964 collection, “The Pronouns: A Collection of 40 Dances for the Dancers.” The event was a tribute in the form of a “child’s-eye view” of the 1970s avant-garde; an homage both to the Judson era and to Mac Low, who would have been 90 that month. Scott Thurston is currently researching the relationship between innovative poetry and experimental dance practices. As part of this work he traveled to New York City in September to see “40 Dancers,” to interview Sally Silvers and Bruce Andrews, and to take a workshop with Simone Forti.
Judson Church & Its Dance Critics by George Jackson
George Jackson’s 2010 reflection examines the work of Jill Johnston and Allen Hughes, two dance critics who paid early homage to Judson Dance Theater in the 1960s. Jackson contrasts Jill Johnston’s breathless, energetic writing in the Village Voice with Allen Hughes’ spartan, un-biased prose, published in the New York Times in between years as a music […]
Carolee Schneemann in Conversation with Marissa Perel
Carolee Schneemann speaks with Critical Correspondence editor Marissa Perel on the 50th anniversary of the first Judson Dance Theater performance. Interview date: July 6, 2012 Download this interview as a podcast
REPRINT: Jill Johnston’s “Democracy,” a Village Voice review of Judson Dance Theater’s historic first performance
In honor of the 50th anniversary of Judson Dance Theater, we are pleased to share a reprint of Jill Johnston’s August 23, 1962 Village Voice review of the very first Judson Dance Theater performance. Johnston’s brief review of performances by Fred Herko, John Herbert McDowell, Ruth Emerson, David Gordon, William Davis and Yvonne Rainer, among others, marks one of the first critical responses to the Judson movement.
