Tobi Tobias

lives in New York City, where she writes about dance and other things worth looking at.

I think I’m best known, nationally and internationally, for my writing about dance.  Much of this work appeared in New York magazine (where I served as the journal’s dance critic for 22 years) and in Dance magazine (where I also edited the criticism for nearly a decade).  I have been the sole dance critic for Bloomberg News and have also reviewed dance regularly for the Village Voice.  My SEEING THINGS column at ArtsJournal is an extension of these activities.

My involvement with dance has extended to major oral history projects as well as to writing for the public television series Dance in America and Live from Lincoln Center.  In 1992 I was awarded a Danish knighthood in recognition of my extensive writing and oral history project on the Royal Danish Ballet and its Bournonville tradition.

In the course of a parallel career in writing for children, I’ve published over two dozen books, among them A World of Words, The Quitting Deal, Pot Luck, and Chasing the Goblins Away.  For adults I have written Obsessed by Dress, a meditation on clothes.  I also write about vintage objects, chiefly in the realms of fashion, photography, and designs for living.