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Deborah Jowitt on bodies in motion

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Happy Hours Aren’t Always Happy

July 28, 2018 by Deborah Jowitt

Monica Bill Barnes and Anna Bass perform Happy Hour at Jacob's Pillow, 7/26-28 and 8/2-4. The first time I saw Monica Bill Barnes’s Happy Hour, it took place in a long, narrow studio at Gibney Dance, 280 Broadway. In that re-purposed old building near City Hall, it was easy to imagine Barnes and Anna Bass—clad in hats, suits, and ties, their hair slicked back into puny buns—coming from … [Read more...]

New York City Ballet Celebrates Jerome Robbins

May 7, 2018 by Deborah Jowitt

I lived with Jerome Robbins for six years. (Forgive the startling opener; he was dead at the time, but liked a joke). During those years, I read his diaries and his letters, talked with his family, friends, and those he worked with. Since recovering from writing a book about him and his choreography, I haven’t attended many performances of his ballets. Now the New York City Ballet, for which he … [Read more...]

How Many People in a One-Woman Show?

April 30, 2018 by Deborah Jowitt

I love going to shows at Joe’s Pub for Dance Now’s Dance-mopolitan’s Commissioned Artist Series. But doing so takes a kind of expertise that I may lack. Did I manage to cut the sticky burrata that topped my little salad while keeping clean the blank paper on which I intended to take notes? Check. Did I really order a second beer? Yes, I did. Did I actually take some notes on top of previous notes … [Read more...]

Celebrating a 40-Year Career

April 9, 2018 by Deborah Jowitt

Jane Comfort & Company Revisit Forty Years of Work In 1978, Jane Comfort and I were both forty years younger. Not a surprise? I guess not. But that sentence may prove a snappier lead than my starting off by recounting what Comfort has accomplished over those forty years and how many dances of hers I’ve seen. (See how I snuck the facts into my non-lead? Or should I spell it “lede” as did … [Read more...]

Meredith Monk’s Journey

March 20, 2018 by Deborah Jowitt

Meredith Monk's Cellular Songs at the BAM Harvey Theater, March 14 through 18. When I began to search the Brooklyn Academy of Music’s website for images of Meredith Monk’s Cellular Songs, I went astray. I couldn’t categorize the work the way the site expected me to. If I clicked on “theater,” I couldn’t also click on “music.” When, with help, I found the photographs I sought, “theater,” … [Read more...]

Are You Certain?

August 26, 2017 by Deborah Jowitt

John Heginbotham and Maira Kalman premiere a collaboration at Jacob's Pillow. Do I see an acknowledgement or a warning? My destiny maybe? The seats in Jacob’s Pillow’s Doris Duke Studio Theater haven’t paid much attention to me until now, when I’m about to sit in one to watch the world premiere of The Principles of Uncertainty by choreographer-director John Heginbotham and … [Read more...]

Journey for Two

November 19, 2016 by Deborah Jowitt

David Vaughan and Pepper Fajans in Co. Venture at Baryshnikov Arts Center. They make a charming pair: David Vaughan (b. 1924) and Pepper Fajans (b. 1985). I don’t mean “charming” as in, “let’s have them over for dinner” (although that would be nice). I mean that’s how they appear at the Baryshnikov Arts Center in the U.S. premiere of Co. Venture by the Brooklyn Touring Outfit that they … [Read more...]

Exploding the House of Atreus

January 23, 2016 by Deborah Jowitt

Ann Liv Young's Elektra at New York Live Arts, January 20-30 The chronically grumpy comedian W.C. Fields advised fellow actors never to work with children or animals if they wanted the audience’s attention full-time. He knew what he was talking about, but Ann Liv Young is a creatively flagrant disregarder of many conventions. During her new Elektra at New York Live Arts, my gaze … [Read more...]

Two Dancers and a Radio Host Walk into a Bar. . .

June 20, 2015 by Deborah Jowitt

Ira Glass of "This American Life" collaborates with Monica Bill Barnes & Company. It’s an unlikely combination: Three Acts, Two Dancers, One Radio Host. Yet Ira Glass, the creator and voice of public radio’s Radio’s This American Life and Monica Bill Barnes and Anna Bass of Monica Bill Barnes & Company have been performing this show on and off since 2013. The three turn out to … [Read more...]

Piaf Lives!

May 22, 2015 by Deborah Jowitt

Pascal Rioult celebrates the centennial of Edith Piaf's birth in a nightclub setting. To get myself in the mood to write about Pascal Rioult’s Street Singer, a work celebrating what would have been Edith Piaf’s hundredth birthday, I dug up a relic from my family’s past: a 10-inch LP from the 1940s, Chansons Parisiennes (it had cost three dollars) and listened to Piaf sing “La Vie en Rose” (by … [Read more...]

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Deborah Jowitt

Deborah Jowitt began to dance professionally in 1953, to choreograph in 1961, and to write about dancing in 1967. Read More…

DanceBeat

This blog acknowledges my appetite for devouring dancing and spitting out responses to it. Criticism that I love to read—and have been struggling to write ever since the late 1960s—probes deeply and imaginatively into choreography and dancing, … [Read More...]

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