Email Author Deborah Jowitt

2004 Stories by Deborah Jowitt

• Digital Eternity

  published December 28, 2004

  The dusky snake charmer raises a small horn to her lips with mechanical regularity. As the serpent weaves before her, she slowly opens and closes... More >>

• Stop the Train!

  published December 28, 2004

  Critics writing about modern dance in the middle of the last century were at pains to understand what the choreographer meant. Audiences fretted... More >>

• Future Past Perfect

  published December 21, 2004

  In 1997, years after seeing a performance by Merce Cunningham's company, Peter Schjeldahl wrote in this paper, "I think it altered my genetic... More >>

• Behind Bars

  published December 14, 2004

  At the beginning of John Jasperse's brilliant and chilling California, three women (Eleanor Hullihan, Rachel Poirier, and Katy Pyle) enter... More >>

• Anniversaries

  published December 7, 2004

  Fifteen years after the death of its founder, the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater celebrates its 40th anniversary at City Center, as well as... More >>

• Spur of the Moment

  published December 7, 2004

  Improvisation in dance used to have a bad rep (in college, Twyla Tharp walked out of a class when asked to "be a cloud"). Since the ’60s,... More >>

• Bravo for Mavericks

  published November 30, 2004

  Since 1964, I've been among the many astonished by the richness of vision and depth of skill shining from Meredith Monk's theater pieces, musical... More >>

• In Memoriam: Alicia Markova 1910–2004

  published November 30, 2004

  Few people living today will remember seeing a tiny, slender 15-year-old English girl named Lillian Alice Marks make her Paris debut at the... More >>

• Games People Play

  published November 23, 2004

  Perhaps I should always take in a Pina Bausch piece with someone who's never seen her work before. My companion's reactions of surprise or... More >>

• Old Smoothies and New Kinks

  published November 16, 2004

  It's pleasing to learn that you're watching Rennie Harris's Legends of Hip-Hop in the same 42nd Street theater where, in 1923, Abie's... More >>

• At Peace

  published November 9, 2004

  You don't go to a performance of Jeremy Nelson's work to watch troubled relationships play out or high-tech bodies bash one another around. Nelson... More >>

• The God Within

  published November 2, 2004

  New York is always throwing us surprises. Who could have envisioned that a group of women with diverse cultural roots and an impressive variety of... More >>

• What's New? What's Past?

  published October 26, 2004

  The novelty of American Ballet Theatre's fall season is Christopher Wheeldon's VIII. Who'd have imagined a historical drama centered on... More >>

• Danger: Men at Work

  published October 19, 2004

  I've lost count of how many times Eliot Feld has dissolved, reconstituted, and renamed his company. At present, his Ballet Tech is, alas, in limbo... More >>

• Home on the Range

  published October 19, 2004

  It could have been a stillborn American dream: In 1986 an artistic and freethinking mother with a modicum of dance training starts a dance company... More >>

• Dying to Dance

  published October 12, 2004

  The fados of Portugal are songs of love, loss, despair, and death, born from the travails of a seafaring folk. Non-Portuguese listeners to... More >>

• Affairs of the Gods

  published October 5, 2004

  Linear narrative rarely makes an appearance in postmodern dance-dramas. Jane Comfort's new Persephone, surprisingly and refreshingly,... More >>

• Falling in Love Again

  published September 28, 2004

  When I saw Molissa Fenley's quartet Mix at the Kitchen in 1979, I was struck by its tight space patterns, handclaps, and springy, audible... More >>

• Acquiring Extreme Resonance

  published September 21, 2004

  When it comes to layering and intercutting disparate texts and images, no one can match Paul Lazar and Annie-B Parson of Big Dance Theater. The... More >>

• Down Memory's Busy Street

  published September 14, 2004

  Seeing Gabri Christa's Dominata is like coming upon a street alive with activity and rich with laughter and color. The street could be in... More >>

• Downtown Dance and Performance Awards Celebrate 20 Years

  published September 14, 2004

  "Plus ça change . . . " The 20th anniversary of the "Bessies," a/k/a the New York Dance and Performance Awards, reiterated familiar themes,... More >>

• Dancing in Cuba, Dancing With Cuba: Two Women's Experiences

  published September 14, 2004

  Performers and choreographers proudly ballyhoo the notion that dance is a universal language. It's true that a dancer can walk into a ballet class... More >>

• Boston in New England

  published September 7, 2004

  Those who've been following the Boston Ballet during its rocky recent years have nothing but praise for Mikko Nissinen, who took over the artistic... More >>

• Seeding Happiness in the Dark

  published September 7, 2004

  In 1784, Wolfgang Mozart wrote to his father of a servant girl's ineptitude and thievery, saying, "Were it not that I hate to make people unhappy,... More >>

• Howling at the Cosmos

  published August 31, 2004

  Dayna and Gaelen Hanson. The names conjure up ample blonde daughters of a Minnesota dairy farmer, not the two foxy women (unrelated) who make up... More >>