Media Clippings

Quite a Move!
October 26, 2006 - Robert Leiter, Literary Editor

There are few social or literary critics of exceptional quality these days, ones we turn to because of the authority of their vision and voice. In this ever-shrinking crowd, I would put Leon Wieseltier, literary editor of The New Republic, who doesn't write as often as he should; Charles Krauthammer, who writes on politics for many venues; and Louis Menand, who writes for several of the same places, and about literature as well. I would have put Lee Siegel in this gang, until he publically self-destructed by answering the critics of his blog using a pseudonym.

Into this select grouping, I would have to add Joan Acocella, who generally writes about dance for The New Yorker, though she doesn't confine herself to that subject. She has written one of the great works of criticism in Willa Cather and the Politics of Criticism. She's often tackled literary subjects from her perch at the magazine (and is coming out with a book of essays soon, on numerous topics, that I'm looking forward to with anticipation).

But for the most part, dance is her field at The New Yorker, and she excels at it. The fact that she could come to the magazine and take over from Arlene Croce -- a formidable figure and a commanding critic -- and do it with such aplomb is a feat in itself. The level of quality that she demonstrates from column to column is also something to be praised.

And in the issue of Aug. 22, she did something that I don't think The New Yorker had ever done before: She wrote about three Israeli dance troupes that had performed at the Lincoln Center Festival in July, and handled it with firm knowledge and particular insight.

I, of course, may be completely wrong about the magazine never having considered Israeli dancers, but I cannot recall it ever happening before. And even if I am wrong, it was the generosity of spirit that Acocella showed -- in addition to her acuity -- that was of note.

"Israel is a young country, in an emergency," she began. Just the fact that she took into consideration these elements in an arts piece -- points that political writers usually ignore, perhaps willfully -- was an unusual aspect of the piece.

Acocella continued: "One might therefore expect from its dance companies a certain straightforwardness, a willingness to put on shows about what life is like and how we should feel about it. But in the three Israeli troupes that appeared ... -- Batsheva Dance Company, Emanuel Gat Dance, and Yasmeen Godder and the Bloody Bench Players -- what we saw was the opposite. Collage form, reflexiveness (representations about representation), attacks on the fourth wall, invasions of the audience: name a post-Brechtian challenge to traditional theatre, and that's what these people brought us. Such strategies have not vanished from American dance, but, since their high tide in the 1960s, they have receded. In Europe, however, the quarrel with illusionism -- 'What do you mean, I should let the audience suspend disbelief?' -- is still going on, and so it is, apparently, in Israel."