How To Be A Dance Critic

Choreography is everywhere.

09 Nov

Michelle Santiago Cortés on Beyoncé’s neck.

I stopped dancing ballet when I was fifteen. Nothing about my training set me up for a future as a professional ballerina, but I didn’t suck–I had “good extensions,” a strong sense of musicality, and the kind of double-jointed knees that make for a lovely S-curve from toe to knee when in relevé. I quit in order to focus on school (and becoming a writer). 

Leaving ballet to spend more time with books turned into a search for books about ballet, or even dance in general. On a high school trip to Boston, I scoured the Harvard Coop for dance books and I found almost nothing except for Jennifer Homans’ enormous volume of Apollo’s Angels and a slim copy of Edwin Denby’s Dance Writings and Poetry. Because I was traveling, I chose the slim collection of writings by the noted critic over the absurdly thick cultural history of ballet. I wanted to encounter writing about dance that could help me develop my tastes so that everything could be felt more intensely, its meaning weighed more heavily. But Denby’s poems were tedious and as a critic, he was overtly racist with a nationalistic preference for American-style ballet who often failed to relay accurate facts on such simple matters like the true choreographer of the Nutcracker (it wasn't Petipas!). I wanted dance writing that stirred my hunger and I launched into a quest to sate it.

The New York Times’ dance critic, Gia Kourlas, sometimes finds a rare occasion to step out of her usual concert dance (dance performed with a stage and an audience) coverage to write about Wednesday Addams’ goth-girl dance, the Kens dream ballet in Barbie (2023), and why dancers love stairs. It’s ironic: concert dance struggles to fill seats, while dances go viral on the internet every day, but dance critics mostly cover concert dance for a shrinking readership. I’m childishly confident more dance writing–about all kinds and forms of dance–would go a long way to fill theater seats. 

The average pop culture fan is taking in massive amounts of choreography without much critical language to describe it. Parris Goebel’s “pollyswag” and dancehall influences are signatures of Rihanna’s Super Bowl Halftime Show and Justin Bieber’s “Sorry” music video. JaQuel Knight co-choreographed Beyoncé’s Coachella show and “Single Ladies” music video as well as Megan Thee Stallion’s “Body.” If you’ve watched Mitski in concert or caught her miming in any of her recent music videos, that’s because she worked with choreographer-performer Jas Lin. Not to mention the viral dances (The Renegade) and dancers (Charlie D’Amelio and Addison Rae) that made TikTok a premier social media platform.

For some time I struggled to articulate why I thought Beyoncé’s breakdown in “My Power” was so catchy and equally hard to imitate. Even when she danced it next to Blue on the Renaissance tour, the move she made with her head in the split second between “get loose” to “get low” eluded me. Until Kourlas put me into the eyes of one of her choreographers by asking, “What kind of movement looks good on Beyoncé? What is natural?” To which Chris Grant replied, “She’s really good with her neck. She can really hit and snap at certain moments, but also be cool and chill.” And just like that, a thread of understanding wove through Beyoncé’s body of work and I watched her neck with more attention, and consequently, more gusto.

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This is what good dance writing can do. And it doesn’t have to come from a Critic. In fact, my favorite instances of dance criticism are the things people say when they are unwittingly touched by dancing they see in music videos, concert stages, TikToks, theaters, or even just parties. 

Which brings me to Jungle’s “Back on 74”: When the British electronic music duo dropped the music videos for the singles of their fourth album, “Volcano,” the choreography instantly stood out. On YouTube, commenters name the choreography as one of the top reasons why the song’s story and message rang so clearly. One Redditor explained that the choreography “itches my brain,” while the rest of the choreo admirers went straight to TikTok with their tributes. The nerdier commenters across social media made their guesses–is it Fosse inspired? Something about it feels like the 1950’s? Choreographer Shay Latukolan says it’s actually Michael Jackson (who was inspired by Fosse) with a hint of The Supremes and The Temptations. Add to that Latukolan’s background as a street dancer in Europe who is no stranger to dance battles, and we start to find the words for the music video’s story of a breakup: The dancers are divided by an invisible line across the stage, the sequences are breathy, their faces go silent and then grimace with life. At one point, the camera pans around the male lead as he reaches for his ex from across the room, almost through the camera, reminding me of how Diana Ross often reached for her audience.

If you ask the fans, the song’s viral success is largely due to the music video’s equally catchy and emotive choreography.  Good choreography is what makes NewJeans’ girlish affect seem like a genuine expression of youth. What makes Troye Sivan’s “Got Me Started” feel like a near-religious night out. It’s what gives Victoria Monét’s “On My Mama” performances that wink-wink of an in-group meme reference.

If I like one thing Edwin Derby wrote, it’s the following: “the sharper [the critic] formulates a theory of the technique of expression, of how dance communicates what it does, the further he gets from the human vivacity of dancing without which it communicates nothing at all.” The best part about reading dance writing is that the reader partakes in an activity akin to the dancer’s–something of an approximation of an articulated ideal, a pursuit that rewards us with nothing but its delicious tension. The words will never be enough, but they provide plenty.

PLAYBACK

Snippets of streaming news — and what we’re streaming.

  • TikTok is putting an end to its creator fund (Time)

  • SAG-AFRA and Hollywood studios reach a tentative agreement (NBC News)

  • Bored Ape Yacht Club conference leaves attendants with burning eyes (404 Media)

  • The cast of Mean Girls reunited…for a Walmart commercial (People) And the trailer for the “Mean Girls” movie musical just went live

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