For the past few days I’ve been sick as a clown; I can’t stop coughing and I’m shivering despite the 90 degree weather. I haven’t slept because I can hardly breath. Regardless of my body’s wear, I’ve had to work non-stop in order to keep this magazine’s promise of daily postings, but today I’ve decided to stay in and rest. I’ve been cozied up in bed, with a cup of warm lavender tea (such an abnormal nuisance  to have a cold in the summer) reading Edwin Denby’s “Dance Writing and Poetry.”

Denby, who died in 1983, was one of the most influential dance critics of the twentieth century. Arlene Croce has said, “With other critics you can agree or disagree. With Denby you undergo a form of conversation. You have new eyes, new ears, and a sensibility that lets you respond to meanings you hadn’t dreamed were there.”  His reviews and essays compiled in this book span a period of almost thirty years.

I had little patience for the poetry. Although Ron Padgett had warned that you must live with Denby’s poems and read them over and over in order to negotiate their elusiveness. What is fascinating about Denby’s essays is his transparency. He is extremely casual in his approach, but his knowledge is conveyed perfectly.

He is also HONEST. One of the lines that I found most inspiring as a budding critic was in a piece about Martha Graham’s “Chronicle.” He writes, “I wish I had seen it again to clarify my own impression and to be able to point specifically to its more or less successful elements. As it is, I can only speak of it in general terms, and confusedly.”  Many of today’s dance critics fail to admit such naivety, they choose to convey authority, whether they poses it or not. It’s an ongoing battle: do you pretend to know something or do you admit your cluelessness?

That question then boils into the idea that only people who “know about dance” should write about dance, which I’ve always been against. Criticism for me has been about continuing a dialogue after a performance has ended (a recent example of this is how Ann Liv Young changed her provocative performance ending of “Why Won’t You Let Me Be Great” at PS 122 to something you’d only see on pay per view after reading Claudia La Rocco’s review in the “New York Times” [I will spare you the details, you can research it for yourself]), so the “non-dance person’s” views are just as relevant as the balletomane’s (or dance aficionados). It’s my contention that choreographers don’t necessarily create works for the limited number of people that have spent most of their life immersed in dance; so why shouldn’t we all be able to comment intelligently about the art that is presented? Or in the least, like Denby, admit when you’re not quite clear on something. Too many mistakes are made when we try to pretend…