Margaret Fuhrer:

Hi dance friends, and welcome to The Dance Edit podcast. I’m Margaret Fuhrer.

Amy Brandt:

And I’m Amy Brandt.

Margaret Fuhrer:

We are editors at Dance Media. Today we’ll begin with a headline rundown covering the tragic, really just unbelievable, news about Stephen “tWitch” Boss; all the show turnover that is happening or about to happen on Broadway; and the two latest ballet companies to begin unionizing. Then we will have a longer discussion about the news that the Washington Post has laid off dance critic Sarah Kaufman—in fact eliminated its dance critic position entirely—and about how that ties into larger-scale changes that are happening in dance journalism. We’re going to have a real state of the industry moment today.

So, no further preamble. I’m going to start the headline rundown with news that still does not seem real. Just before recording, we heard that Stephen “tWitch” Boss had died at age 40. Boss was a contestant and then all star and judge on “So You Think You Can Dance,” which is where he met wife Allison Holker Boss. He was also the longtime DJ—or faux DJ, he wasn’t actually a DJ—but also co-executive producer for “The Ellen DeGeneres Show.” He was really the glue that held that show together.

It is extremely hard to overstate the influence of this incredibly gifted artist and just incredibly kind person. I didn’t really know tWitch; I just had the privilege of interviewing him several times. But even in those limited interactions, it was just so abundantly clear that he was one of the warmest and most generous and most genuine people in the whole business, and he brought that warmth and generosity to everything he did in the dance world and beyond the dance world. So it’s just hard to make sense of it. And I’m sorry, Amy, this is a rough segue for you.

Amy Brandt:

It’s okay. It’s okay. This is unbelievably sad, and he just personified joy in so many ways, so it’s just really hard to process right now.

Broadway’s Phantom of the Opera, which announced that it would be closing in February after 35 years on the Great White Way, has extended its farewell run by eight weeks. The reason? News of its closing triggered a big surge in ticket sales, not enough for the show to remain on Broadway long term, but enough to keep it going for a while longer. So now I really need to get those tickets.

Margaret Fuhrer:

Here is Broadway news that truly shocked a lot of people, myself included. The musical KPOP closed abruptly on December 11th after just 17 non preview performances. The closing followed a public dispute between the show’s company and New York Times theater critic Jesse Green, with producers describing Green’s negative review of the show as “casual racism.” KPOP dedicated its final performance to the AAPI community. And we have more that you can read about all of that in the show notes.

Amy Brandt:

I was really surprised to hear that, and I was really honestly looking forward to seeing the show on Broadway. It sounded like it was going to be awesome.

Margaret Fuhrer:

It had a really devoted fan base, even in the brief period that it was open, people were super, super excited about it.

Amy Brandt:

The off-Broadway show STOMP has also announced that it is closing after 29 years, although it will continue to tour in North America and Europe. The show, a mix of percussive music and dance, cited the pandemic and the fact that audiences haven’t really fully returned as reasons for closing.

Gosh, I remember seeing STOMP in I think 1998. It was my first trip to New York City. It’s had quite an amazing run, so it’s great that it’s still continuing on tour at least.

Margaret Fuhrer:

It does feel like a lot of New York show eras are coming to an end. But swinging the pendulum back to the happy side of Broadway: A reimagined production of The Wiz will tour nationally before coming to Broadway in the spring of 2024. Notably, the show will feature choreography by JaQuel Knight, making his Broadway debut. I feel like when dance talent from the commercial world crosses over to Broadway this way, sparks tend to fly. So, I can’t wait to see JaQuel’s spin on the show.

Amy Brandt:

Also coming to Broadway is a new Britney Spears musical. Once Upon a One More Time, featuring Spears’ music, will open in previews in May with opening night currently slated for June 22nd. The musical centers around a group of fairytale princesses whose lives change when they’re given a copy of The Feminine Mystique by Betty Friedan, by their fairy godmother. It is directed by hiphop duo Keone and Mari Madrid, so that should be fun.

Margaret Fuhrer:

The show got sort of middling reviews when it ran in DC last fall, but the potential seems so enormous. I mean, Keone and Mari also commercial crossover artists, incredibly talented. Staying tuned there.

All right. Moving into the ballet world: Ukraine’s culture minister is calling on the country’s Western allies to boycott Tchaikovsky and other Russian artists and composers until Russia ends its invasion of Ukraine. Many cultural institutions have already taken steps along that path since the war began. But the biggest ask here is to ballet companies who would have to pause performances of The Nutcracker with its Tchaikovsky score. And so far, ballet organizations have mostly not budged. They’ve carried on with Nutcracker season. In a statement to NPR, a Royal Ballet spokesperson said, “The presentation of great historic works such as The Nutcracker performed by an international roster of dancers should send a powerful statement that Tchaikovsky, himself of Ukrainian heritage, and his work speak to all humanity in direct and powerful opposition to the narrow and nationalistic view of culture pedaled by the Kremlin.” And we’ve got that whole NPR story for you in the show notes.

Amy Brandt:

The American Guild of Musical Artists has announced that two ballet companies have begun the process towards unionization. Texas Ballet Theater and Ballet Memphis have signed authorization cards to form their unions with AGMA. It’s definitely an interesting development, I think.

Margaret Fuhrer:

That more and more companies are unionizing? Yeah, especially these smaller companies.

Here is some news that broke late in the game. It turns out that a dance festival has been happening in Qatar alongside the World Cup, a festival we didn’t really hear much about until right as it was starting. It’s worth noting that many people, myself included, have been having complicated feelings about this year’s World Cup, but the dance festival, curated by Benjamin Millepied and Nico Muhly—so, two very big names—is featuring free performances at venues all over the country by a range of international dance artists, including of course, Millepied’s own LA Dance Project and some other probably pretty familiar names.

Amy Brandt:

I think Bobbi Jene Smith is included in that—did I see that?

Margaret Fuhrer:

Bobbi Jene Smith, Janie Taylor, Madeline Hollander. It’s a pretty impressive list.

Amy Brandt:

Two ballet icons are getting honored in big ways. Native American ballerina Maria Tallchief will appear on the back of US quarters next year. This is in addition to the $1 gold coin that will feature the Five Moon ballerinas, where Maria is prominently featured, along with her sister, Marjorie Tallchief, Rosella Hightower, Moscelyne Larkin, and Yvonne Chateau. So that’s here in the US. In Italy, Carla Fracci has been honored with a commemorative stamp, part of a collection featuring Italian artists who died between 2021 and 2022. Always love seeing dance artists being honored in mass produced ways.

Margaret Fuhrer:

Absolutely. I was just going to say, and I’ve said this before, more dancers on more stamps and more coins all the time. Let’s do it.

The 2023 Young Arts Award winners have been announced. There are 702 winners in total, all ages 15 to 18, in a range of categories, but of course, special congratulations to the pretty darn extraordinary finalists in the dance category. And we have the full list of names linked in the show notes.

Amy Brandt:

Such a great organization, really, really helpful for young artists.

If you’ve been watching Instagram and TikTok, you may have noticed a fun battle between American Ballet Theatre and Dutch National Ballet. ABT dancer Connor Holloway, who helps manage the company’s social media with another dancer, Cy Doherty, is often seen interviewing the dancers with his signature miniature microphone, and in one of his recent ones, asked a bunch of dancers what their least favorite step was. The overwhelming winner, of course, was gargouillade.

When Dutch National Ballet grand sujet Daniel Montero Real copied Holloway’s style and his own Instagram takeover for the Dutch company, and then apologized for copying his style publicly, Holloway accepted, but challenged him to show the world his gargouillade. And the resulting videos that came afterwards are just hysterical. They include cameos by Tiler Peck, a last minute trip for Holloway to Amsterdam, and a hilarious, very highly produced video at the end. Needless to say, it was a hoot, and we hope these cross-company collaborations on social media keep happening. It’s really fun.

Margaret Fuhrer:

It’s been a particularly hard couple of weeks following a string of very hard weeks, which makes this an even more needed gift—just the most delightfully nerdy thing happening on the internet right now. And I’m sorry, Olga Smirnova’s cameo in that final video is perfection. It’s so great. We have linked Ballet Herald‘s explainer of the whole thing in the show notes. You can check that out.

Can you hear my cat losing her mind?

Amy Brandt:

I can.

Margaret Fuhrer:

Good grief. Apologies listeners, if you can hear my cat.

In other viral dance news, actor Jenna Ortega’s wonderfully weird dance from the series “Wednesday” has taken on a life of its own on TikTok, where fans are copying and riffing on the choreography. And Ortega actually created that choreography herself, with inspiration from, among other sources, Bob Fosse, inevitably. Gia Kourlas wrote a piece for the Times about why this “Wednesday” dance is so compelling, and we have that linked for you.

Amy Brandt:

It’s very fun and it’s really interesting to read about all the influences that she tapped for that particular dance.

And finally, the dance world has lost two other greats this month. Former Martha Graham dancer Susan Kikuchi, who went on to stage Graham’s works worldwide as well as revivals of Jerome Robbins’ The King and I, died on November 14th at the age of 74. She definitely grew up in the Graham world. Her mother was the famed Graham dancer Yuriko, who died earlier this year at the age of 102. So two great losses there in one family. And Dame Beryl Grey, a principal ballerina with the Royal Ballet who went on to lead London Festival Ballet—now called English National Ballet—passed away at the age of 95. She was the first British ballerina to dance in Russia with the Bolshoi, and in Beijing, and had a thriving freelance career after leaving the Royal Ballet in 1957. So hats off to Dane Beryl Grey.

Margaret Fuhrer:

So, that is the end of our headline rundown this episode. Here is your reminder to take a look at the Dance Media Events Calendar as well, because it has lots more information about all kinds of dance world events. We’re starting to see a lot of spring season announcements, we’re starting to see a lot of audition information coming out, and we don’t always have time to get to that here on the podcast—but it’s there in the calendar. So to see the full list and to add your own events to it, head to dancemediacalendar.com.

Alrighty, it’s time for our longer segment, which concerns the news heard ’round the dance writing world. Earlier this month, as part of a spate of job eliminations, the Washington Post laid off its dance critic of a quarter century, the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Sarah Kaufman. And that means, I believe, that Gia Kourlas at the New York Times is now the only full-time dance critic in the country, the entire country.

Obviously, this is of great interest to Amy and me as dance journalists, but it really should be of interest to anybody invested in the dance community. We’re living through a massive shift in journalism as a whole, obviously, with the decline of traditional media affecting the very nature of criticism—what it means to be a critic, who “gets” (heavy quotation marks) to weigh in, where the conversations are happening. And during this time, dance writing in the mainstream press has dwindled to almost nothing.

So what does that mean for the dance world more broadly? There’s definitely been a great sense of loss, especially among us journalists, which is absolutely merited. We are losing something important, and we want to talk about why it’s important. But what can be gained from this shift, too, and where do we go from here? This is not a new conversation, but even after many years now of thinking about it still feels urgent and unresolved.

Amy Brandt:

It’s interesting, I danced in DC for 10 years and my company was often a target of negative reviews by Sarah Kaufman. But while dancers often have cynical or complicated feelings towards dance critics, especially their local critics, I think most would agree that the post elimination of Kaufman’s position is not good news. Dance has always been on the fringes of popular culture and often treated as less than among the classical arts as well compared to music and opera and whatnot. But now it just feels like it’s being pushed even more to the fringes, and you really have to be an enthusiast already or a dancer yourself to know where the dance-specific publications and blogs are.

So where will the general reader hear about new productions or perhaps be able to delve more thoughtfully into something they’ve just seen by reading a review? There are other great publications, like Fjord Review, Ballet Herald, Broadway World, Bach Track, that have dance reviews still, but you already have to be aware of them to know about these platforms. And I’m curious if the Washington Post will continue writing features and previews of dance productions, maybe by freelance arts and culture journalists, or if this just kind of a general end to frequent dance coverage, or just, I don’t know.

Margaret Fuhrer:

Hopefully they keep commissioning freelancers, but even so the elimination of a staff dance critic position is a major blow to this industry. That there were only two at this point anyway was pretty insane. Thank you for pointing out though, Amy, that if you’re an obsessive, there are plenty of places to read, actually really interesting and insightful writing about dance. But if you’re not, it’s almost invisible to you now at this point, writing about dance.

Amy Brandt:

It’ll be interesting to see how the Kennedy Center, The Washington Ballet, some of these cultural institutions based in DC, how will they handle this going forward? Will this affect how they market things and will they invest more in different types of ways of reaching new audiences?

Margaret Fuhrer:

And how will that affect the discourse around dance, when what we’re hearing about dance we’re hearing from venues and producers as opposed to journalists?

It’s been interesting watching the way, yeah, critical discourse around dance has evolved even since I first started at Dance Media back in 2008. There used to be this sense of, and this is not unique to dance, but there used to be the sense of reviews as pronouncements from on high. Maybe you would compare multiple critics’ reviews to each other—remember when there used to be multiple reviews of most dance shows?—and maybe you would grumble about or endorse some critic’s perspective at the proverbial water cooler. But the level of engagement with that writing was relatively minimal. And what I do like about the digital transformation and the rise of social media is, as many, many people have said before me, first of all, the lack of gate keeping. Now more voices are able to contribute to the conversation.

But also I think it’s changed the way we think about criticism, where a review has become not the end of a conversation, but the beginning of a conversation. And I think smart critics know that. And honestly, the best dance critics, I think their writing has evolved accordingly in a way that can be really constructive. The impulse is not to pass an absolute judgment, but to provide context and insight and start conversations rather than end them. And then I love seeing those threads picked up or sometimes snipped through by brilliant people on TikTok and Twitter, and there’s a lot of that happening.

Amy Brandt:

And let’s also be honest, for a long time, the dance critic has been part of a particular demographic: white, often classically inclined and perhaps less able to speak authoritatively on social and street dance forms or non-European dance forms. And so this maybe opens up the door to more voices, more new kinds of voices in dance journalism now that it’s not occupied by one person.

Margaret Fuhrer:

I want to hope that’s true. I guess the issue is that one of the biggest reasons the demographic for dance writers has been so narrow is because it pays pretty much nothing and offers no stability. So if you’re not wealthy and privileged to begin with, it’s a tough business to be in. And that’s something that the writer Marina Harss noted in a story in Dance Magazine last year. How can we attract more diverse artists to this profession if we are offering them so little? It’s a profession that’s not really a profession anymore, she says.

Amy Brandt:

A lot of these, it’s basically volunteering. You’re writing for free, or you’re getting paid very little. Margaret, you and I are incredibly lucky to have the jobs that we have as editors in that they are full-time positions and whatnot. But when I talk to college students or young people who are interested in becoming a dance writer, I feel like I have to be very up front with them about… That’s wonderful, but make sure you have broad education, and that you also can write about other things, and that it’s just nearly impossible to make a living off of writing about dance.

Margaret Fuhrer:

There are clearly big overlaps here too, with the way the creation of dance itself is and is not supported in this country, with the way that we as a nation assign value, or more commonly do not assign value, to the arts. Because yes, good dance journalism is an art. So it’s all part of the same question: how can we support this kind of art making in a way that is sustainable, so it’s not automatically a sacrifice, a labor of love, but an actual vocation?

As is so often the case, we don’t have answers, we’re just trying to get to the right questions. But in the show notes, we’ve linked to the Washington Post story on Sarah Kaufman’s departure, and to Sarah’s final review for the paper, which included a poignant sign off, and then also to Marina Haas’s Dance Magazine story about the reality of dance writing today, which is a depressing but necessary read, I think.

All right, that’s it for us this week. Thanks everyone for joining. We’re going to have actually two interview episodes in a row over this holiday break, so look forward to that. In the meantime, keep learning, keep advocating, and keep dancing.

Amy Brandt:

Happy holidays, everyone.