William Deresiewicz at Persuasion:
Now I’ll never have a chance to impress Arlene Croce.
Croce, who died last month at 90, was the dean of American dance critics during the heyday of American dance. I started my writing career as a dance critic, too, and for many years that’s all I ever dreamed of being as a writer. My first sixty-plus published articles were dance reviews, and their intended audience consisted, in its entirety, of Arlene Croce. She was the lodestar, the queen, the presence around which the field arranged itself. I’ve wanted few things more in life—wanted it with the ardor of youth and the thirst for praise of the apprentice writer—than to win her approval.
I never did. In fact, I’ve no idea if she ever saw a word I wrote. But her death brought me back to that time. In retrospect, it was the waning days of the golden age of an American art form whose achievements bear comparison to those of Florentine painting or Viennese music. Not many remember this now, for dance leaves little to posterity.
More here.
Enjoying the content on 3QD? Help keep us going by donating now.