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Examining a century of dance criticism in the United States and its influence on aesthetics and inclusion Dance criticism has long been integral to dance as an art form, serving as documentation and validation of dance performances, yet few studies have taken a close look at the impact of key critics and approaches to criticism over time. The first book to examine dance criticism in the United States across 100 years, from the late 1920s to the early twenty-first century, Shaping Dance Canons argues that critics in the popular press have influenced how dance has been defined and valued, as well as which artists and dance forms have been taken most seriously. Kate Mattingly likens the effect of dance writing to that of a flashlight, illuminating certain aesthetics at the expense of others. Mattingly shows how criticism can preserve and reproduce criteria for what qualifies as high art through generations of writers and in dance history courses, textbooks, and curricular design. She examines the gatekeeping role of prominent critics such as John Martin and Yvonne Rainer while highlighting the often-overlooked perspectives of writers from minoritized backgrounds and dance traditions. The book also includes an analysis of digital platforms and current dance projects-On the Boards TV, thINKingDANCE , Black Dance Stories, and amara tabor-smith's House/Full of BlackWomen -that challenge systemic exclusions. In doing so, the book calls for ongoing dialogue and action to make dance criticism more equitable and inclusive.

This dissertation examines the multiple functions of dance criticism in the 20th and 21st centuries in the United States. I foreground institutional interdependencies that shape critics’ practices, as well as criticism’s role in approaches to dance-making, and the necessary and fraught relations between dance criticism and higher education. To challenge the pervasive image of the critic as evaluator and of criticism as definitive, Set in Motion focuses on conditions that produce and endorse certain forms of criticism, and in turn how this writing has gained traction. I employ the concept of a choreographic apparatus to show shifting relations amongst writers, artists, publications, readers, institutions, and audiences. Their interactions generate frameworks that influence dance’s history, canon, and disciplinary formations. I propose a way of situating criticism as a form of writing that intersects with, informs, and influences both history and theory. Set in Motion expands discourse on writing by examining the continuities and discontinuities in practices over the course of a century. Chapter 1 focuses on articles by John Martin in the New York Times the late 1920s and early 1930s. Chapter 2 analyzes how artists in the 1960s, in particular Yvonne Rainer, took hold of the choreographic apparatus to redirect discourse about their projects. In Chapter 3, I expand my analysis from methodologies to the study of educational institutions. Chapter 4 turns to the question, “where is criticism today?” and investigates how digital technologies in the 21st century inform and inflect our engagements with criticism. Set in Motion contributes to dance studies discourses, disciplinary formation, and histories of professionalization by noticing ways in which criticism and theory function less often as opposing forces and primarily as reciprocal and interconnected partners. By recognizing the ways criticism has functioned as a fulcrum to legitimate and leverage particular approaches to dance, this project highlights artists’ and critics’ modes of production that generate and redesign our definitions of dance writing.

Chapter 1 examines writing by John Martin, the dance critic for the New York Times from 1927 to 1962, noting the influence of Richard Boleslavsky’s lectures on Martin’s theories of modern dance, Martin’s attention to artists’ economic needs and priorities, as well as Martin’s foreclosure of possibilities for artists of color like Hemsley Winfield, Katherine Dunham, and Asadata Dafora. This chapter highlights Martin’s formulation of kinesthetic engagement or “inner mimicry,” which he developed from Boleslavsky’s concept of an “invisible bond” linking performers and audiences. Against a notion of Martin as an “apologist” for modern dance, this chapter reveals how he generated the terms and frameworks for white modern dance and identified white artists to be its standard-bearers. By placing Martin’s articles alongside those in Ebony magazine and the New York Age, this chapter exposes how Martin devalued the work of Black artists, and his assessments and criteria continue to percolate through a century of critics’ writing.

Chapter 2 turns to the role of the artist-critic, analyzing how Yvonne Rainer redesigned the apparatus of dance criticism and used her publications in the 1960s and 1970s to justify a different set of aesthetic criteria. At the same time, these criteria protected the perpetuation of whiteness as an aesthetic value that Martin established in the New York Times and solidified a lineage of postmodern dance that continues to be reproduced in textbooks and taught in history courses. This chapter places the “innovations” of white Judson artists alongside an analysis of postmodernism by Cornel West and research by Brenda Dixon Gottschild, and asks why performances by Black artists such as James Brown and Cholly Atkins are often ignored in discussions of postmodern dance.

Chapter 5 analyzes digital platforms in the twenty-first century and focuses on four sites that challenge assumptions about the disappearance of dance critics: On the Boards TV, thINKingDANCE, Black Dance Stories, and amara tabor-smith’s HouseFull of Blackwomen. If Black dancers have, historically and currently, been denied access to or misrepresented in the popular press, this chapter examines how these sites reframe the conversation and center distinct voices and experiences. This is the redesigning of the choreographic apparatus, which has, for decades, focused on aesthetics and value systems that elevate the work of white artists. While attending to the ways these platforms address and challenge systemic exclusions that have pervaded criticism in the popular press, this chapter also examines affordances of the digital realm, such as the sharing of video and film, and how these circulations transform today’s purposes and functions of dance criticism.

Chapter 4 interrogates relationships between dance criticism and dance studies, an interdisciplinary field that gained prominence in the 1980s and 1990s, and sought to differentiate itself from dance criticism. However, scholars in dance studies perpetuated some of the same systemic exclusions that critics reproduced during the twentieth century. This chapter suggests that dance scholars sought to validate their existence in academic settings and discourse, in part, by strategically distancing their writing from that of critics. Concurrently, in 1994, New Yorker critic Arlene Croce wrote “Discussing the Undiscussable,” a “review” of a performance by Bill T. Jones that Croce did not attend, and an article that continues to influence dance criticism and curricula.

Chapter 3 reveals the enormous influence that dance criticism has had on the disciplinary formation of dance in university settings. Margaret H’Doubler established the first dance degree in the United States in 1926, and John Martin started publishing in the New York Times in 1927. While dance educators in higher education have fought complex battles to gain the respect of scholars in other departments, dance critics have also played vital roles in legitimating dance as an art form. This chapter examines the concurrent institutionalization of criticism and dance in higher education and how their constitutive development left indelible traces: influencing the artists and techniques in dance departments and shaping the design of history courses to validate these artists and techniques. This chapter ends with prompts for history courses today that can encourage dialogue about dance criticism and disciplinary formation, analyzing the ways that courses and curricula have become tethered to systemic exclusions that perpetuate injustices of recognition.

The introduction traces the author’s path from dancer to critic to teacher, noting the serendipity and privileges of becoming a dance critic. While existing scholarship on dance criticism focuses on certain decades or individual writers, this book reveals constitutive relationships between critics and canonical artists, as well as the shifting roles of writers and publications. Focusing on dance criticism in the popular press from the 1920s to 2020s in the United States, Shaping Dance Canons introduces the concept of a choreographic apparatus to explain how criticism functions like a flashlight, highlighting certain artists and aesthetic values while rendering others invisible.

The conclusion investigates our present moment, in 2022, emphasizing a cyclical approach that is evident in each chapter: our past informs our future, and an understanding of the complexities of historical records enriches our response to current concerns. Debates about the teaching of critical race theory expose how dominant communities and ideologies can render other people and value systems invisible or inconsequential. Just as the disciplinary formation of dance history was a “self-validating” activity, one that relied on criticism in the popular press, and brought prominence to techniques being taught in university settings, the conclusion expands this lens on our teaching of history and asks whose voices are excluded and why? This book does not pretend to have all the solutions or remedies to obstacles created by systemic exclusions, and calls for ongoing dialogue and action. The conclusion ends with the suggestion that more attention to relationships between value systems and methods of evaluation could, potentially, make dance criticism more equitable and inclusive.

Regarded as a pivotal figure in dance criticism in the United States, John Martin is frequently positioned as a writer who conceived of dance as a distinct and autonomous art form.¹ He is both celebrated and critiqued for establishing the critical autonomy of dance: Margaret Lloyd describes him as “practically an institution in himself … the most frequently quoted dance critic inside the USA,” while Susan Foster notes that he was an “apologist” for modern dance, and Andre Lepecki writes, “The strict alignment of dance with movement that John Martin announced and celebrated is but the logical outcome of his