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Jowitt presents papers from a panel honoring Marcia B. Siegel, an internationally known dance critic, historian and teacher. An interview with Siegel and her response to Elizabeth Streb's presentation are also presented.

David Pellegrini, Book Review Editor, Performing Arts Department, Shafer 12, Eastern Connecticut State University, Willimantic, CT 06226, or via electronic mail: pellegrinid@eastemct. edu. Darkening Mirrors: Imperial Representation in Depression-Era African American Performance. Prentiss, Craig R. Staging Faith: Religion and African American Theatre from the Harlem Renaissance to World War II.

Modernity, once a prerogative of the West, is now ubiquitous, experienced diversely by people all over the world. The changing notions of modernity are historically linked to the development of the public sphere. This article broadly attempts to map the discourse of modernity to the evolution of Kathak, a premier classical dance from India. The article has two threads running through it. One is the development of the public sphere in India as it relates to anti-colonial nationalism, the formation of the modern nation-state, and globalization. The other focuses on transformations in Kathak as they relate to changing patronage, ideology, and postcolonial history. I emphasize the latter to mark the transitions in Kathak as emblematic of Indian national identity and national ideology to a new era of cultural contestation. This emergent public domain of culture is coined as “public modernity” by anthropologist Arjun Appadurai in contemporary India. It is linked to economic reforms, or “liberalization,” leading to globalization and a resurgence of communal politics. Both of these make culture, tradition, and identity central to the contestation of power among the diverse social formations in India.

When CORD asked me to put together a panel honoring Marcia B. Siegel for the 2005 conference in Montreal, I did not hesitate to accept. She had done the same for me in 2001. But this was no quid pro quo. Decades ago, when Siegel edited the long-defunct publication Dance Scope, she invited me to contribute a review of Edwin Denby's Dancers, Buildings and People in the Street to the Spring 1966 issue. She was taking a big chance. That was my first published writing. She had only heard me talk about dance on “The Critical People,” a radio show about the arts on WBAI-FM (a bunch of us got together weekly and more or less winged it). Over the years, she and I have thrashed out ideas about criticism, historical writing, and specific performances sitting side by side in theater seats, collapsing in hotel rooms after arduous days at conferences, conducting workshops together, and while weeding my vegetable garden. Our opinions may differ, but we have similar ideas about what we are trying to accomplish in our writing and what kind of writing we like to read. In putting together the panel, I consulted Marcia for ideas. Gay Morris, Selma Odom, and Peggy Phelan are her distinguished colleagues in dance history, theory, and criticism; she also counts them among her friends. Elizabeth Streb, whom she has reviewed over the years, created and delivered a stunning Powerpoint presentation. I regret that it couldn’t be included here. Juxtaposing Marcia's writings about her work to glimpses of the pieces reviewed and her own impressions of them, Streb offered a uniquely insightful and generous view of the critic-artist relationship.

Within this quotation the reader may find a rich description of historical and even contemporary Middle Eastern attitudes toward dance and male dancers in particular, penned from a native point of view. In this article I address those attitudes, but more importantly challenge several cherished, long-held assumptions and theoretical stances expressed by native elites and Westerners interested in Middle Eastern dance and dancers. First, I challenge the romantic views that many gay men hold that the presence of male dancers and the sexual interest expressed toward them by Middle Eastern men somehow constitutes evidence for an environment accepting of homosexuality and a Utopian gay paradise, where the possibility of unbridled sexual congress with handsome, passionately out-of-control Arabs, Persians, and Turks exists. Thus, they crucially confuse gay or homosexual identity with homosexual activity or behavior. Because of this confusion, I use an important aspect of queer theory that counters “the monolithic alternative of liberationist gay politics” (Bleys 1995, 7) to look at the phenomenon of professional male dancers in a somewhat grittier, more realistic light. In particular, I refer to Stephen O. Murray's groundbreaking article, “The Will Not to Know” (1997, 14–54) which establishes a valuable lens through which to view how the vast majority of Middle Eastern individuals regard homosexual acts.

David Pellegrini, Book Review Editor, Performing Arts Department, Shafer 14, Eastern Connecticut State University, Willimantic, CT 06226, or via electronic mail: pellegrinid@easternct. edu. Please indicate areas of expertise and specify which title(s) you are interested in reviewing; an updated list of available books will be provided upon request. Darkening Mirrors: Imperial Representation in DePion-Era African American Performance.

I am sorry not to be able to join you in person today, but I am glad for the chance to participate in this opportunity to honor Marcia Siegel. Marcia and I taught together in the Department of Performance Studies at New York University from 1985, when I joined the faculty, until her retirement in 1999. And I was honored when she came to do a workshop and speak in my class at Stanford when I began teaching there in 2003. Many of you in attendance today know the beauty and rigor of Marcia's writing about dance, so perhaps it might be better if I spend my time sharing some aspects of Marcia's work that might be less well known to you.

David Pellegrini, Book Review Editor, Performing Arts Department, Shafer 12, Eastern Connecticut State University, Willimantic, CT 06226; or by email: pellegrinid@easternct.edu. Please indicate areas of expertise and specify which title(s) you are interested in reviewing; an updated list of available books will be provided upon request. Publishers and/or authors interested in having their titles listed for review should forward books to the above address.

First I would like to thank Deborah Jowitt and CORD for inviting me to participate in this panel. I have known Marcia for many years and I am delighted to be here today to honor her. This also gives me a chance to speak about the Institutes for Dance Criticism (sometimes unofficially called the critics' conferences) started by Selma Jeanne Cohen in 1971 at Connecticut College and then expanded to the West Coast for several years in the mid-1970s. I met Marcia at the 1974 West Coast institute, which she was directing at Mills College. The next year I attended the East Coast branch at Connecticut College, which Deborah [Jowitt] directed and where Marcia served on the faculty. In their early years the institutes were of tremendous importance to dance criticism. Nothing like them had ever been attempted. They came at the beginning of the dance boom, when publications were suddenly expected to cover what, for many editors and writers, was a little-known art form. The institutes were sponsored by the National Endowment for the Arts specifically to train dance critics. A number of people passed through the institutes who went on to important careers in criticism and academe, including Sally Banes, Janice Ross, and Mindy Aloff.