Deborah Jowitt

Deborah Jowitt wrote about dance for The Village Voice from 1967 to 2011. She has published two collections: Dance Beat (1977) and The Dance in Mind (1985), in addition to Time and the Dancing Image (1988) and Jerome Robbins: His Life, His Theater, His Dance (2004). She edited and contributed to Meredith Monk (1997). She is currently writing a critical biography of Martha Graham. Her essays have appeared in numerous journals and anthologies, and her criticism is now published at artsjournal.com. She lectures and conducts workshops worldwide, as well as teaching in the Dance Department of New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts. This essay was written for the Dancehouse Diary.

Deborah Jowitt

Watching Dance, Rituals of Spectatorship

And in fact, the image of unsuspecting audience members performing pre-determined, ritualised actions in a partially unknown context and without tangible benefit to the universe or the gods seems to resonate with the way we live our lives. Read more...