ABSTRACT
Nancy Goldner was born in Queens, New York, March 19, 1943. As a young girl she trained at the School of American Ballet for seven years, dancing in the premiere of Balanchine's "Nutcracker" in 1954. Then "adolescence happened" and an intended career in dance performance ended. She graduated from the University of Michigan in 1964, majoring in Literature, Philosophy, and History. Her first professional work was in publishing, working as an editor for two publishing houses in New York: Macmillan and then Crowell. Her first regular professional dance writing began in 1969 for Dance News in which she was featured until it folded in February, 1983. Throughout the 1970's and 1980's Goldner wrote dance criticism on a regular basis for many publications including The Christian Science Monitor, The Nation, The Soho Weekly News and Les Saisons de la Danse. She has taught dance history and criticism at New York University, York University in Toronto and at the Critics Conference at the American Dance Festival at Duke University, North Carolina, where she also served as director from 1980-84. She is the author of The Stravinsky Festival of the New York City Ballet (Eakins Press, 1974) and the recipient of a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities for research on the Bennington School of Dance. She is also on the editorial board of the International Encyclopedia of Dance, to be published by Oxford University Press.
