ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on dance reviewing as it has developed since the early twentieth century in response to the emergence of what French dance theorist Laurence Louppe refers to as contemporary dance: the break with classical ballet that produced new forms of theater dance. It discusses some of the generalized conditions of the discipline of dance that interrupt the traditional terms of a critical encounter. Dance criticism has undertaken an interesting journey from its historically significant role in establishing the very terrain of twentieth-century theater dance to the crisis in arts reviewing more generally in the early twenty-first century. A new approach to self-commentary from dance artists emerged in the mid-twentieth century in America in line with a widespread wave of artist-theorists across media. In the new context, where connoisseurship tussles with the democratic field of blogging, and visuality dominates over textuality, dance criticism is again well placed to adapt to new contexts and their terms.
