Dancing intertexts: The Rub

XV

In this respect dance is in a similar position to all the other arts, sharing their reliance upon verbal and written languages while establishing their own distinctive modes of communication, whether in sound, paint, light or words.

Why must the reliance be on the verbal and written? If these artforms are communicating and constructing meaning beyond the verbal, the reviews should be too.

Dancing Intertexts...more

19

“The reality of interpretation is that readers enter at different points, select points of interest and, most usually, enter from an interpretative or evaluative stance. The reader then selects (chooses) those ‘facts’ which support that perspective. In this sense, the reader constructs the dance. Eco refers to this as the ‘continuous coming and going’ of interpretation (1979:5)”

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This choosing of facts works similarly to the comments section of the Guardian, or how people react to comments on Twitter. Maybe some of the commenters on the Guardian are looking for points that Luke Jennings makes that align with their own views/perceptions of the performance. An entry point could also be what is missing from the written piece. For me, my entry point was noticing that very little review space was given to Romeo & Juliet. I wanted to know why.

Every reader is coming into the piece from a different history or perspective:

Ballet is boring / Romeo & Juliet is my favorite / I’ve seen every ballet ever / I know all about ballet / I know nothing about ballet

Is it a critic’s job to think about all of those different points of entry? Is it a critic’s job to maximize the amount of perspectives that can enter a piece? By changing the form of how that piece is ‘written,’ how does the critic change the opportunity for new and old perspectives to interact with the piece?

In other words, how would a filmed review create more or different entry points than a written one?

I guess I could answer this question: A filmed review would allow for new points of entry because of how the information is being communicated. A written piece could explain what the dancers looked like on stage, down to the very last detail. With a filmed piece, you have to be more creative with how you address how dancers performed because simply filming the dancers doesn't give an idea of your opinion of their performance. You have to find ways to make visual comparisons, using other types of film — stock footage, vintage footage, footage you create yourself — and cutting techniques. While any dance critic/writer can write that the ballerina danced quickly and accurately, how in the world do you say that in an image? Suddenly, a world of visual metaphors has opened up to me. Maybe "quickly and accurately" looks like lightning striking a single post.

Also, a filmed review is a great opportunity to step away from description. And while it's been common for me to come across reviews with a lot of description and not much of an opinion, I think a filmed review of the ballet would be impossible to make if the opinion wasn't carried through straight from the beginning. Rather than describing what it looked liked, a film lets you skip the subtleties and say exactly why it did or didn't work.

Because I'm sourcing film from other contexts (movies, home videos, original footage I've made) it's a natural next step to review that ballet through different lenses than just what happened on-stage. Making a film allows me to think beyond the stage. I can't film the performance anyway, so I have to use the ballet as an opportunity to speak critically about something else within that performance.

Immediately after seeing Romeo & Juliet, I knew it didn't work, and I started thinking about how I could capture why it didn't work on film:

1. The dancers were so far away and tiny on the gigantic stage that the live nuances were impossible to catch — Perhaps I could blur the dancing?

2. The stage was so big that the half-jog/runs to catch up with the music were quite apparent — Maybe I could use footage of football players running up and down the field

3. The screens were giant and distracting, and they forced me to watch the ballet in high definition 2D. I couldn't look away — Could I use footage of bugs flying into light? A cat distracted by the television? A trainwreck you just have to watch?

And in this way I was actually describing. But I wasn't describing just what I saw, but how I saw it. And the how part of the description was what I saw as the opinion.

I was also thinking a lot about my conversation way back when with Jennifer Homans, who said I wouldn't have the opportunity to flip-flop on what worked and what didn't work. My film had to be one way or the other, or it would be confusing for the viewer. I agreed with her until I realized that there was one big part of the Romeo & Juliet performance that did work: the marketing. The marketing was the reason why critics called it a 'success.' You didn't have to have an opinion at all to see that the ballet had made big bucks: an arena was full of people, and in a way, it didn't matter whether or not the performance was a good one, because people had paid to be there and the seats were filled.

This was something I wanted to address in the film. And I thought that looking at what didn't work (the performance itself) and what did (what got people to the performance) was a perfect chance to use the review to do what I've been wanting: To use the performance as a way in to talk about something else. Yes, okay. I do talk about what happened on stage and why it didn't work, but then I give my big But! and say what did work. So for me, this filmed review is critical on a couple of different levels: I have an opinion about the on-stage performance and I also have an opinion on a different part of the performance: the marketing of it.

Dancing Intertexts

Page 18

John Frow…refers to the identification of an intertext as an act of interpretation in itself, and therefore as a discursive structure rather than a ‘source.’ He suggests that understanding the discursive structure is of greater significance than understanding the ‘facts,’ just as “detailed scholarly information is less important than the ability to reconstruct the cultural codes which are realized (and contested in texts).

This works with the function of review. The function of a review is really no longer meant to describe; it should be linking bigger, cultural ideas so the audience can interpret/infer the meaning of a performance. And not necessarily what that performance meant in an artistic sense, but what did that performance mean from a historical standpoint? Or from an economic one? Or from a technological standpoint? Or from an audience perspective?

A thought on Dancing Intertexts

On page 17:

“Interpreting dances using textual analysis requires a multi-disciplinary approach, one which ‘risks putting together in a single framework elements belonging to very diverse universes of discourse and research fields’ (de Marinis 1993: 6-7)”

This notion should extend beyond academic and theoretical writing and be exercised in the everyday articles and reviews of dance critics and writers. Heavily descriptive reviews no longer serve the purpose of posterity or relay the experience to a new set of viewers: describing the event only singles it out more and excludes a readership that could potentially have an interest in ballet. Reviews must balance necessary description with critical interpretations of what the ballet means in a broader context. This can be done by looking at the ballet through many lenses: economics, history, gender issues, social media, film.

The use of ‘risk’ in the quote above interests me. It suggests that textual analyses should be taking these risks. Textual analyses owe it to ballets — whose choreographers have drawn from a range of disciplines to create — continue to bring more ideas and contexts into the context of the review. If reviewers were to think of the ballet not simply as a performance, but also as a text that is a creation of many parts, reviews could be more interpretive than descriptive. Instead of documenting how a ballet looked on-stage, they could critically document how a ballet looked in the context of its time and society.

The definition of ‘text’ can extend beyond the ballets themselves and the written analyses; the form of the text can be as multidisciplinary as the content addressed. By writing a review in the form of a film, critics can still “put together in a single framework elements belonging to very diverse universes of discourse and research fields,” and altering how that review is disseminated (film, rather than conventional 400-500 text words), also adds to the discourse. A film-review, rather than a written one, challenges the critic to draw from a completely different camp of ideas: the critic must convey an opinion and ideas using a different set of resources, such as already available footage, sound, and animation.

The written storyboard

When I spoke about my project with Jennifer Homans, she wanted to know how I'd go about making a film if I hadn't really ever made one before. This was a worry I'd had, but something I shook off when Tom agreed to offer two extra eyes throughout the process.

Jennifer had said that with film, and with the length of film I'd be making (short!), I needed to make sure I was clear. I needed to have an opinion and communicate it without an subtleties. She said that it probably wouldn't work to say something like:

This worked because of blah blah blah. And this didn't work because of blah blah blah.

I couldn't go back and forth. She said it might be best to be one or the other about the performance. Did it or did it not work? And nothing in-between.

She asked what I thought the drafting process would look like. And I told her that I aimed to first write the review. I wanted to do this because writing helps me think and narrow down my ideas. I knew that writing a 500-700 word review would allow me to draft my ideas in a narrative that made sense to me. After writing those 500-700 words, I'd be able to get the jist of my opinion in just a few key sentences. Many times, it's only in the process of writing something big that I figure out how to articulate my points. I explained to Jennifer that this piece of writing would be a draft of my storyboarding process. I decided to call the written review my written storyboard.

There were many drafts leading up to the final draft of the written storyboard. When I was happy with the written draft, I showed it to Teal and Anna. They were surprised that, on my way to a visual outcome, that I would begin by writing. I didn't and still don't understand their surprise. I've always seen that 'text' as a step in the translation. I saw the ballet. I needed to verbally respond to what I saw. You could say that it's a very detailed script. Not all of what is written will show up visually in the film.

It allowed me to do what we talk a lot about in class: Zooming in and zooming out during the research process. Writing the review enabled me to zoom in on my opinion and give reasons for it. After the review was written, I started to view the draft not as a text, but as an image to be read. I zoomed out — way out — and looked for my main points.

I extracted those main points onto a sheet of paper.

Without the extra text around those main points, they told a more succinct story. It was a story that made my visual (more conventional) storyboarding process much easier. I cannot think of another way I would have reached the messages I wanted to convey other than doing the writing first. Although I had been thinking about the footage I wanted to include while working on the written storyboard, I realized that the images I included in the written storyboard might not work on film. This wasn't something I stressed out about. I thought about my conversation with dance critic Sarah Kaufman. She said that when she writes about a performance, she'll take pages of notes, but normally she doesn't use any of them in the final piece. The final piece is a summation of her main point and what stuck with her afterwards. Maybe a few of those scribbled notes find their way in, but most of the time, they are the sum of a larger part. I see the written storyboard in this way. It was part of my note-taking and scripting process. It allowed me to see the larger picture and to articulate what exactly it was I wanted to say. Whether or not the actual images I describe or exact words I use make it into the film doesn't matter. The written storyboard was a necessary step to zoom in and out, and for me, it was a crucial step in thinking visually.

Who is my reader?

Although the visual outcome is meant to be seen as entertainment by one kind of target audience, I'm also interested in reaching the practitioners. This is something that needs to actually implemented. In other words, Hire me!

A profile of A Practitioner-type

Kiernan and Elke live in different mid-size, Midwest, metropolitan cities. They are both in their 20s. They both have cars — old ones they’ve pushed beyond the 150,000-mile mark. They both buy their vegetables at their local farmers markets. They both eat Kashi cereal with organic skim milk for breakfast. And they both have cool names.

They are also both music editors at alt-weekly publications. Neither thought they would reach their dream of editing a music section before 30. Until six months ago, they had mastered living on 1000 dollars a month. Now, though, they have a freelance budget, and the health benefits seem to satisfy their parents.

They don’t make a big deal out of it, but Kiernan and Elke work their asses off. They stay at their offices past 10, and by 3 a.m. on Monday morning, they have their 50 blog posts written, edited and scheduled for publishing throughout the upcoming week. They try to plan and control what content they can, so they can plan and write and assign some more.

They gave up their Nokias for iPhones when they moved into their big-kid jobs and their very own, unshared, one-bedroom big-kid apartments. When they aren’t doing work things, they are doing work things. After syncing his e-mail and phone, Kiernan figured out that he works 10 extra hours each week. Elke files late-night texts from drunk musicians for future story ideas. They both dream about pitch meetings.

Sometimes they work through the night — at coffee tables (the desks aren’t big enough and kitchen tables are something to which they aspire)— only interrupting their routine of assigning memos and pitches for periodic sips of Boulevard or Schlafly wheat beer and to make a late-night breakfast sandwich. The sun will rise and they’ll realize it’s too late to go to bed, so they’ll cycle into work because they think better on their bikes, and when they arrive at their window-facing cubicles, it won’t matter that they didn’t get much sleep. They’ll have their Americanos and the pride of knowing that the days of being an intern are behind them. Now they have their own, unpaid fledglings to gently boss around.

Although they are in different cities, and their respective, respectable alt-weeklies, they are both searching for a new way to write about music. They were hired over the dudes with ten or fifteen years experience because so many of the other editors already love print. And although the bossman says he likes blogging, well, everyone knows what he’s daydreaming about when they see the hordes of past issues, stacked up high on top of the filing cabinet in his office. He wants a paper-paper, but he’s not getting one. Kiernan and Elke love print too. It’s how they came to love music. But the magazines they used to read and the record stores they once visited have turned into Pitchfork and iTunes.

Kiernan and Elke know they could get more readers if they changed a few things online, and they’ve begged the art-director for a print-edition redesign. Their colleagues acknowledge the rampant problems — fluffy Q&As and the cockroach-like resilience of the current show preview. But it’s as risky to maintain the same format as it is to make a change. Kiernan and Elke have good ideas. They have big ideas, but follow-through is daunting when the company they work for won’t even shovel out the cash for an office copy of Microsoft Word.

Neither of them smoke, but they hang out with friends on the back decks of gigs because that’s where the brain-picking happens. They all suffer from mild internet addictions. They’re all gradually landing on their feet. Sheppa’s a graphic designer for VML, but he also just made a fucking beautiful music video for Margo for free. Next August Sheresa’s going to teach high school orchestra, but this summer, she’s photographing weddings.

When Elke asks her friends why they’ve come to these shows, they say they’re not just there to see who’s playing. They’re there to see who’s listening. No one does just one thing. No one wants it just one way. They want an experience. That’s what Kiernan and Elke want too. Instead of paying for freelancers, Kiernan spent his weekly budget on a camera with video. Elke’s been recording with her iPhone.

Kiernan and Elke both know about music. They, like, really know it. But they also know that knowing isn’t enough.

Yeah, because they write for city papers, they have to think local. But they want to cover music in a way that connects someone in New York and someone else in their mid-size, Midwest, metropolitan cities. They have a lot of big ideas. They have a lot of work to do. Mostly, they want to make something their friends will read, not out of friendship obligations, but because it’s good and get-able.

Reflections on doing stuff

Doing stuff is hard.

Well, getting started doing stuff is what's hard.

For the past week and a half, my thesis work — which has been mostly steady albeit a bit slow — has completely plateaued. I've felt like the real making-of this visual outcome is an impossible task. And before thinking about the outcome too much, I've been writing off all of my ideas as failures. It's a little premature, since I've now only just worked out my storyboards.

And I should be clear: It's not the failure of the project that I'm worried about. That's nbd. I can happily critically self-reflect till the dogs come home.

I'm worried I'll fail at creating something that (tries to) says something new. And I'm worried I'll fail at developing an outcome that puts the stuff I do best to their best use.

For a long time, before I really knew what I was doing, I had figured that my thesis outcome would take the shape of a book. I'm comfortable with books. I like them. I like making them. I make all kinds of those things from start-to-finish. But ballet in a book doesn't work. Especially, considering where I'm at now. Not only is a book the wrong form for this project, it's just too easy (or at least that's what I've told myself). And by easy, I mean, the easy choice. My fall-back option.

And plus, I'm pushing the review to see how much more of the experience can be shown through images rather than words. What could this review look like outside of letters? Ballet, like I've said before, is experiential. It's multi-sensory. I'm arguing that the review needs to be that way also. Or, at least, it should have a toolkit to allow itself to be that way if it feels like it.

A ballet review can't be static. It's got to move. And words can move too. I believe that. They can move a reader. They can move the story along. But so can film. And sound. And I think that all of these — text, sound, film — can be joined (not only slideshow + article) to do a few things:

1. Report on the event.

2. Convey an opinion.

3. Preserve the performance for posterity.

I'm arguing that my visual outcome will do all of these things, which reviewers say reviews should do anyway. But I also think that this type of visceral review will:

1. Extend the life of the performance by using the performance itself as a prompt for a performative review.

2. Use the performance as a way in to address the big questions the performance raises. You can't film in ballet. But there are other ways to convey what you saw (animations, archival footage), and by using what's outside of that performance to explain the performance, you are able to put it into a larger context — one that might matter to more people.

I've just rushed through that explanation because I've only allowed myself 45 minutes to reflect (If I spend much longer on the reflections, I tend to get way too waffly). Hopefully it makes sense when I read through it later.

Anyway, back to getting started. I had to write all of this out for you because yesterday I had a meltdown. I had forgotten why I wanted to try to review through film and sound. Without even starting the project, I had done what I had done to my book thoughts: I had cast this film off as easy. I needed to find something more difficult to do. A tablet device? Something completely interactive? Something with lots of dynamic choices that moved for the readers. Something that showed them what happened and showed off my awesomeness.

But I couldn't begin to know how to think about making something for a tablet. And unlike my film idea, which had seemed so straightforward and right to me, I couldn't think of a reason to make the review touch-screen ready.

Mostly, though, my conversation with Anna and Teal had inked through all of my thoughts. Do something that puts your skills to their best use — that's what I heard in our conversation. Probably the only thing I could remember. And I assumed that making a film was what Teal and Anna thought was not the best use of my skills. I started thinking that if I made a film, it would just be a crappy YouTube art film.

So yesterday, with that thought in my head, I went the whole cycle of ideas.

I cut down my original text to only basic ideas.

I did a list storyboard to think about possible images.

I storyboarded a sound review.

I drew some tablet things.

I drew crazy animation ideas.

But I never knew how to get from one idea to the next. I had formed an opinion on the ballet, and I had ways of backing it up. But none of the things I explored were pushing along my opinion. They were working as reportage, but not a review.

But when I allowed myself the option of making a film, I got excited. I knew — and saw — exactly how I wanted that story to be told. What sounds to include. What images to bring in. What text to lay over the images. What archival footage to introduce. It was all there. And I got excited. I could see it.

And unlike when I thought I was going to barf (from anxiety) over making some stupid touch-screen, I got that nervous feeling I always get when I write something I know is good: I always start shaking, and I get cold. And I know you can't only do your thesis on instinct alone, but I have to go with my gut on this one. Yesterday was a matter of getting the doubt out so I could get going.

In a way, maybe the film is an easy choice. Or, it should be an easy choice for critics. If ballet is really experiential — and for me, it's about way more than the performance on the stage — why haven't ballet reviews looked like this in the past? Maybe it seems easy because it seems like such an obvious thing to try. Something that could be interesting and work well. Like, duh.

Analysis

Sometimes, I get excited. Well, mostly I'm excited all of the time about the research I'm doing. And a lot of times, my head kind of explodes with ideas that I just spit out. It's a constant brainstorm, when sometimes I need to be more careful about what I say.

Like my tutorial with Anna and Teal last week. In a flurry of wondering about the impact technology will have on my visual outcome, I said I wanted to see how one version works in print and one version works on-screen. I don't know why I said that. I've never really been interested in separating things — this goes here; that goes there. I've just been interested in finding the story I want to tell and the best way to tell it.

And I think we spent a bit more time than I would have liked talking about something I shouldn't have actually said? Maybe not. It was productive, though. Because it made me question whether making a film was the best way of putting my interests and ideas out there.

I've been thinking a lot about the function of a review. From my conversations with The Ballet Bag ladies, Jennifer Homans and Sarah Kaufman, I keep hearing a few similar ideas:

1. Reviews are records. One purpose of a review is that it should record what happened so that 100 years from now, we can go back and read about a ballet performance.

2. When they are at a performance and know they will be writing a review, the reviewers are paying attention to what they are paying attention to.

3. Although notes play a role, what ends up in the review might have nothing to do with the pages and pages of notes one makes at a performance.

4. Reviews give one person's account, and (surprsingly? not surprsingly?), the idea of how the content of a review works is quite comparable to sports writing or broadcasting: Reviews set the scene; they give a play-by-play of a couple of key moments; they provide an analysis.

For me, that analysis can sometimes be missing. What does an analysis of a ballet performance look like?

Here's a quick web definition:

The definition that really strikes me is:

An investigation of the component parts of a whole and their relations in making up the whole.

A review is an investigation. But it's not just about reporting on what you find. It's about reporting towards finding or forming an opinion.

Operating under this definition, I think I can make the argument that a performance isn't just what's on stage. And that there is a "before, during and after-ness" with ballet performances that must be addressed. But it doesn't have to happen in an linear way.

Tweets and stuff.

The Royal Opera House pulled out some seriously epic marketing for Romeo & Juliet. And to me, it proved — more than anything else — that if you tell someone to be somewhere, they'll come. The trailers, and coverage and pre-performance press caused real buzz, which is something missing from any other performance run. Since the Royal Ballet kept calling this an 'experiment,' I wondered whether they thought their experiment was successful. And if they'd try some of the same marketing techniques for other events. Well, the other day, the Opera House hosted dancing and dance lessons at lunchtime. As someone who's paid to sweat it out on the packed dance floor of London's famous Rivoli Ballroom, I figured about a zillion people around my age would genuinely want to show up to foxtrot in the breezy, light-filled jewel box aka Paul Hamlyn Hall. I guess I was wrong. The ROH did send out a tweet, but as far as PR, the only other sighting of the event was what was on the website. Boring.

The tweet was this:

Oh boy. Looks like people are having a blast. How about telling people my age about this thing? Zillions of us are unemployed and don't have anything better to do on a sunny afternoon. We'd love to be dancing. Reach out! So I called them out on it, over twitter.

Of course I didn't hear anything back. The opera house is an amazing venue. Anyone I've taken to the opera house — Kate, Tom and Sam (who had never been to a ballet before) has ooh'd and ahh'd at the inside. It's exciting! It's a treat. And when you walk into that bar, you realize it's not a scary, intimidating hall. It's gorgeous and lovely. And in the light of day with dancing? It sounds like the perfect way to kill an hour.

After really paying attention to everything surrounding #RomeO2, I think dance critics had an opportunity to talk about the success of the production in many different ways. I think what was happening beyond the stage was as important to preserve as the performance itself, especially if Luke Jennings says he's written about R&J many times before.

With social media and viral-ness, marketing is part of the performance. If you hype it, they will come. If you tell us it will be awesome, we will come. It seems like the Royal's a bit too polite with their advertising. Romeo and Juliet was in-your-face, I suppose. Good marketing fills seats. Who cares about what happens on stage. As long as people show up, that's a success...in a very basic and frank sort of way. And Luke Jennings acknowledged that. It seems like it's worth it to further unpick the idea of a successful performance, though.

The 'performance' above (the tea room dance) looks like a successful performance. People are there, filling the hall. Dancing. But was it successful in reaching a different demographic? Is that important to ROH? I think it should be. And I think treating this like a performance is another way dance writers should be critically covering and engaging with dance.

The people dancing and the people reading the tweets make up different camps. As a twitter follower, seeing those photos, I don't really think that looks fun. But it could be!

Okay I'm worn out.

Oh but real fast, I thought of something else. If the Royal is using Twitter to disseminate information to their followers, and they want us to take part in their events, they need to be 'available' to the dialogue that gets tweeted back at them. Why didn't they respond to me? I did ask a question. Maybe I was a bit cheeky, but I'm sure they actually do have an opinion on it. I'd like to know!

Guardian Comments Section

Recently I spoke to Emilia and Linda, the two minds behind The Ballet Bag, a website about ballet for dance maniacs and newbies too. The site was started as a 2-part experiment. First E&L (as they call themselves) wanted to know how the ballet conversation could be expanded. They love popular culture, and wanted to show where ballet fits in. By talking about ballet in a conversational tone and bringing in stories from a range of disciplines, they hoped they might attract a different or wider audience than the ones who read reviews in newspapers. The Ballet Bag is also an experiment in social media networking. E&L are as obsessed with social media as they are with ballet. They wanted to see how the Ballet Bag could A. Start cross-border conversations (there are ballet-lovers everywhere) and B. See if they could get more ballet-writing and coverage opportunities if they showed how well they could do this social-networking thing.

I asked them what other dance writers and critics thought about the work they do. E&L said that by making the Ballet Bag a multi-sided conversation (they are writers writing, but also writers trying to engage conversations using lots of different tools — conferences, Twitter, blogs, Facebook), critics like Judith Mackrell and Luke Jennings were inspired to join Twitter, and use it as a way to talk with their readers and ballet dancers they write about. Both Luke and Judith also have a cult-like following of commenters on their dance reviews. Known as Judith's 'salon' or Luke's 'salon,' these salonistas end up extending the 400-word dance review to dozens of comments. Following the Guardian blog/online guidelines, both dance critics participate in the conversation and continue to ask/answer questions. They have an opportunity to say more, and they do. E&L say this is an example of how writers are using the technology they have to see the review in a different way. So perhaps the 400-word review is really a prompt, a way of getting the conversation started.

Obviously a writer must have more to say. I thought so when I read Luke Jennings' recent review. Jennings wrote about three performances that happened in one week, which included Romeo & Juliet at the O2. However, in his six-paragraph review, 800-word review, Jennings devoted just one paragraph and 100 words to the performance that 40,000 people attended.

On my initial reading, for me the review failed in a few ways:

1. Jennings failed to actually give his opinion on Romeo & Juliet. He said the performance was a 'success,' but he didn't say why he thought so.

2. He didn't consider his audience. Surely there were more Guardian-reader stakeholders at the O2 than in the 200-person audience at Oh So Totally Rad, the performance to which Jennings devoted most of his word count.

3. Jennings was using many different definitions of 'success' throughout his piece. I never got a clear picture of what makes success to him.

The comments section was in full-swing by the time I had gathered my thoughts. Most of the time, these commenters are quite silly. There's little engagement in wanting to know more. It's mostly about right-or-wrong. Good taste versus bad taste. But! This conversation was getting interesting.

In response to one commenter, Jennings wrote about his intention as a reviewer:

Personally, I go to every performance with the same intention: to engage with the piece on its own terms and to report as I see, hear and feel. This, with new or experimental work, excites two very specific kinds of negative comment.

He wanted to report how he sees, hears and feels. Where was the audience in this? Where was the critical opinion? I couldn't resist:

First, I wanted to know why R&J didn't get more space. Secondly, I wanted to know what success means to him in the case of R&J, especially his critical opinion. I waited, with bated breath, to see!

Okay, fine. You think Oh So Totally Rad was more thought-provoking. But what really struck me was his last paragraph:

"The issue on this occasion seemed to be the nature of the experience rather than the details of the performance."

I would argue that the performance and experience were linked. And only part of the performance was happening on-stage. So I wrote back:

I don't think I was explicit enough. And in retrospect, I don't think I knew exactly what I wanted to ask enough. But what I wanted to find out was why he thought the only performance worth writing about was the one on-stage.

Here, Luke suggests that a performance does have an afterlife and that reviews serve to preserve what happened. In a way they are records (something that both dance writers Jennifer Homans and Sarah Kaufman have told me too). But if we are recording ballet, why are we only recording the staged events? If this, in a way, is supposed to like taking minutes, shouldn't we be writing about things leading up and things following? If reviews are for posterity (besides being for readers), what will readers-of-the-future be interested in reading? And what about the performers? And the ballet companies themselves? Can they be impacted by a review?

I got sick of commenting. I was impressed at how quickly Luke responded, and the thought he put into his answers, but I also have more questions. So I sent him an e-mail.

I heard back, and I'm hoping to talk more about this idea of the performance — where it begins, goes and ends. I'm also interested to see what he thinks of my project ideas.

To wrap-up: In terms of extending a reviewer's toolkit, the comments section can be an interesting way of extending the life of a ballet and the review of the ballet. But it can also be counterproductive. Many commenters will simply write how great Luke is. Or one might say "I don't understand why you get paid for this shit." Both might actually make good essay topics — Reviewer as author (or textual choreographer?) and What's a Reviewer's Job, Really?

But I also think there are other ways of adding to the review-writing toolkit. And that begins with thinking of the performance as something that exists beyond the stage. It also begins with using description in a way that conveys the mood and the reviewer's opinion. Otherwise, you are just reporting. And anyone can do that.