Message-ID: <Pine.NEB.4.64.1001292010160.10272@panix3.panix.com>
From: Alan Sondheim <sondheim@panix.com>
To: Cyb <cybermind@listserv.aol.com>, Wryting-L <WRYTING-L@listserv.wvu.edu>,
Cyberculture <cyberculture@zacha.org>
Subject: To the Editor: (in response to Macaulay's review 1/22/10) (fwd)
Date: Fri, 29 Jan 2010 20:11:30 -0500 (EST)
(This most likely won't be published, but some people wanted to read it, so here it is, group-sent, apologies for this, love Alan) ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Wed, 27 Jan 2010 09:46:29 -0500 (EST) From: Alan Sondheim <sondheim@panix.com> To: dance@nytimes.com Subject: To the Editor: (in response to Macaulay's review 1/22/10) To the Editor: I'm writing to respond to Alastair Macaulay's review of our performances, in the January 22 Dance Section. I've never responded to a review, negative or positive, before, but Macaulay's demands it. The review is a diatribe, neither a description, nor an analysis. No one reading it would have the slightest idea of the evenings themselves. We deserve better. Macaulay's dismisses the music/song as follows: "Meanwhile, he is accompanied by two colleagues. Alan Sondheim plays a variety of stringed instruments; Azure Carter sings her own songs in a series of pretty frocks and petticoats, and even dances a little. Both are entirely trivial." This is sexist and obviously insulting. He may not have liked the music, but this says nothing. (I should mention that there were dancers, musicians, and choreographers in the audience - some quite well known, etc. - and none of them had this reaction; far from it. We also played to large houses, in spite of the review.) Macaulay also dismisses Foofwa d'Imobilite's name as follows: "Mr. d'Imobilite has provided several pages of accompanying literature. These cover his 'conceptual libretto' for 'Musings,' the wordplay within its title and his own name, his methodology and the inspiration behind 'Involuntaries.' It's all clever, but, like his name, damnably arch and contrived." This is stupid and ad hominem. The "several pages" were written by d'Imobilite, Carter, and myself, by the way - Macaulay apparently paid no attention to the distinction. He likewise paid no attention to the half-hour video, intended as an introduction to Involuntaries; he paid no attention to the lighting of Musings, which was computer-controled and designed as a dance performance in itself; and he apparently paid no attention to the details of Involuntaries itself. He thinks otherwise: "Mr. d'Imobilite's choreography for himself consists almost entirely of spasms." I've seen spasms, and this is as nonsensical as saying that Michael Jackson's choreography is just prancing about. In fact, the sections of Involuntaries are quite distinct from each other, as the audience understood. I don't know Macaulay, and don't want to, but he appears to favor an ugly form of connoisseurship I've seen far too often. Rather than attempting to understand the work (reading the program notes? watching the video? watching the performance itself?), the performance is used as an excuse for yet another agenda - in this case, I assume, a return to ballet or traditional Cunningham. The readers of the Times deserve far better than this. The Times stands alone, in a sense, and for better or worse, functions as an arbiter, if not of taste, at least of what one might see of an evening. And for that, we need analysis and care, and at least someone who loves downtown dance, someone who understands it, to review these occasions. It's difficult enough to work on a kind of edge without being slammed by relatively unresponsive critics in the Times. Thank you. Sincerely Yours, Alan Sondheim sondheim@panix.com 718-813-3285