Criticism & reporting
An editorial sensibility invested in transparency, generosity, and creative context-building informs my work across disciplines.
A dancer by training, I begin from the body: from my pleasure and positional privilege in being an audience member, artist, reader, or witness. My editorial eye is a documentary one, fixed on the broader frame while remaining rooted in space and place. Can a site-specific dance work in a rapidly gentrifying downtown make a meaningful social or spatial intervention? How do a writer’s walks on the Haw River across seasons influence her writing on childlessness? Is an audience walkout choreographic protest?
I try to live and write in criticism’s imaginative, justice-oriented futures, and I believe in locally-focused criticism and reportage as essential community work.
How to decenter regional hegemonies of arts activity and reporting?
What could happen if we more intentionally collapsed the distance between “critic” and “artist,” acknowledging shared practices and spaces for identification?
What does criticism look like on Instagram, in sidewalk chalk, in the in-between flow of the postal service?
I ask a lot of questions.
A selection
“The School for Living Futures Aims to Animate Climate Activism with Creativity” (Indy Week, 2023)
“Durham Soccer Bar is a Promising Space with Room to Grow” (Indy Week, 2022)
“In a New Exhibition, Triangle Artists Foreground the Experience of Home as a Dance Between Permanence and Loss” (Indy Week, 2022)
“The American Dance Festival is Back. So Are the Joys and Complications of Live Dance.” (Indy Week, 2021)
“At Pride Night, Olympic Ambitions and New Jerseys Ring In an NC Courage Victory” (Indy Week, 2021)
“Wendy Spitzer Turned Crowd-Sourced Grief Into Site-Specific Songs” (Indy Week, 2020)
“Making Stop” and Q&A with Colleen Pesci (Casserole Series, 2020)
“How Do You Measure the Success of a Performance You Created?” (Carolina Performing Arts Commons Festival / Indy Week, 2019)
“With SHOW, Justin Tornow Attempts the Impossible: an Economically Viable Performance Experiment that Promotes Freedom and Flexibility” (Indy Week, 2018)
“More than Just Dance, Empower Dance Studio Teaches An Inclusive, Diverse Vision of Downtown Durham” (Indy Week, 2017)
"An Oral History of the American Dance Festival: How an Academic Enclave in Vermont Became a Modern Dance Lightning Rod for Durham and the World" (Indy Week, 2017)
“Casting Concentric Rings in Global Waters, Culture Mill Imports Sustainable Practices to Saxapahaw” (Indies Arts Awards / Indy Week, 2016)
“After Taking Over Global Theaters, Trisha Brown Dance Company Returns to Site-Specific Roots at Duke” (Indy Week, 2016)
“Dance Review: John Jasperse Somehow Stops Time While Moving It Forward in Remains” (Indy Week, 2016)
“Art for All? Trajectories of Creative Space in Contemporary Dublin” (Kenan Institute for Ethics, 2015)