Blog

The Offending Classic

December 3, 2020 - By Joellen A. Meglin

Against Orthodoxies

Photo: Piet Mondrian, Composition with Red, Yellow, Blue, and Black, 1921, oil on canvas, 59.5 cm x 59.5 cm.[1]

I discovered George Orwell’s post-Hiroshima, early Cold War essay “Politics and the English Language” as I prepared to enter a doctoral program in dance.[2] It taught me that original thinking was going to have to be hard won, independent—my own choreography rather than learned repertory. Throughout my teaching career, I have often recommended this essay to students as an antidote to scholarly writing steeped in what Orwell calls “ready-made phrases”—jargon, orthodoxy, phrases that...

A Virtual Gathering of Native Voices

December 2, 2020 - By Emily Wojcik

Join us Thursday, December 10, at 8pm Eastern Time for our free Virtual Gathering of Native American Voices. With Theodore C. Van Alst, Jr., Elise Paschen, Toni Jensen, and Tacey M. Atsitty, moderated by Laura Furlan, the reading will hand over the mic to contemporary Indigenous voices, rather than cosplay Pilgrims, during the 400th anniversary of the landing at Plymouth Rock.

Tacey M. Atsitty, Diné, is Tsénahabiłnii (Sleep Rock People) and born for Ta’neeszahnii (Tangle People). Her maternal grandfather is Tábąąhí (Water Edge People) and her paternal grandfather is Hashk’áánhadzóhí (Yucca Fruit Strung-Out-In-A-Line People) from Cove, AZ. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in POETRY Magazine, Kenyon...

Autumn Journal on Autumn Journal: 15-16

December 1, 2020 - By Michael Thurston

(Photo: Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes – The sleep of reason produces monsters (No. 43), from Los Caprichos)

Read Part 14 here

“Nightmare leaves fatigue”

Exhausted by the stresses of pandemic, racial reckoning, a nail-biter of an election on which hinged the question of whether something like democracy continues or we slide on into authoritarianism, I fall asleep. Sleep comes easily at first; I’m out almost as soon as the lamplight dies. A couple of hours into the...

(Almost) 10 Questions for Lance Larsen

November 30, 2020 - By Edward Clifford

My friend Julia wanted to bask in fame, or wear it in her hair like a dragonfly wing, or maybe roll in it like a dog. Wouldn't it be easier, I said, to just shake Fame's craggy hand? I meant the poet, who had just finished reading. This happened at a snooty conference where Pulitzer Prize winners and untouchables sample tarts from the same tray. My friend Julia refused to fawn, refused to buy his book. Well then, I said, let's join him for breakfast tomorrow.
—from "Dark Harbor," Volume 61, Issue 3 (Fall 2020)

Tell us about one of the first pieces you wrote.
In first or second grade at Washington Elementary in Pocatello, Idaho, my class was assigned to write about hope. Here’s what I turned in, misspellings...

The Offending Classic

November 27, 2020 - By Juan Ignacio Vallejos

On the Intolerable in Dance

Photo: Marcha Ni una menos, Buenos Aires, 2018

I recently saw Angelin Preljocaj’s Rite of Spring (2001) on film. This was the latest of many ballets staged by the French choreographer from the repertoire of the Ballets Russes. Earlier Preljocaj had offered the world his Le Spectre de la Rose, L’Oiseau de Feu, and Les Noces. Though considered a choreographer of contemporary dance, most dance critics agree that Preljocaj’s works are indebted to the tradition of classical ballet and to neoclassical techniques. In his inventive version of Rite of Spring, the choreography is structured in particular around the idea of a primitive energy related to sex and violence.

...