Critical Gestures: Writings on Dance and Culture

Ann Daly ranks among the most insightful, articulate dance critics and scholars writing today. Spanning the divide between journalism and scholarship, this collection offers a double-sighted view of dance in America from 1986 to the present, documenting the shift in experimental dance from formal to social concerns, and recording the expansion of dance studies in the academy from historical documentation to cultural criticism.

Daly examines performance art and visual art as they relate to and influence dance, with a look at the intersection of dance and history. Gender is the subject of the final section of the book. More than 80 reviews, features, essays, interviews and scholarly articles — including extended considerations of Pina Bausch, Deborah Hay, Bill T. Jones and Ralph Lemon — were originally published in venues ranging from High Performance to The New York Times to TDR: A Journal of Performance Studies.