Joan Acocella, Avenali Lecture 2005 - Ballet and Sex

Abstract: This event was held on February 22, 2005 in the Morrison Library, UC Berkeley.

Joan Acocella received her B.A. cum laude in English from the University of California at Berkeley. She earned a Ph.D. in comparative literature at Rutgers University in 1984; her thesis was on the Ballets Russes. She has served as the senior critic and reviews editor for Dance Magazine and New York dance critic for London's Financial Times. Acocella is currently dance critic for The New Yorker, where she also writes on books. In addition, Acocella has been a Guggenheim fellow and is currently a fellow of the New York Institute for the Humanities. She has lectured at universities in New York and California.

Acocella's dance reviews have a wide appeal because her wit is down to earth and energetically conversational in style: "Today, primitivism is the opposite of surprising. Loincloths? Not again!" Importantly, they allow us to share in the author's enthusiasm for dance as an art form that taps human instincts and emotions at a visceral level. At the same time, her writings on dance convey a sophisticated appreciation of performance. John Rockwell reflects on this combo in a review of Acocella's critical biography of choreographer Mark Morris: "[Acocella] is a great reader of subtexts and parser of artistic intentions. . She is also an exponent of aw-shucks plainness à l'Américaine: 'There is a doggy side to love,'; 'things go pow.'"

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