Dance reviewers again

I'd intended to post a link to this piece in the Guardian a few weeks ago by Mark Lawson:

"If a serious newspaper were to cease printing theatre or movie reviews, there would be outrage on the letters pages, delegations from professional bodies to see the editor and discussions on radio arts shows. The Daily Mail's decision to dispense with overnight TV reviews, though, has passed with hardly a comment. But the reasons for the decision are revealing of a significant shift in TV's relationship with viewers and with newspaper readers."
Guardian Media

The day it appeared I met some dance critics who were very gloomy about what this might mean for their own craft. And I've been brooding about it in the context of my own dance reviews for The Tablet, and constantly asking myself, "why would anyone want to read this?" The question is additionally focused for me, because I edit other reviewers' work.

My readers are, for the most part, thoughtful Catholics and Anglicans (some Jewish readers). Lots of clerics, academics, politicians, lawyers, social activists, civil servants, teachers, and - interestingly - other journalists. In my particular situation, I'm trying to write more from the perspectives of dance as ritual, dance's moral/ethical dimension, and dance as anthropology - and how it reads our culture. I try to persuade readers why they should care about dance - and why it is more than an entertainment. It probably makes for strange reading, because it doesn't take background knowledge for granted. Some of my judgements might read eccentrically out of that context, but, I hope, they sit well within it. So, for instance, in writing about Wayne McGregor's Chroma, I knew that my readers were aware of John Pawson's Cistercian monastery at Novy Dvur in Bohemia, and that issues of 'charged limbos' and 'sacred spaces' will make sense to them. And I come to McGregor with my own moral agenda. No problems with the language or style - but lots of issues with the anomic emptiness that screams at me from everything he does. And I would be open about that in my own pages, but wouldn't venture similar thoughts elsewhere. That said, I wish I had seen the piece more than once. Most of my work is very deliberate, and reviewing simpliciter doesn't really allow that luxury. (For similar reasons, but, perhaps, more rooted in my own psychology, I was incredibly moved by Rudi Van Dantzig's Four Last Songs. I began to doubt my own good judgement when I saw what others wrote.)

Dance writers for generalist publications face similar questions about their publics. Unless you are writing for a committed readership, you probably need to be changing how you write. One critic complained that all that arts editors cared about now was 'stars' (as in 5-4-3-2-1). But, in some ways, that's fair enough: in a daily paper that's a quick read, dance reviewing is a branch of consumer journalism, kindred almost to the restaurant page. You want to know who's up, who's down, what's in, what's out, what's worth your money, what's to miss.

I believe that there will be a major shake-out in arts reviewing over the coming years. While newspapers have changed in so many ways, arts reviews have avoided some of the acutest pressures, perhaps because they've been in editors' peripheral vision, and because there is a lingering sense of a high culture that educated readers are presumed to share. Dance reviewing is a very particular case, (a) because it is intrinsically problematic (ii) most readers will never see the performance (in the case of theatre or music, there is a sporting chance, either that they will, or that they will know what's being discussed), (iii) because dance is perceived as, somehow, not really intellectually respectable.