Dancing Sydney Review Platform seeks to make a small contribution to addressing a lack of critical discourse, both now and historically, that would even begin to approach the published literature surrounding Australian visual art, music and theatre. Creative excellence requires dialogue with a community that is engaged, informed and committed. With space for arts reviews in major outlets slimmer than ever before, and a tradition of underwhelming or downright negligent publishing when it comes to dance criticism in this country, we need fresh strategies for gaining critical ground for Australian contemporary dance.
The already beleaguered artistic community involved in contemporary dance development and production in Australia might not survive one more widely read, but poorly informed critic. Yes, everyone's entitled to their opinion, but where is the equity in appointing expert commentators in our major papers across the visual arts, literature, theatre and dance who have an appropriate level of knowledge and care and can produce informed, well-written, and productively critical articles?
One example of this inequity is a recent review of INDance at Sydney Dance Company published in the SMH August 23, 2024. The critic opens with a wholesale damning of the field that amplifies the misconceptions and prejudices that the art form has been dogged by for many decades:
Modern dance cliches – the bad ones – often involve shapeless bags, near-darkness, long periods of repetitive or very slow movement and superfluous nudity. Perhaps this is why modern dance is sometimes unfairly labelled as self-indulgent or inaccessible.
Such repetitions of outdated clichés set us back yet again as we work to attract audiences to this artform through informed discourse. The sensationalist tone of this review is in line with ‘shock-jock tactics’: attempts to win reader attention at the expense of reviewing excellence. This is an extremely outdated and unethical mode, unworthy of publication in any self-respecting outlet.
Who evaluates the critic? Who has gained the stripes to translate Australian Contemporary Dance for broader audiences, an art form that has its references in international, cutting-edge practices, and the broader contemporary arts? Visual art criticism in this country has boasted giants such as Robert Hughes, controversial voices such as John McDonald, and a new generation of artist-critics such as Lisa Radford and Neha Kale. Literary criticism has had artist-critics such as Patrick White and Drusilla Modjeska as well as new voices Jeanine Leane, Cher Tan and Prithvi Varatharajan. Theatre has had the brilliant James Waites, Alison Croggan and my colleague at UNSW, John McCallum. Music has Andrew Ford and the brilliant Robert Forster.
Why is contemporary dance consistently shuffled into the 'too hard' basket? Where is the editorial duty-of-care? What attempts are made to research the best candidate for this work? RealTime arts journal did so much to build serious critical dialogue around dance, with an impressive roll call of top-notch writers; Eleanor Brickhill, Philippa Rothfield, and Andrew Fuhrmann. Justine Shih Pearson has published some excellent reviews in The Conversation, and Vicki Van Hout’s review blog for FORM Dance Projects (2013-) in Sydney provides crucial archives of works that may not have been covered anywhere else.
Dancing Sydney Review Platform is supported by local dance writers and scholars who see dance criticism as an essential part of any healthy dance ecology. In supporting new and emerging writers through editorial support and guidance, we hope to sow some seeds for future quality writings on dance.