Background
Croce, Arlene Louise was born on May 5, 1934 in Providence. Daughter of Michael Daniel and Louise Natalie (Pensa) Croce.
( The best of America's best writer on dance For twenty...)
The best of America's best writer on dance For twenty-five years, Arlene Croce was The New Yorker's dance critic, a post the magazine created expressly for her. Her entertaining, forthright, passionate reviews and essays revealed the logic and history of ballet, modern dance, and their postmodern variants to a generation of theatergoers. This volume contains her most significant and provocative pieces—over a fourth of which never appeared in book form—covering classical ballets, the rise of George Balanchine, the careers of Twyla Tharp, Mark Morris, and Merce Cunningham, and the controversies surrounding many of the twentieth century’s great dance companies.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0813029139/?tag=2022091-20
Croce, Arlene Louise was born on May 5, 1934 in Providence. Daughter of Michael Daniel and Louise Natalie (Pensa) Croce.
Student, Women's College student, University North Carolina, 1951-1953; Bachelor, Barnard College, 1955.
She was a dance critic for The New Yorker magazine from 1973 to 1998. Prior to her long career as a dance writer, she also wrote film criticism for Film Culture and other magazines. The keynote of her criticism can be grasped from her ability to evoke kinesthetic movement and expressive images in her writing.
Although she considers ballet to epitomize the highest form of dance, she has also written extensively on the topic of popular and filmed dance, and is a recognized authority on the Astaire and Rogers musical films.
In 1994, she courted controversy with her stance on Bill T. Jones"s Still/Here, a work about terminal illness. In an article called "Discussing the Undiscussable," she dubbed the work "victim art" and refused to attend any performances, claiming that it was "unreviewable." The article was reprinted in her 2000 book, Writing in the Dark.
Her writings on dance are available in several books, and a sampling of her film criticism can be found in the anthology American Movie Critics: An Anthology From the Silents Until Now. A review of her The Fred Astaire & Ginger Rogers Book can be found in Pauline Kael"s collection of movie reviews, Reeling.
( The best of America's best writer on dance For twenty...)
(1987 ALFRED A. KNOPF hardcover, Arlene Croce (The Fred As...)
(First Edition)
Fellow National Arts Journalism Program (senior).