Joan Acocella RIP

[Drew]

May she rest in peace:

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/07/obituaries/joan-acocella-dead.html

 

[sandik]

"“What will they become?” she recalled thinking about their futures, when she wrote the introduction to her book “Twenty-Eight Artists and Two Saints” (2007), a collection of essays and reviews.

“There are many brilliant artists — they are born every day — but those who end up having sustained artistic careers are not necessarily the most gifted,” she wrote, adding that they were “the ones who combined brilliance with more homely virtues: patience, resilience, courage.”"

I've often thought that one of the attributes of an excellent dancer or choreographer is a high tolerance for repetition -- the patience to work on something over time.

[uptowner]

“Gift” link for the NYT obit (should be unlocked) https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/07/obituaries/joan-acocella-dead.html?unlocked_article_code=1.ME0.i0SM.aQXdj87za8gX&smid=url-share

[sandik]

Rummaging around in my hard drive, I found this, from some long-ago review.  She was super smart, and knew her references, but she could also be a smartass.

"One of the most frightening things you can say to someone is, 'let’s go to a modern dance concert.'”

[volcanohunter]

4 hours ago, sandik said:

"One of the most frightening things you can say to someone is, 'let’s go to a modern dance concert.'”

Well, it is a crapshoot, and I say that as a former modern dancer. 

[California]

New York Review of Books has posted an archive of her writing. I think this is all public access:

https://www.nybooks.com/contributors/joan-acocella/?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=NYR-01-09-23-Acocella_theme&utm_content=NYR-01-09-23-Acocella_theme+CID_3938b533263c2bc7a8d444ed3df92d63&utm_source=Newsletter&utm_term=the%20full%20archive%20may%20be%20found%20here

[sandik]

7 hours ago, volcanohunter said:

Well, it is a crapshoot, and I say that as a former modern dancer. 

And I agree, as a dance critic!

4 hours ago, California said:

New York Review of Books has posted an archive of her writing. I think this is all public access:

https://www.nybooks.com/contributors/joan-acocella/?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=NYR-01-09-23-Acocella_theme&utm_content=NYR-01-09-23-Acocella_theme+CID_3938b533263c2bc7a8d444ed3df92d63&utm_source=Newsletter&utm_term=the%20full%20archive%20may%20be%20found%20here

Thanks so much for the link.  I don't subscribe to NYRB, and so missed a lot of what she wrote here.

[Quiggin]

Not all of the archive at NYRB seems to be in public access though you can register for one (or two) free looks. Public libraries, such as San Francisco's, may have online subscriptions through Flipster, but only to 2014.

I enjoyed reading Joan Acocella's reviews, though there seemed to me to be some sadness along with the sharpness. Here's a clip from a 1995 article on another critic, Robert Garis:

Quote

Garis was part of a particular group of well-read, articulate people, many of them artists and writers, who gathered around Balanchine’s enterprise in the Fifties, Sixties, and Seventies, and he tells us something about this crowd: how they conducted their friendships at the ballet, how they huddled together at intermission, comparing their responses and arguing over the respective merits of this and that ballerina. My one complaint about the book is that it doesn’t offer more of this material. Garis gives us only glancing portraits, often uncomplimentary, of a few of the principals: the much-revered dance critic and poet Edwin Denby, whom he portrays as an oblique and calculating man; Haggin, with his dogmatism and his bullying. He also touches on Kirstein, whom he seems to have regarded as little more than the company’s PR man ...

But Garis’s brevity on the subject of the goings-on around the company is part of his empiricism, his determination to tell us only what he himself experienced, and in sticking to that subject, he has given us something invaluable. 

For a large portion of the audience, it was not just a ballet company; it was a central event in their lives. Garis was one of those people, and though the inwardness of his book is unique in writings on Balanchine—indeed, on ballet—it is nevertheless representative of the effect the company had. Under Balanchine, NYCB was a mental adventure of the profoundest kind. The adventure is over now, but Garis testifies to the happiness it gave.

The New York Times obit mentions that a collection of AC's writings on literature, “The Bloodied Nightgown and Other Essays,” will be published later in the year.

Edited January 9 by Quiggin