This is a review of Nora Chipaumire’s “Miriam” by Claudia La Rocco.
One thought on “Dance Review – “Miriam””
Claudia La Rocco starts her dance review on “Miriam” by describing the atmosphere in which the dance was performed, already leaving the reader fully engaged in the mystery and darkness of the piece. She then continues to summarize “Miriam” with a good balance of specifics while keeping her writing interesting. Her use of construction and organization generally conforms to what was suggested in Chapter 4 of Wendy Oliver’s “Writing About Dance”. While most of the article is description, evoking a lot of feeling, there are few evaluative, analytic, and interpretive points created by the author.
La Rocco’s choice of language is suitable for a well written critique, with descriptive terms such as “enigmatic”, “hunched”, and “aggressive”; words that all helped the reader feel the environment and air of the dance in the best way possible without actually witnessing the performance.
Although Oliver mentions that a first person point of view is more effective when used in a dance review because it is more personal, La Rocco only uses first person in one paragraph. As a reader, one may feel the disconnect as it seems like La Rocco inadequately “critiques”, using most of the article to capture only the visual and emotional aspects of the dance.
Over all, Claudia La Rocco accurately displays the style of writing and language needed in the “description” aspect of a critical dance review. However, based on Wendy Oliver’s “Writing About Dance”, the article lacks elements of analysis and evaluation based on observations. The closest sentence to resemble a thesis would be “Though “Miriam,” which had its New York premiere on Wednesday night, is housed in the Brooklyn Academy of Music’s diminutive new Fishman Space, with spectators seated on four sides just steps away from the performance, it still requires its watchers to lean in.” Yet at the end of the article, the reader does not feel that La Rocco has proven any point or given much thought of her feelings toward the performance “Miriam”.
-Olga
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Claudia La Rocco starts her dance review on “Miriam” by describing the atmosphere in which the dance was performed, already leaving the reader fully engaged in the mystery and darkness of the piece. She then continues to summarize “Miriam” with a good balance of specifics while keeping her writing interesting. Her use of construction and organization generally conforms to what was suggested in Chapter 4 of Wendy Oliver’s “Writing About Dance”. While most of the article is description, evoking a lot of feeling, there are few evaluative, analytic, and interpretive points created by the author.
La Rocco’s choice of language is suitable for a well written critique, with descriptive terms such as “enigmatic”, “hunched”, and “aggressive”; words that all helped the reader feel the environment and air of the dance in the best way possible without actually witnessing the performance.
Although Oliver mentions that a first person point of view is more effective when used in a dance review because it is more personal, La Rocco only uses first person in one paragraph. As a reader, one may feel the disconnect as it seems like La Rocco inadequately “critiques”, using most of the article to capture only the visual and emotional aspects of the dance.
Over all, Claudia La Rocco accurately displays the style of writing and language needed in the “description” aspect of a critical dance review. However, based on Wendy Oliver’s “Writing About Dance”, the article lacks elements of analysis and evaluation based on observations. The closest sentence to resemble a thesis would be “Though “Miriam,” which had its New York premiere on Wednesday night, is housed in the Brooklyn Academy of Music’s diminutive new Fishman Space, with spectators seated on four sides just steps away from the performance, it still requires its watchers to lean in.” Yet at the end of the article, the reader does not feel that La Rocco has proven any point or given much thought of her feelings toward the performance “Miriam”.
-Olga