The dance review that I read was titled “Blacka Di Danca Shakes His Way Through Borough Hall” by Siobhan Burke. I found this dance review interesting because I learned about the BEAT festival, which is something I have never heard about before. The idea of bringing performing arts to nontheatrical sites in Brooklyn such as parks, warehouses, and galleries is something I never knew existed or heard about before. I found this review very helpful and I noticed some of the aspects of a dance critique that Wendy Oliver mentioned in the reading. One of the things I noticed was the description portion of the critique. Burke says, “In the Nuh Linga (No Linger), the foot draws an S-shape on the floor while the upper body snakes and fingers snap. Down the Flank resembles the act of kicking a soccer ball and the Gully Creeper that of sneaking out at night.” Burke did a good job at describing certain steps and creating an image in my head of what it could look like. This was done really well and I liked how easy it was to understand certain steps and how they are carried out without even seeing them in person.
Another aspect of the critique that I noticed was interpretation. Interpretation includes the the writer’s personal views of the entire work or certain aspects of it in order to find the meaning of it. I saw this when Burke said, “The BEAT organizers aren’t always prudent in their pairing of artist and site; last year’s nocturnal performances in Green-Wood Cemetery, for instance, underutilized that locale. “Dancehall in Borough Hall” at first seemed like another mismatch, the bureaucratic vibes at odds with the dynamism of Blacka Di Danca and his sidekicks, Janelle Garvey and Aliyah Ali. But as they settled in for a 15-minute show, followed by a 45-minute class for adventurous audience members (the rest of us could just observe), the sterility of the space fell away. And it didn’t matter that only a few people were watching; a wiry, daring dancer with unlimited charisma, Blacka Di Danca can work a crowd of any size.” Even though Burke had his doubts in the beginning, after seeing the entire performance, he concluded that the overall dance performance was successful and he noticed that even though the place of the performance was odd it ended up working regardless. Burke also shows his final evaluation of the dance performance when he says “Excited to the point of giddiness by the history of his form, Blacka di Danca is keeping it very much alive.”
I can tell by the critique that Burke has looked into Blacka Di Danca’s style and his previous works. This helped him to be able to interpret the dance better and to come up with his final evaluation of the entire piece of work. Just like Wendy Oliver mentioned in the reading, I agree that a critique has to allow the reader to feel well informed about the performance even if they saw it in person or not. A good critique gives specific details but also gives general observations to better understand and visualize the performance being reviewed. I think that Burke could have possibly analyzed the dance performance more, but overall I do think it was a good critique in the sense that it allowed me to experience the performance even though I was not present.
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