Brian Seibert’s review, “The Duet as a Physical Sculpture, Unburdened by Noise or Clothing,” focuses on Molly Lieber and Eleanor Smith’s dance performance Rude World. Throughout the review, Seibert highlights how the dancers, although seemingly “dancing only for each other” in a “self-contained world,” obviously made it for “the external gaze.” Although the dance between the partners seems private, their movements are often a showcase for the audience. This point is clear throughout all the paragraphs, which is a technique Wendy Oliver emphasizes, stating that “all writing on a specific dance” must be “connected to your thesis statement for that dance” (77).

Although Seibert does not supply the reader with enough description to actually envision the dance itself, he does supply snippets of description, which is effective in this case because, as Oliver points out, “generalized description of a…section of a dance is appropriate for capturing its flavor” (79). He is able to capture “the flavor” of the dance through use of specific words and phrases such as “sensual,” “tactile,” and “interplay of weight, muscular tension and release.” He also makes effective use of language through similes such as “they are like tangled strands of seaweed caught up in gently churning waves,” which according to Oliver, helps to “communicate the impact of the work in an engaging way” (90).

Furthermore, Seibert goes on to provide his own interpretation, exemplifying Oliver’s technique: “forming a plausible hypothesis about the meaning of a dance and then backing it up” (85). Although he does not provide interpretations as frequently as descriptions, he picks a specific part to interpret the dance as a whole. He states that the performance was “sensual, tactile, but the tone…much less erotic than exposed and undefended” and goes on to defend his view by describing the “prone Ms. Lieber [pulling] her knees under her and [arching] her back.”

Along with this interpretation, Siebert concludes the review with an evaluation. Overall, he describes the dance as “too haphazard and insufficiently thought through,” and that “the view is beautiful, but it isn’t quite enough.” However, unlike Oliver description of evaluation as building “on description, analysis, and interpretations to make arguments” regarding the successes and failures of a performance, Seibert fails to build up to his evaluation. His descriptions and interpretations fail to lead up to his final conclusion–he does not use them to indicate why he thought that the dance was not enough.