Contrary to popular belief, when artsmeme is not excavating the coal mines of library archives for factoids to tickle your fancy, or cajoling you to attend the latest cool performance, she has a social life! This gathering on Oscar Sunday in New York included some of the most interesting thinkers, doers, researchers, authors, shakers, and makers of the city’s dance community.
From left to right, they include: Naomi Goldberg, executive and artistic director of Dances for a Variable Population and a leading national expert on movement for seniors and physically disabled; Wendy Perron, dance writer, self-described “dance addict,” and author of a soon-published history of the Grand Union dance collective; artsmeme‘s Debra Levine, visiting from Los Angeles; Amanda Vaill, editor/commentator of the recently published Jerome Robbins: By Himself, a handsome and intriguing compendium of Robbins’s letters and photos; Norton Owen, Director of Preservation at Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival, the crossroads of not just performance, but also dance scholarship; and Elizabeth Zimmer, dance critic, longtime dance editor of the Village Voice and most recently Jerome Robbins Dance Division Research Fellow at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, where she has worked in the archives of Selma Jean Cohen, a pioneer in the fields of dance history, theory and philosophy.
Yes, much knowledge! but on this Oscar night, also a lot of fun.
If the dance world cannot win an Oscar, then, at least, it can eat Oscar cookies. These golden nuggets we spied in the display case of the marvelous “Amy’s Bread” cafe at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, where the Jerome Robbins Dance Division is housed.
