Avenali Lectures

Joan Acocella, Avenali Chair in the Humanities 2004-2005

“Ballet and Sex” | February 22, 2005
Follow-up Panel Discussion | February 23, 2005

Joan Acocella is a dance and book critic for The New Yorker. She has served as the senior critic and reviews editor for Dance Magazine and New York dance critic for London’s Financial Times. Acocella’s writing conveys an enthusiasm for dance as an art form that taps human instincts and emotions at a visceral level. Her reviews have a wide appeal both for their sophisticated appreciation of performance and their down-to-earth and conversational style.

Acocella has authored and edited several books on dance, literature, and psychology, including Willa Cather and the Politics of Criticism; Creating Hysteria: Women and Multiple Personality Disorder; and Mark Morris. An alumna of UC Berkeley and Rutgers University, she has been a Guggenheim Fellow and a fellow of the New York Institute for the Humanities.

Panel Discussants: Joan Acocella, Joe Goode (Theater, Dance and Performance Studies), Wendy Lesser (Editor, The Threepenny Review), and Suzana Sawyer (Anthropology, UC Davis). 

Webcast

Related Events

A Conversation with Joan Acocella and Trisha Brown | February 24, 2005

“Dancing Girls” | February 25, 2005

A discussion with Joan Acocella specifically geared toward undergraduates, on dance, gender, and life at The New Yorker.

“Reviewing Art” | February 25, 2005

Acocella with Alla Efimova (Judah L. Magnes Museum), Ramona Naddaff (Rhetoric), and Joshua Kosman (San Francisco Chronicle); moderated by Anthony J. Cascardi (Director, Consortium for the Arts).