Avenali Lectures

Joan Acocella, Avenali Chair in the Humanities 2004-2005

“Ballet and Sex” || February 22, 2005

Webcast || Joan Acocella received her B.A. cum laude in English from the University of California at Berkeley. She earned a Ph.D. in comparative literature at Rutgers University in 1984; her thesis was on the Ballets Russes. She has served as the senior critic and reviews editor for Dance Magazine and New York dance critic for London’s Financial Times. Acocella is currently dance critic for The New Yorker, where she also writes on books. In addition, Acocella has been a Guggenheim fellow and is currently a fellow of the New York Institute for the Humanities. She has lectured at universities in New York and California.

Acocella’s dance reviews have a wide appeal because her wit is down to earth and energetically conversational in style:  “Today, primitivism is the opposite of surprising.  Loincloths? Not again!” Importantly, they allow us to share in the author’s enthusiasm for dance as an art form that taps human instincts and emotions at a visceral level. At the same time, her writings on dance convey a sophisticated appreciation of performance. John Rockwell reflects on this combination in a review of Acocella’s critical biography of choreographer Mark Morris: “[Acocella] is a great reader of subtexts and parser of artistic intentions. … She is also an exponent of aw-shucks plainness à l’Américaine:  ‘There is a doggy side to love,’; ‘things go pow.’”

In addition to a long list of dance and book reviews, Acocella has authored several books on dance, literature, and psychology—Willa Cather and the Politics of Criticism (2000), Creating Hysteria: Women and Multiple Personality Disorder (1999), and Mark Morris (1993)—and has edited The Diary of Vaslav Nijinsky:  Unexpurgated Edition (1999) and Andre Levinson on Dance (1991). 

Other Events with Joan Acocella

Follow-up Panel Discussion || February 23, 2005

Joan Acocella (Avenali Lecturer), Joe Goode (Theater, Dance and Performance Studies), Wendy Lesser (Editor, The Threepenny Review), and Suzana Sawyer (Anthropology, UC Davis)

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

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