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.