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| Deborah Jowitt out at The Village Voice |
When I was young and restless and living on the East Coast, I was an avid reader of The Village Voice. I read the political columns closely, because the mainstream press failed to appreciate either the depth of the disaster and folly in Vietnam or the old-boy corruption at home, and the Voice did. And I read the arts writers, Andrew Sarris for film and Robert Christgau for rock, because they understood that the arts of the times weren't a decorative sideshow -- they were at the center of things, reflecting the tumult of the '60s and containing the most savage and telling critiques of American society. I understood that from reading those critics.
I also read the Voice's dance critics. Jill Johnston's columns barely qualified as criticism really. They were bright bursts of a cultural and personal consciousness summoned by dance, more than careful considerations. The shocking and wonderful dance experiments of the time, which questioned and redeployed all of the elements of movement into completely new approaches and concepts, were perfect for Johnston's enthusiasm. Deborah Jowitt was aware of the cultural upheaval around her, but she focused her considerable powers of observation on the dance itself and the artists who made it, finding in their radical experiments a way for us all to engage the world creatively.
This is a column about Jowitt, because she recently resigned from the Voice rather than change her approach to writing about dance. Her editor wanted to her to write more "negative" reviews, and that's not the kind of critic that Jowitt is. She rightly refused to comply, and as a result, the Voice continues its mad dash toward irrelevance. Actually, I suppose it's more of a marathon, this slow unwinding of a once-great newspaper. On the other hand, I'm confident that Jowitt will find interesting projects and places to write in the future. She is a national institution greater than the newspaper she is leaving.
