Dance Dance Film Essays

Previously uncollected dance writings from the legendary art critic who defined the Pictures Generation, in a handsome clothbound edition Pioneering AIDS activist, art critic, educator and curator Douglas Crimp is known for the fluidity and acuity of his writing on an array of passions. His book AIDS: Cultural Analysis/Cultural Activism (1987) deconstructed the art world's complicated and mostly disheartening responses to the AIDS crisis; On the Museum's Ruins (1993) explored postmodernist art practices in relation to the politics of institutions; and Before Pictures (2016), a brilliant combination of memoir and criticism, chronicled Crimp's first decade in 1970s New York. This new book collects the critic's incisive pieces on dance (a lifelong interest) and dance on film, which, according to Artforum, "galvanized the field and synthesized histories of ballet, modern dance and postmodern performance." Written from 2006 to 2010, these in-depth essays are devoted to choreographers and filmmakers such as Charles Atlas, Trisha Brown, Merce Cunningham, Tacita Dean, Anne Teresa de Keersmaeker and Yvonne Rainer.