Arlene Croce

Arlene Croce
Born	5 May 1934  Providence
Died	16 December 2024  (aged 90) Johnston
Awards	Guggenheim Fellowship (dance research, 1971)

Arlene Louise Croce (May 5, 1934 – December 16, 2024) was an American dance critic. She founded Ballet Review magazine in 1965. From 1973 to 1996 she was a dance critic for The New Yorker magazine.

Life and career

Croce was born in Providence, Rhode Island, on May 5, 1934. Prior to Croce's long career as a dance writer, she also wrote film criticism for Film Culture and other magazines. The keynote of her criticism can be grasped from her ability to evoke kinesthetic movement and expressive images in her writing. Although she considered ballet to epitomize the highest form of dance, she has also wrote extensively on the topic of popular and filmed dance, and was a recognized authority on the Astaire and Rogers musical films.

In 1994, she courted controversy with her stance on Bill T. Jones's Still/Here, a work about terminal illness. In an article called "Discussing the Undiscussable," she dubbed the work "victim art" and refused to attend any performances, claiming that it was "unreviewable." The article was reprinted in her 2000 book, Writing in the Dark.

Her writings on dance are available in several books, and a sampling of her film criticism can be found in the anthology American Movie Critics: An Anthology From the Silents Until Now. A review of her The Fred Astaire & Ginger Rogers Book can be found in Pauline Kael's collection of movie reviews, Reeling.

Croce died in Johnston, Rhode Island, on December 16, 2024, at the age of 90.

Bibliography

Incomplete - to be updated

Books

• The Fred Astaire & Ginger Rogers Book (1972)
• Afterimages (1978)
• Going to the Dance (1982)
• Sight Lines (1987)
• Writing in the Dark, Dancing in 'The New Yorker' (2000)
• American Movie Critics: An Anthology From the Silents Until Now (2006), edited by Phillip Lopate — contains her reviews on the films Pather Panchali and Aparajito as well as a selection from The Fred Astaire & Ginger Rogers Book.

Articles

• Croce, Arlene (28 January 1985). "Dancing: Experiments". The New Yorker. Vol. 60, no. 50. pp. 81–85. Gail Conrad and The Tap Dance Theatre; American Ballet Theatre's performance of Field, Chair and Mountain by David Gordon.
• About Arlene Croce (in Spanish). La crítica en la danza. "Discussing the indiscussable". By Patricia Roldán
• The Dance Criticism of Arlene Croce (2005) by Marc Raymond Strauss, McFarland & Co, ISBN 978-0786423507

External links

• Arlene Croce at IMDb
• "Arlene Croce Biography (1934-)". Filmreference.com. Retrieved 16 September 2017.
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