"Criticism & Culture of Ballet"

Robert Johnson is a dance critic and journalist with more than 30 years of experience covering the American dance scene for daily newspapers, trade magazines, e-magazines, books, and scholarly journals. Based in New York City, he has enjoyed a wealth of opportunities writing about every conceivable style of dance from classical ballet to Bharatanatyam, and has reviewed dance companies from around the world. As a feature writer, he has interviewed many of the great figures of his time, a list of phenomenal talents that includes Germaine Acogny, Alicia Alonso, Ronald K. Brown, Trisha Brown, Merce Cunningham, Katherine Dunham, Boris Eifman, Garth Fagan, Suzanne Farrell, Farruquito, Savion Glover, Yuri Grigorovich, Judith Jamison, Virginia Johnson, Bill T. Jones, Jiří Kylián, Liz Lerman, Wayne McGregor, Arthur Mitchell, Eiko Otake, Mallika Sarabhai, Paul Taylor, Twyla Tharp, Helgi Tomasson, Doug Varone, Violette Verdy, Edward Villella, Diana Vishneva, and Eva Yerbabuena, among a host of others. As a critic, he continues to address such pressing issues as the preservation of our dance heritage, politics and gender, the economics of dance, racism, environmentalism, and technology. He has taught and lectured on dance history and criticism. He trained in ballet with Nina Youshkevitch, giving him a special interest in the Ballets Russes and in the works of Bronislava Nijinska; and he holds a master’s degree in Performance Studies from New York University, where he studied criticism with Marcia Siegel. He has been News Editor at Dance Magazine, and Reviews Editor at Pointe. From 1998 to 2014, he was staff dance critic for The Star-Ledger, in Newark, New Jersey; and he was honored to receive Dance New Jersey’s 2005 Arts Advocate Award. Currently he contributes to The Dance Enthusiast and NJArts.net.