Christian Boltanski at the Jewish Museum – “seeing my work…somebody that I don’t know…is going to be sad for two minutes…”
...and indeed, emerging from the elevator at the Jewish Museum in NYC at mid-day on Friday, November 14, 2025, I came face to face with this striking piece by Christian Boltanski (1944-2021) -- an artist I have admired over four decades for his elegaic, memory-laden...
MG at the Salmagundi Club – Fifth Ave – NYC
Wednesday evening, October 22, 2025 - On the occasion of the third anniversary of the publication of MARTHA GRAHAM - WHEN DANCE BECAME MODERN what a delight to speak at the venerable Salmagundi Club/Coffee House, in animated conversation with my editor at Knopf,...
PRIDE AND PLEASURE in many ways at the Morristown Festival of Books
Saturday, October 11. 2025, mid-day. My bemused friend and literary comrade Amanda Vaill is seen here poised to sign copies of her new book, Pride and Pleasure - The Schuyler Sisters in an Age of Revolution at the Morristown (N.J.) Festival of Books, where she was a...
A fabulous “MARTHA GRAHAM 100” book party at Apparatus in Chelsea
Friday night, October 9, 2025. Dancers Ane Arieta and Leslie Andrea Williams display their exuberant esprit de corps in celebration of the just-published lavish, eye-popping, monumental MARTHA DANCE COMPANY 100 YEARS, a labor of impeccable love by photographers Ken...
My joyous introduction to The Brooklyn Rail
October 1, 2025 - My first invitation to join Phong Bui and likeminded friends -- and he says it best: "The Beauty of Friends Being Together: What a joy to see our brilliant friends the other day at Rail HQ in Greenpoint where I hosted a another delicious lunch...
MAN RAY at the MET
Friday, September 26, 2025, 9:30 a.m. - What an extraordinary privilege, thanks to the friendly generosity of Carol Shuster-Polakoff and Phong H. Bui, to bear witness to Man Ray: When Objects Dream, on view at the Metropolitan Museum of Art through February 1, 2026....
Remembering Linda Hodes – June 3, 1931-August 1, 2025 – with gratitude to Marni Wood.
"I talked to Linda Hodes and she would be delighted to meet with you," renowned Martha Graham Company veteran and founder of the UC Berkeley Dance department Marni Wood told me on June 10, 2014. Marni and I had chatted over coffee (at her favorite spot, the now late...
March 21 – UNESCO’s World Poetry Day – a prediction from Czeslaw Milosz
A poem worth pondering, chosen in a time bearing witness to the invasion and destruction of our institutions. In the essay collection The Witness of Poetry (1983), Milosz stresses the importance of Poland's cultural heritage and history in shaping his work. “My corner...
Goodbye to all that…
Into my seventh decade as a published author/editor/critic. Books and little magazines and manuscripts and photographs and ephemera on the 3rd floor have been building up, containing multitudes. It feels like forever that I've been talking to friends and family about...
Deaths and Entrances – the plotless poem & Emily’s role
Friday afternoon, February 21 2025 - In the 11th floor rehearsal studio, inundated by Hunter Johnson's invasive score, bearing witness to the Martha Graham ensemble unspooling this episodic quasi-narrative under the impeccable guidance of Blakeley White-McGuire and...
Margaret Mighty Oak Brackey Prepares to Take Her Leap in Charles Weidman’s Lynchtown
Tuesday evening, January 27th, 2025 - in the Studio at 115 Wooster Street - I was invited by Samantha Geracht to sit quietly (as always) and lend "another pair of eyes" to a rehearsal for Charles Weidman's seven-minute epic, the 1936 Lynchtown to be presented on...
Martha Graham’s Romanticism – Back in the studio @ Gibney – Janet Eilber rehearsing Appalachian Spring
January 15, 2025 - The new years parade by. I lose count of how many times I have witnessed APPALACHIAN SPRING, and have come to understand why -- because a masterpiece is inexhaustible. My familiarity with the enduring content of this dance has likewise expanded...