Twisting the Night Away

Rebecca J. Ritzel's Feb. 5 Style review of last weekend's Choreographers' Showcase at the University of Maryland was a slap in the face to serious modern dancers in the region.

I danced in the showcase, but I am not writing to address Ritzel's chilly review of Daniel Burkholder's "My Ocean Is Never Blue," the piece I performed in. Instead, I'd like to highlight the three pieces, by Megan Harrold, Tzveta Kassabova and Samantha Speis, that impressed me and other modern-dance fans in the audience with their clear, compelling choreography and very talented dancers. Ritzel, in contrast, simply wrote those pieces off as "variations on a tiresome theme," and described the strong dancing as merely "crash[ing] to the floor."

The piece Ritzel highlighted as the evening's best, "The Hunt of the Gatherers," by Kutia Jawara, was certainly interesting and probably the most accessible to non-dance audiences. However, her description of those dancers as "by far the most talented at the showcase" illustrated, disturbingly, that Ritzel knows little about modern dance and what makes a good dancer.

While Ritzel may have a legitimate beef with the abstract nature of modern dance, that gripe has no place in a review of a local modern-dance showcase. You frequently print articles by Blake Gopnik that lambaste accessible visual art pieces and instead highlight obscure artists who can be appreciated only by serious connoisseurs. If visual art is given this kind of respect and provided with a reviewer committed to its development, why isn't modern dance?

-- Amanda Abrams

Washington