Dancing on Air

Journalism it's often remarked, is the first draft of history. In dance, reviews in mass media provide the bedrock for much historical research. The dance boom, which came along in the mid-1960s, led to a boomlet in opportunities for writers in New York City, chiefly in the Village Voice and the Soho Weekly News , weeklies that supported the work of Deborah Jowitt and Marcia Siegel, pioneering writers in the alternative press, and provided outlets for many other young critics. The Dance Touring Program of the National Endowment for the Arts created a demand for writers across the country. With the end of the DTP in 1986, performances, and the need for reviewers, fell off outside New York. During the 1980s we lost several publications— Dance News and Ballet News , and even the Soho Weekly News —that had nurtured fledgling critics. Through the 1990s, space for dance in the Village Voice kept shrinking. There have been fewer opportunities for young writers to hone their skills in public. But around 1997, services by and for dancers began turning up on the burgeoning World Wide Web. Anyone with a search engine could find them. A parallel universe was born

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