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The Buzz, 7-5: Gratitude
Streb Fires Bartlett; the Tragedy of Jennifer Dunning

How Elizabeth Streb says Thanks

On June 19, Terry Dean Bartlett says, the very day the STREB associate director and 10-year company veteran sent out a press release announcing a benefit concert he had organized for a Streb dancer who fractured her spine while performing in a Streb concert -- Dances for deeAnn: A Benefit for a Broken Back -- Elizabeth Streb fired him.

"I have been fired from STREB as of June 19," Bartlett told the Dance Insider. "The stated reason was for vocally confronting Elizabeth on issues in front of 'the public' on various random occasions over the last couple of years, which is apparently more of an issue for her than my job performance as rehearsal director, and actual performance as a dancer, with 10 years experience... as safety checker, quality controller, etcetera.... I got the job done no matter what it was and no matter how little time she gave me, every time with flying colors, but refused to kiss her ass in the process.

"The unstated reason I believe I was fired was because I had the benefit for deeAnn (Nelson) and put out a press announcement that someone broke their back in one of her shows... and five weeks later I got the axe. Apparently I am too much of an embarrassment for her to have around, but only AFTER the eight weeks of (Streb) SLAM shows are over, the kids' school year is over, the company benefit is over, and the putting the show back up with a new dancer in just three days after the accident (is over). She even had me audition my own replacement without my knowing it. And had been planning to fire me for eight weeks or more, but kept me around so she could use my promotion of the show, my performance, my teaching and my schmoozing for the company to her most selfish ends.

"There is also the question of ageism? She hired a bunch of young new dancers to replace me. (One is as young as 19.) Who knows for sure, but in any case it is so disheartening how deceitful and disrespectful the whole deal is... followed by her 'out of the goodness of her heart' offering me a whole EIGHT WEEKS (wow) of severence pay if I would keep my mouth shut about it and say that I chose to leave to pursue other prospects. And lie. I countered that I at least deserved one month's pay for every year I had devoted to her, but she said that her board didn't even want to pay me the eight weeks(as it is not in the contract to do so) but that her offer still stood. I turned it down. I don't like lying very much."

The Dance Insider contacted Streb producing director Kim Cullen, the company's administrative point person, to request comment from Elizabeth Streb on Bartlett's firing and his related accusations. Cullen responded with the following statement: "Due to artistic differences Ringside Inc. has parted company with Terry Dean Bartlett. The company appreciates Terry Dean's contributions and wishes him the best in his future endeavors. Ringside Inc. fully supported the benefit held for our colleague deeAnn Nelson."

The benefit, meanwhile, held Monday at Dance Theater Workshop, brought in close to $6,000, Bartlett reports. A leading big thinker in the New York and global dance community -- he's in Venezuela choreographing a piece on a company there as we speak -- Bartlett will no doubt continue as co-producer of the celebrated Danceoff! series of downtown dance variety shows. His curatorial curiosity, downtown roots, diplomatic aplomb, positive energy, and constitution make him an ideal candidate to replace the just-departed Laurie Uprichard as executive director of Danspace Project.

As for Streb, she might want to consider that every time dance, which is supposed to be different, which is supposed to come from a place of compassion, which is supposed to be directed by the heart, treats a dancer like garbage it loses a little bit of its soul. Considering everything that this particular dancer has given to Elizabeth Streb and her company for 10 years -- not just in daring do, but as an ambassador for the company and thus for her -- she might want to also think about the concept of gratitude.

Criticize the Art, Jennifer, not Our Bodies

One of the reasons I was relieved when the New York Times hired Alastair Macaulay as its chief dance critic last Spring was that it was obvious from his writing that Macaulay approached dance reviewing from a place of love and respect. I don't think dancers -- mature dancers, anyway -- resent criticism. But they expect it to stay on the level of critiquing the art and their ability to execute and interpret it. The subject of the criticism should be what they're creating, and how they're creating it, not simply their bodies, their bodies which they put on the line as none of us do to elevate their art and maybe, sometimes, our lives.

Jennifer Dunning, the longtime Times critic, used to write about dance from a place of love and authority, not to mention objectivity. (By objectivity, I mean that unlike, say, her Times colleague Anna Kisselgoff, she didn't let factors outside the dance, e.g. dance world politics, influence her reviewing.) During the Kisselgoff-Jack Anderson-Dunning era, Dunning was far and away the most talented reviewer and writer, the most eloquent, the most universally respected by dancers. This isn't to say there were never any dance artists who felt wounded by her, but I think the very fact that they felt the wounds so deeply attests to their not expecting the arrows from Jennifer, normally a fair-minded critic.

When Kisselgoff retired, I wasn't the only one in the dance world disappointed that the Times didn't automatically make Dunning chief dance critic.

And yet, in recent years, Dunning has sometimes succumbed to a malady common to many veteran critics (including myself), in which the critic becomes jaded, impatient, and tired, and the fatigue creeps into the criticism to make it sometimes less than that.

Take Dunning's June 16 review of Villains and Heroes, the latest installment in the DancemOpolitan cabaret series produced by Dancenow/NYC and Joe's Pub, at Joe's Pub in New York.

"The heroes" of the evening, Dunning wrote, "included Ashleigh Leite's pudgy Wonder Woman, boisterous and meditative in turn...."

"Pudgy"?

This isn't dance criticism.

Jennifer, we love you, we treasure most of the body of work you've created in more than two decades recording the dancers' art most of the time with love, with poetry, but I think it's time to ask yourself whether you are still open to dance.

As the word 'tragedy' has come to be often misused and misunderstood these days, I should perhaps expand on my applying it to the case of Jennifer Dunning: I use it in the sense of a tragic hero. This is used to describe a good person -- often a great person -- who has become beset by a tragic flaw which diminishes and damages them, and usually brings down their loved ones as well. To illustrate what I mean with an opposite example: Were I writing about Dunning's Times colleague Gia Kourlas, I wouldn't employ the same word; that's not a tragedy, that's simply spite and cynicism. Kourlas has never had real respect for dance, nor respected the role dancers have given her. Dunning has, for many years, and that's why seeing her descend to the level of calling a dancer 'pudgy' (even in the context of an otherwise positive review of the piece in question) hurts so many of us. It demeans the dancers who have given her her line of work, as well as her own metier.