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A Comparative Study on the Dance Writings of Edwin Denby and Deborah Jowitt - Focused on the Structure and the Critical Terms

MalborgKim 1

1이화여자대학교

Candidate

ABSTRACT

This study aims to analyze the critical methodologies of Edwin Denby and Deborah Jowitt. Together they represent the American dance criticism of the 20th century. Edwin Denby made dance criticism a professional critical writing not the subsidiaries to music criticism. Not like John Martin who started his full time dance critic's career writing on music, Denby started his critic's career writing on dance with insider's knowledge and understanding in dance. With his experience as dancer/choreographer and his love for dance made him to establish the academic methodology for dance criticism. The critical style and viewpoint of Denby influenced the next generation of Americian dance critic. Deborah Jowitt succeeded Denby's spirit of dance writing style most among the New York School which is practically a group of Denby's followers. Their essays in criticism Dance Writings(1986) of Denby and the Dance Beat(1977) of Jowitt are chosen as the subject for the study. From these, 20 most characteristic essays on ballet and modern dance works are selected respectively to study the structure of their writings and the characteristics of their critical terms used in describing dance movements and showing their standards of value judgements on dance works. Study results show they have similar writing structure and a great emphasis on movement description. The most of their writings were spent on describing the details and the movement qualities of dances they saw. Both Denby and Jowitt have an exceptional talent in describing dance movements. Also they showed a tendency of trying to interpret the meaning of the movements with modern dance works. But their overall style of writings were differed in the wording and colors of the texts. Denby's writing is very articulate and beautiful with poetic symbols and literary elegance. His critical terms are cultivated and classic with high taste. Jowitt's writing has a characteristic of colloquial style. And she often starts her writing like talking to her friends sitting next to her. She was good in expressing the dynamics of the modern dance movements. Jowitt used more terms in movement description and value judgement than Denby. Also she used vocabularies distinctively conveying the momentum and the sensations of the movement. This writer thinks the secret of their excellent dance writing lies in their love for dance and their effort of trying to understand dance and the attitude of sincere writing.

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