DanceTabs Contributors

Aimee Tsao

Aimée Ts'ao, a San Francisco dance writer, has appeared in Dance Magazine, was dance critic for the Bay Area Reporter and was the senior ballet editor for the Dance Insider Online. She lets her previous incarnation as a professional dancer (ballet and modern) imbue her perspective and hopes you like the resulting flavour.

Alan Helms

Alan Helms is Professor Emeritus of English at the University of Massachusetts/Boston and the University of Paris. For the past 15 years, he's written on dance for South End News and InNewsweekly (both Boston weeklies), and more recently Balletco. When not watching dance or gardening or spending time with friends, he can be found lying on his couch at home reading Proust.

Amy Pearl

Amy Pearl is a freelance writer and editor based in Houston, Texas. Her writing focuses on dance, cities and sports and has appeared in the Houston Chronicle and her column “Table for One” at JustVibeHouston.com. She is also executive director of the nonprofit arts organization Hope Stone, Inc. and resident advisor to Houston Ballet II. Website: www.writeonpearl.com

Araminta Wraith

Araminta Wraith, or 'Minty', is a soloist dancer with Scottish Ballet and guest blogging for DanceTabs throughout the companies 50th anniversary season in 2019. You can also find Minty on Twitter, @AramintaWraith and Instagram, @aramintawraith

BM Admin

A few news posts - no longer used for such

Brendan McCarthy

Brendan McCarthy is arts editor of The Tablet. He was formerly a producer with the BBC and with the Irish broadcasting service RTE. He created the MacMillan Estate's official website, www.kennethmacmillan.com and is a board member of the Henri Oguike Dance Company.

Bruce Marriott

Bruce Marriott is editor of DanceTabs. For non-dance stuff he can be found at www.brucemarriott.com

Christina Gallea Roy

Christina Gallea Roy studied ballet in Sydney, London and Paris dancing with British, Australian, American and European companies, working with choreographers Leonide Massine, Walter Gore, Hans van Manen and Rudi van Dantzig among others. A partnership with dancer and choreographer, Alexander Roy led to the foundation of International Ballet Caravan and Alexander Roy London Ballet Theatre. Now living in France Christina also writes regularly for Dancing Times and her book, "Here Today, Gone Tomorrow – A Life in Dance", was published in 2012. Her website is www.gallearoy.com

Claudia Bauer

Claudia Bauer is a freelance writer and lifelong bunhead in the San Francisco Bay Area. Her writing has appeared in Dance Magazine, Pointe Magazine, the San Francisco Chronicle, Critical Dance and SF/Arts Monthly. She tweets every so often at @speakingofdance.

DanceTabs

Dave Morgan

After starting with an interest in taking photographs at rock gigs, Dave Morgan built up a huge resource of London Curtain Call pictures on Flickr(*) and, after attending various production photocalls for many years, became our lead house photographer in the Spring of 2011.

Deborah Weiss

Deborah Weiss is a freelance dance writer and critic, based in London. Royal Ballet School trained and a former senior soloist with London Festival Ballet and Bayerisches Staatsballett, she began writing in 1993 whilst living in Southern Germany. She has written for a number of publications including Dancing Times, The Dancer and Dance Europe.

Diane Parkes

Diane Parkes is a freelance journalist specialising in the arts. Based in Birmingham, she has more than 20 years' experience of writing for print, websites and social media and specialises in syndicate features for a range of arts organisations including theatre and dance companies, venues and orchestras. Follow her on Twitter @DianeParkes1

Emily Wells

Emily Wells is a Los Angeles-based writer who contributes to publications like Vogue, The Los Angeles Review of Books, and Document Journal. She received her MFA in creative writing from UC Riverside in 2017 and has edited for several fashion publications including Purple Fashion Magazine and Flaunt Magazine. Website: emilywells.net

Eric Taub

Eric Taub, based in New York, is just trying to write about dance and other things, intelligibly.

Foteini Christofilopoulou

Foteini Christofilopoulou is a Greek born, London based, freelance performing arts photographer; specialising in dance. Besides DanceTabs, client commissions include: Dance Umbrella, Royal Academy of Dance, Sadler's Wells and many more. She also undertakes more unusual dance theatre shoots, such as her work with Levantes Dance Theatre, which involves playing an active role in the creative process and subsequently in live performance. Her website is at: www.foteini.com

Gay Morris

Gay Morris is a New York based art and dance critic and historian. She is the author of A Game for Dancers: Performing Modernism in the Postwar Years, 1945-1960 (Wesleyan); editor of Moving Words/Re-writing Dance (Routledge); and editor, with Jens Richard Giersdorf, of Choreographies of 21st Century Wars (Oxford University Press). She is a frequent contributor to the website danceviewtimes and for a number of years was a corresponding editor for Art in America.

Giannandrea Poesio

Giannandrea Poesio is the Director of the Research Institute for Media, Arts and Performance at the University of Bedfordshire and a free-lance dance critic. He works as historical consultant and reconstructor for several ballet, opera and drama companies and is the author of To and by Enrico Cecchetti (2010), a critical investigation of unpublished materials relating to the famous Italian dancer and pedagogue.

Sadly Giannandrea passed away in February 2017. He was always such enormous fun and wore his deep knowledge of the art with a delightful mixture of ease and panache.

Graham Watts

Dance Writer/Critic. Member of the Critics' Circle, Chairman of the Dance Section and National Dance Awards Committee. Writes for leading dance magazines & websites - in UK, Europe, USA, Japan & cyberspace. Graham is based in London.

Heather Desaulniers

Heather Desaulniers is a freelance dance writer based in Oakland, California. She is the Editorial Associate and SF/Bay Area columnist for CriticalDance, the dance curator for SF Arts Monthly and a frequent contributor to several dance-focused publications. Website: www.heatherdance.com

Jane Simpson

Jane Simpson has written for DanceTabs/ Balletco since its very early days in 1997. She contributed regularly to Dance Now for its last 10 years and wrote for the Yearbook of the Encyclopaedia Britannica (2000 - 2009); she writes a 'London Letter' for the Washington-based quarterly, Dance View. She is based in London and also makes several trips to Copenhagen each season.

Update: In June 2014 Jane decided to retire from writing - see more on this page.

Janet Ward

Janet Ward is a writer/editor. For the past 50 years, she has been attending ballet performances, with a particular focus on Russian companies, which she has travelled far and wide to see. She is currently working on a book about the Bolshoi Ballet.

Jann Parry

A long-established dance writer, Jann Parry was dance critic for The Observer from 1983 to 2004 and wrote the award-winning biography of choreographer Kenneth MacMillan: 'Different Drummer', Faber and Faber, 2009. She has written for publications including The Spectator, The Listener, About the House (Royal Opera House magazine), Dance Now, Dance Magazine (USA), Stage Bill (USA) and Dancing Times. As a writer/producer she worked for the BBC World Service from 1970 to 1989, covering current affairs and the arts. As well as producing radio programmes she has contributed to television and radio documentaries about dance and dancers.

Jarkko Lehmus

Jarkko Lehmus trained at the Finnish National Ballet School and at Millennium Performing Arts in London eventually becoming an award winning soloist at Scottish Ballet. He was also well known for blogging on Balletco.

Now freelance and based in Finland he has worked with Tero Saarinen Company, Susanna Leinonen Company, Finnish National Ballet, David Hughes Dance Company, Fabulous Beast Dance Theatre, Arc Dance Company among others. In his own artistic work Jarkko concentrates on spatial imagination, the physicality of emotions and kinesthetic empathy. He is on Twitter @LehmusWorks and his home on the web is: www.lehmus.works.

Jessica Sabatini

Jessica Sabatini is a writer of fiction and Arts journalism. She has been dancing for fifteen years and has trained in a number of forms, but is now passionately involved in contact improvisation. As an Arts collaborator she has a special interest in interdisciplinary practice, particularly bringing the worlds of movement and language together.

John Mallinson

John Mallinson is a retired physician, flaneur, street photographer, and given half a chance, photographer of public dance events.

Sadly John passed away in August 2019, after a short illness. He was an utterly charming gentleman who gave much to dance, and is deeply missed.

Jordan Beth Vincent

Jordan has a PhD in 20th century Australian dance history. She lectures at the Victorian College of the Arts, is the president of Ausdance Victoria, and reviews dance for The Age newspaper in Melbourne, Australia. You can check her updates on twitter at: @TalkingPointes

Josephine Leask

Josephine Leask is a dance writer and lecturer. Having written for a range of dance and art publications, she currently writes for Londondance and the Dance Insider. She lectures in cultural studies at London Studio Centre. Follow her on Twitter @jo_leask

Juliet Burnett

Juliet Burnett is a Senior Artist at The Australian Ballet. She has been writing for Behind Ballet, the blog of The Australian Ballet, since its inception in 2009, and has also written for Dance International magazine. You can follow her on Twitter (@JulietBurnett), Instagram (JulietBurnett) and at www.dancinginaturningworld.com

Karen Greenspan

Karen Greenspan is a New York City-based dance journalist and frequent contributor to Natural History Magazine, Ballet Review, and Tricycle. She is also the author of Footfalls from the Land of Happiness: A Journey into the Dances of Bhutan, published in 2019. You can check out more of her writing at: www.karengreenspan.com.

Kathryn Tully

Kathryn Tully is a British freelance journalist who has been based in New York for 10 years. She writes about the arts for the Financial Times, Forbes, BBC.com and The Economist, among others.

Kathy Elgin

Kathy Elgin was Co-Editor, along with her dear friend and mentor John Percival, of Dance and Dancers magazine in the 1980s. She now writes regularly for the Dancing Times and Dance Gazette, as well as being the author of several books for young people on Elizabethan history, design and fashion.

Kenneth Archer and Millicent Hodson

Choreographer/graphic artist Millicent Hodson and art historian/scenic consultant Kenneth Archer restore lost twentieth century masterpieces of dance and design. Since 1987 they have researched and staged three ballets by Nijinsky, five by Balanchine and five by Börlin. They write books and articles about their work, exhibit their drawings and do lectures and workshops worldwide. Several films have been made about their repertoire, notably on Le Sacre du Printemps from 1913 and Le Chant du Rossignol from 1925.
On the web they can be found at www.hodsonarcher.com.

Kevin Ng

Kevin Ng is based in Hong Kong and writes about dance for a number of publications including the Hong Kong Economic Journal, The Financial Times, the St. Petersburg Times, Ballet Review and Ballet 2000.

Kosta Karakashyan

Kosta Karakashyan is a Bulgarian director, choreographer and writer. He has performed and choreographed on Dancing With the Stars Vietnam and is a two-time Bulgarian National Ballroom Champion. Under his creative agency Studio Karakashyan, recent works include directing music videos for artists Bettan and Acrillics and documentary dance film Waiting for Color about the LGBTQ+ persecution in the Chechnya.

Laura Cappelle

Laura Cappelle is a freelance dance writer based in France. She regularly writes for the Financial Times, Pointe and Dance Magazine, and has also contributed articles in French to Le Monde and Le Huffington Post.

Laura Dodge

Laura Dodge is a freelance dance writer, teacher and administrator based in London. She writes for a number of websites and publications including Dancing Times and Londondance. She also has an MA in Ballet Studies. You can follow Laura on Twitter at: @dodgedance

Lauren Gallagher

Lauren Gallagher is a dance writer based in New York City. Formerly a dance critic for the San Francisco Examiner, she spent her childhood as a Rudolf Nureyev groupie and considers London her second home. She Tweets about ballet, books, cars, and life at: @snickersnacked.

Lauren Wingenroth

Lauren Wingenroth is a recent graduate of Barnard College and an active dancer and choreographer in New York City. She currently dances with e r a dance collective and TREES and choreographs and collaborates on new works of musical theater. Her writing can be found at Broadway World, The Columbia Spectator, Dance Magazine and Pointe.

Lewis Whittington

Lewis Whittington's articles on the performing arts have appeared in several publications, including the Philadelphia Inquirer, City Paper, The Advocate, Pointe, Dance Magazine, Metro and Balletco. Lewis is based in Philadelphia.

Lidia Crisafulli

Lidia Crisafulli is a London based freelance photographer. After her graduation in photography in Milan, inspired by a passion for theatre and live performance, she joined the Teatro Alla Scala Academy in Milan, photographing mainly opera, ballet and concerts. Moved to London in 2014, Lidia collaborates with many theatre and dance companies, agencies and magazines. www.lidiacrisafulli.com

Lisa Snyder

Lisa Snyder, a guest blogger, is a PhD student at Princeton University. Her dissertation focuses on the Ballets Suédois and Paris during the 1920s, and she also researches Soviet ballet.

Lise Smith

Lise Smith is a freelance dance manager, teacher and writer. She regularly contributes to www.londondance.com, Arts Professional and www.londonist.com. You can check her updates on Twitter at: @Lisekit

Lucy Ribchester

Lucy Ribchester is a dance and fiction writer based in Edinburgh. Her dance writing has appeared in The List, Fest, Venue and Exeunt magazines. Her short fiction has appeared in various journals, and her debut novel The Hourglass Factory will be published by Simon & Schuster in spring 2015. You can find her on Twitter: @lucyribchester

Lucy Van Cleef

Lucy Van Cleef graduated from the School of American Ballet in New York, and has danced professionally in the United States and Europe. Now a free-lance dance writer, based in Berlin, she is a regular contributor to Dance Europe magazine. You can check her updates on Twitter at: @LucyVanCleef

Lynette Halewood

Words needed.

Lynn Colburn Shapiro

Lynn Colburn Shapiro writes reviews and feature stories for Dance Magazine. She is a Chicago-based freelance writer, director and choreographer. Her fiction has been published in Midstream, Jewish Women’s Literary Annual, and The Chicago Jewish News, and her plays have been produced by CBS TV and regional theater companies in Illinois, Texas, Ohio, and Canada. Lynn teaches fiction writing and humanities at Columbia College Chicago, where she received her MFA in Fiction Writing.

Margaret Willis

Margaret Willis’s interest in ballet stems from a five-year stay in the former Soviet Union (1976-81) where she studied classical ballet and began writing on dance. Visiting Cuba in 1990, she first saw Carlos Acosta and has continued to follow his stellar career. She was a member of London City Ballet from 1990-3, performing principal character roles, is the author of Russian Ballet on Tour and contributed several articles for the International Dictionary of Ballet. She writes regularly for The Dancing Times, Dance Magazine and international publications. In 1986, she was the researcher for a BBC-TV documentary on the Bolshoi Ballet and in 2010 wrote "Carlos Acosta: The Reluctant Dancer" (Arcadia books).

Marina Harss

Marina Harss is a free-lance dance writer and translator in New York. Her dance writing has appeared in the New Yorker, The Nation, Playbill, The Faster Times, DanceView, The Forward, Pointe, and Ballet Review. Her translations, which include Irène Némirovsky’s “The Mirador,” Dino Buzzati’s “Poem Strip,” and Pasolini’s “Stories from the City of God” have been published by FSG, Other Press, and New York Review Books. You can check her updates on Twitter at: @MarinaHarss

Matthew Lawrence

Blogger Matthew Lawrence is a principal with Birmingham Royal Ballet... and writer of a diary for Ballet.co and now DanceTabs.
Link to earlier blogs.

Melanie Brown

Melanie Brown is a freelance writer based in New York City. She is a frequent contributor to various online publications, and writes dance reviews and articles for stagebuddy.com

Michelle Potter

Dr Michelle Potter is a freelance dance writer and curator based in Canberra, Australia. She was inaugural curator of dance at the National Library of Australia, 2002-2006, and curator of the Jerome Robbins Dance Division, New York Public Library, 2006- 2008. Her most recent book, a biography of Dame Margaret Scott, founding director of the Australian Ballet School, was published in 2014 as 'Dame Maggie Scott. A Life in Dance.' Her website is at michellepotter.org

Natalie Axton

Natalie Axton is an arts and culture writer in the lower Hudson Valley near New York. She was trained in classical ballet and modern dance, and holds a B.A. from Columbia University. Her writing has appeared in Dance Europe, the Weekly Standard, and the Daily Voice. You can find her at www.natalieaxton.com.

Natasha Rogai

Originally from London, Natasha Rogai has lived in Hong Kong since 1997 and is the dance critic of the South China Morning Post, Hong Kong’s leading English language daily newspaper. She writes regularly for The Dancing Times and was a long-time contributor to Balletco. She is Secretary of the Hong Kong Dance Alliance, the local branch of the World Dance Alliance.

Nicole Dekle Collins

Nicole Dekle Collins is a freelance writer based in New York. She is a contributor to The Dance Enthusiast, and her writing has also appeared in The Village Voice, Pointe, Ballet Review, Dance/USA Journal, New Dance Review and Dance Magazine, where she was an associate editor for six years. She reviews dance in French for Le Soir in Brussels.

Oksana Khadarina

Oksana Khadarina is a Washington, DC–based dance writer and a long-time contributor to DanceTabs. She has been covering dance at The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, as well as in New York City and internationally, since 2006. She has written for Dance Magazine, Pointe and Fjord Review, among other publications.

Paul Arrowsmith

Paul Arrowsmith writes for Dancing Times, with a particular interest in design and dance. He contributed reviews for Balletco from Russia, South Africa and the USA. He is chairman of Parrabbola, a community theatre production company.

Rachel Mann

Rachel Mann originally studied ballet and dance at the University of Utah before switching from performance to academics. She received a doctorate writing about the connections between nineteenth-century ballets and novels. She is currently a freelance writer/editor living in Paris where she continues to see much dance and is now starting to write for DanceTabs.

Raewyn Whyte

Raewyn Whyte is a freelance New Zealand dance writer who regularly contributes to The NZ Herald, DANZ Quarterly and Radio New Zealand arts broadcasts. She is dance editor of the Theatreview website and has an MA in dance criticism from Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, Canada.

Rebecca J. Ritzel

Rebecca J. Ritzel is a freelance journalist and writing professor based in Minneapolis and, up to 2016, in Washington, D.C. Since 2007, she was a regular contributor of dance, music and theatre coverage for The Washington Post. You can check her updates on Twitter at: @rjritzel

Rosie Kay

Rosie Kay is an award winning choreographer and director of Rosie Kay Dance Company - a company with a reputation for making bold, original and exciting works that challenge perceptions and take on innovative subjects.

Ryan Wenzel

Ryan Wenzel is a dance writer and editor in New York. He blogs about ballet, modern, contemporary, and traditional dance at www.bodiesneverlie.com and edits the dance section of The Brooklyn Rail, a monthly journal of arts, culture, and politics. He has written about topics other than dance for publications including The Advocate, Details, Popular Photography, and American Photo. You can find him on Twitter at @BodiesNeverLie.

Rym Kechacha

Rym Kechacha trained at Central School of Ballet and danced with Northern Ballet for three years. She has written for Balletco for many years, The Dancing Times, Dance Europe and now DanceTabs. Rym is based in London.
Link to earlier work on Balletco.

Sanjoy Roy

Sanjoy Roy has written on dance for the Guardian since 2002. He also contributes to Dance Gazette, Dancing Times, Pulse, Londondance and other publications, and since 2015 has been London correspondent for Dance International. He was formerly production editor for Dance Books Ltd and Dance Now magazine. He maintains an archive of published writing at www.sanjoyroy.net, @sanj0yr0y

Sara Veale

Sara Veale is a London-based writer and editor who has studied both dance and literature. She is chief dance critic for Auditorium Magazine, an editor for Review 31 and her work also appears in Fjord Review, Exeunt and elsewhere. Follow her on Twitter @SaraEVeale

Sasa Babic

Seeta Patel

UK born and raised, Seeta has trained in Bharatanatyam for over 25 years with further advanced training with Mavin Khoo. She has worked with several contemporary dance companies including DV8 and Shobana Jeyasingh. Seeta is a refreshing new voice for Bharatanatyam in this country and is forging her own path to revitalize the form.
www.seetapatel.co.uk, @seetadances

Shanti Crawford

Shanti Crawford lives and teaches engineering to young children in Brooklyn, New York. She has studied ballet, Cunningham technique, and West African dance forms. Her work has appeared in the Village Voice and the Brooklyn Rail.

Sheenagh Pietrobruno

Sheenagh Pietrobruno is a writer and researcher. She is an Associate Professor at Saint Paul University/University of Ottawa. She contributes to Dance International Magazine and The Dance Current. Sheenagh is the author of the dance book Salsa and Its Transnational Moves. On Twitter @Pietrobruno

Sheila Cross

Bio details to come.

Siobhan Murphy

Siobhan Murphy is a freelance writer, reviewer and editor, based in London. Between 2005 and 2014 she was London Metro's arts editor. She also contributes to LondonDance and tweets sporadically at @blacktigerlily.

Stephen Wright

Stephen is a London based photographer and also a dancer at Rambert. His years of experience dancing in and creating for wide ranging repertoire by renowned choreographers, informs his dance photography. His images aim to capture not just conventional aesthetics of dance, but also elements of dynamism, risk and the kinaesthetic experience of performing. His work can be found at stephenwrightphotography.co.uk

Steve Sucato

A former dancer turned writer/critic living in the United States, Steve studied ballet and modern dance in Erie, Pennsylvania and at Pennsylvania State University. He has performed in numerous contemporary and classical works sharing the stage with noted dancers Robert LaFosse, Antonia Franceschi, Stacy Caddell, Joseph Duell, Robert Wallace, Sandra Brown, and Mikhail Baryshnikov. His writing credits include articles and reviews on dance and the arts for The Plain Dealer (Cleveland, OH), The Buffalo News (Buffalo, NY), Erie Times-News (Erie, PA), City Paper (Pittsburgh, PA) as well as Dance Magazine, Dancer, Dance Studio Life, Pointe, Stage Directions, Dance Retailer News, Exploredance.com, Balletco and DanceTabs. Steve is also chairman emeritus of the Dance Critics Association; an international association of dance journalists.

Sunkyung Reina Jang

Sunkyung Reina Jang is a freelance photographer based in South Korea. Her pictures have been featured in programmes, advertisements and on the web at Newstage, Balletco and DanceTabs. Her website is: danceinkorea.com

Susanna Sloat

Susanna Sloat is a writer and editor in New York City who has written about many kinds of dance, recently mostly for Ballet Review. She is the editor of “Making Caribbean Dance: Continuity and Creativity in Island Cultures” (2010) and “Caribbean Dance from Abakuá to Zouk: How Movement Shapes Identity” (2002), both available from University Press of Florida.

Toba Singer

Toba is an author and dance critic based in the Bay Area. Articles by her have appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle, Dance Magazine, Dance Europe, Voice of Dance, and CriticalDance.

Valerie Lawson

Valerie Lawson is an author and journalist who lives in Sydney, Australia. She is a former arts editor of The Sydney Morning Herald and, from 1990 to 2009, the Herald’s dance writer. Valerie was dance critic for The Australian Financial Review, 1994-2002, and has edited many sections of the Herald including the weekend colour magazine. As a freelance writer, she is a contributor to balletco, The Australian, The Sydney Morning Herald, and Dance Australia. She holds a Teaching Diploma from the Royal Academy of Dance and graduated B. Phil. (Hons.) in Ballet and Contextual Studies, from the University of Durham, 2002.
Valerie is the author of three books, has recently launched her own website, www.dancelines.com.au and is now writing a history of dance in Australia.

Vikki Jane Vile

Vikki Jane Vile is a freelance dance writer. She started writing for Dance Today and Dancing Times magazines while studying for her BA degree at Royal Holloway, University of London, having won their Young Writer competition in 2010. She has been a regular contributor ever since as well as a theatre reviewer for PlayShakespeare.com and the Society of London Theatre. You can check her updates on twitter at: @VikkiJane