Opinion — Blog — Emily Trace

Fall for Dance North's 2020 Signature Program

In a season when performance venues are purchasing house plants to take the seats of their patrons, the impressive effort that Fall for Dance North put into digitally staging their 2020 Signature Program will be a welcome respite for dance lovers isolating at home. Their six world premieres—some broadcast live from the Fleck Dance Theatre and others prerecorded—are available on demand from now until the 18th, meaning you can stream and restream performances that would otherwise already be the stuff of memory. Embracing the ephemeral has always been a necessary element in dance appreciation, but audiences have a fresh opportunity to go back and experience these works throughout the festival. And the greatest benefit of their remote program? You can exclaim, gasp, sigh, and respond any way you like without disturbing other patrons in a darkened theatre.

The Grand Asymmetry: My Experience of Misogyny in the 2016 Election

Misogyny is not natural. It is a series of beliefs, entitlements, resentful desires, illogical rationalizations, comfortable conclusions, ragged hungers, and terrified insecurity that thrive off of a constructed “other”. It does not fit anywhere into a structure of sense and order. It’s a craggy growth that’s coated centuries of civilization because of the intoxicating relief it offers fearful, fragile minds that bond with one another through contempt.

Opinion, PersonalEmily TraceNovember 12, 2016feminist, Misogyny, Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump, 2016 election, sexism

Eroticism’s Missing Link

I almost never see modern depictions of sexuality so playful, affectionate, fun—so mutual. In each postcard both people are comfortable, excited, and focused on each other; I feel short-changed that something so basic is depressingly rare in sexual media I see today. I felt cheated once I realized what made them so dazzling to me. It should not be rare and magical to find erotic art that depicts consensual, joyful, attentive erotic play.

Neumeier’s "Nijinsky": A Premonition of Ballet’s Future

With a mind called mad and a body that was described as the vessel of a god, fin-de-siècle superstar Vaslav Nijinsky elevated and expanded what ballet as an art form could be in the 20th century. And if Neumeier’s pressurized depiction of this man’s life is incorporated into more ballet companies’ repertoires, then he’ll be that transformative once-in-a-century voice for the 21st.