Last week, The Stranger received a series of indignant e-mails from longtime choreographer KT Niehoff, whose show was reviewed in last week’s paper (along with three others). Niehoff insisted that we “stop pandering to the lowest common denominator” and “go make something” and that she was “ready to go head to head with you.” We stand by the original review—which was only mildly critical of Niehoff’s piece and found several things to praise—but decided to loan her our megaphone for a week to make a case about how crappy we are. We promised we wouldn’t edit her submission in any way.
Take it away, KT.
—Eds.
OK—let’s get this out of the way. Yes, I am KT Niehoff, the creator of A Glimmer of Hope or Skin or Light, yes, my work was reviewed in The Stranger last week, and yes, the review pissed me off.
I am weary of the quip, sarcastic reflections The Stranger dishes out as art reviewing. As a choreographer in Seattle for 15+ years, I have learned to accept the Stranger reviewer lurking in the corner with a mind-made-up-before-I-even-showed-up energy. It makes me want to scream, “Allow yourself to have an experience!” But I have not done my part either. I have embodied that desperate artist hoping someone will care enough about the work to deem it worthy of writing about. And I have been silenced by this power. I’m done. It’s time to review the reviewer.
Last week’s review lumped four artists/events into one sloppy soup. The article began with a sarcastic paragraph about how dancers can’t get it together to coordinate their schedules so their shows stop happening on the same weekend.
My first thought was “why would a reviewer waste a paragraph on a throwaway scheduling comment?” And why the implied negative in the fact there is enough dance in this city to support four shows in the same weekend? Music and theater venues produce multiple artists every weekend in Seattle. Why not be proud of a grown-up city with a thriving appetite for contemporary dance? Why not applaud it?
My colleague Amelia Reeber (who mounted her show this is a forgery last weekend at the Erickson Theater) was among the four artists reviewed. She was described this way: “twirls and spins… frolicking like a Greek nymph (or Isadora Duncan).”
Every dancer on the planet twirls and spins. For a dance critic to describe a dancer as twirling and spinning, well, it’s akin to reviewing a cellist as playing some notes. It’s so broad as to be meaningless. And why is it a unique, groundbreaking contemporary dance artist is equated to a century-old physical vocabulary? I request enough knowledge from you to make more relevant analogies. Reviewers can educate. They can connect the time we live in and the people making work in relationship to that time to their actual forbearers—in Amelia’s case, Deborah Hay, DV8, and 33 Fainting Spells, say nothing of the Seattle dancers who have helped define her acutely 21st-century work—Maureen Whiting, Rob Kitsos, Vanessa DeWolf, and Kris Wheeler. I want dance reviewers who care enough to learn more about the rich history of the art form.
My show (Glimmer)—a year in the making with 23 Seattle artists sweating to bring their best selves to the table—was summarized as “some drunkenness, some nudity, and some moody rock ‘n’ roll.” That is reductive almost beyond belief. Seven of my 12 artists and their costumes (created by Joanne Witzkowski, an award-winning Chicago-based designer) were dismissed as “gutter-glam costumes and frilly blue extras”? [Ed. note: A small correction—the actual quote is “writhing, sexual duets from principals wearing white gutter-glam costumes while a dozen extras in frilly blue watch, wander, and preen.”] These extras put in 100+ hours of absolutely nailing the synchronized intricacy of the physical vocabulary and that’s all you came up with?
The level of professional expertise in Glimmer is reverently off the charts. These artists are deeply thinking, awesomely talented, obsessively hardworking individuals living risky, engaged lives. And they risked going deep into their own psyches so you could have the luxury of examining yours. Your sarcasm is just a cop-out.
Stranger critics, help us to go deeper as a society. Help us to think more about our actions, ask more from our relationships, and get more from our interactions. Learn more about the art form of contemporary dance, which has the unique ability to free our minds to think nonlinearly and push into raw emotion, involuntary kinetic kickback and dream states. They “teach” this natural way of thinking out of us in school so completely we are actually afraid of it (“I don’t know anything about dance”—i.e.—”I am scared if there isn’t an actual plotline I could get it ‘wrong’ and look like an asshole”).
There are incredible artists in this city. They are grappling, practicing, risking, asking, and hoping they can tap into our capacity to reveal the better (or worse) parts of ourselves to each other. And in that revealing, hook into what I believe most of us want from life and each other—more. They deserve smart, tough, critical dialogue. They deserve your respect.
I don’t want you to automatically like my work. I don’t want to call you out on what rotten, ignorant critiquing your paper is giving to dance. I want you be better critics.
I want so much more from the writing in your paper than I ever get. It makes me sad. 
joonbug says “The dialogue in this city is actually strong. It could continue to grow stronger, of course. But a lot of that responsibility lies with the artists as well.
Enough with the complaining and blaming. Look around and take advantage of the fact that these reviewers actually care.”
This is the kind of weak attitude that plagues Seattle. We’re nice. Be grateful. No. The dialogue could be stronger but that’s up to the artists? What do you think the artists are doing in this thread? They are speaking up. Who wrote the original response? An artist. You can’t say – don’t complain, be grateful they even care. And then in the next breath say – it’s your fault there isn’t more dialogue. But don’t complain. I cry “buhh-ll-shit.”
And, believe me, the reviewers don’t actually care. They really don’t. If they did care, they might sometimes interview the folks who are creating, they might find out what the genesis of a project is, where the artist (of any medium) thinks it took them or will take the audience. They might briefly interview other audience members on the way out – or at intermission. The events that get reviewed consist of more meat than one person’s (the fresh out of college reviewer’s) surface glance will reveal.
@37: Shows what you know! Brendan Kiley doesn’t drink beer. He only drinks dancers’ blood.
The artist,
It couldn’t be more annoying to name your self “The Artist” and then come on here and act like you are the voice of the artist. Critics are critiquing the thing they observed not waiting to hear justification from so called artist for why they spent the time they did on their “art.”
If you had an interview it would be an artist profile or a preview not a critique of the work.
Again I stand behind the actions of the Stranger’s Staff who do go out and spend time in the fields that they critic. If you read all of their articles ,and not just the ones that don’t give you the kudos you think you deserve, you might notice that they are invested in the community.
You say you gave up on the stranger a long time ago. So where do you go to find critic. Or do you just look to others to placate your pathetic attempts at being an “artist.” Tell me you go to the Weekly or the Times. Both bastions of placating the artist and telling you everything you do is great and wonderful and hey “you seattle” go see this stuff.
Critic is about challenging you. Clearly “the Artist” feels that to have made to choice to be an artist means that you should be recognized for all the great contributions you make to our society even if society might not need them. The critics job is to help society try and weed through these things and find the gems and the ones that do work to change the way we think and understand our world.
But critics fail as much as artists do. They aren’t always right and I would say that (at least Brendan) they know that and our conscious of their own failings. Thus one of the reasons that Brendan let KT have free reign with her own article. It is unfortunate that she failed in her attempt.
And to add to that I never said “be grateful” they even bother to review us. I said recognize that they actually do care and take advantage of that.
Complaint is not dialogue. What I am saying is that if you want to contribute to a stronger artistic community you should understand and see the whole picture and not just complain. You should engage in a meaningful manner and recognize that we are all interested in a stronger environment of art and art practice. To get there one has to recognize that everything you do is not special and everyone will not see it the same.
You can call “buhh-ll-shit” on something I actually said as opposed to something you said I said.
If “The Stranger simply isn’t the place for the kind for criticism that Ms. Niehoff wants,” why do I get that impression from Jen Graves that it is? Graves, who seems to care a lot about Seattle making better art, gives me the impression that that kind of “extended, intelligent criticism” can and does happen here.
I’m seeing an inconsistency between what The Stranger calls for in Art and what it calls for in Dance. Upon visiting the site, I was surprised to not find a Dance section, as I thought maybe the reason I didn’t find dance every week in the paper was that it rotated with theater or something. But no… it’s really not there.
The Stranger is missing an opportunity to up its standards. If dance coverage is “a national problem,” why not Seattle lead the way? Are there these publications that review dance that make it unnecessary for them to be included in The Stranger? I’d love to know them! (@11: I’m trying! honestmovement.tumblr.com/post/thisisafo…;.)
Because The Stranger is the easy-access voice of art in the city, it makes no sense to me why that should be the reason for setting standards low—in fact, shouldn’t that be the reason to set standards high? The people that don’t care will not care if there is good stuff written and the people that do care will get really excited! To cater to the first category would be ridiculous.
A good review of dance wouldn’t have to contain praise, “vocabulary the audience has never heard of,” or “the artist’s influences.” Of course the general readership would be turned off by descriptions of fouettes and modified open fifths (so am I). But I think The Stranger would do a better job of advertising for dance (supposedly is its job? At least is it with music) were it to talk about movement—what is unique to dance—instead of reducing it to music and costumes, an off-breed of theater. (The closest Kiley gets to interesting talk about movement in “Allergic to Stiffness” is when he lets Amy O’Neal speak for herself, and she talks about warming up.) Bringing dance only to the standards of theater, of course it will fall short.
I wonder if the “majority of The Stranger’s readership” who picks up the newspaper (if, in fact that is the majority of The Stranger’s readership of the actual articles. Per this conversation, it doesn’t seem like it) would be more interested in reading how Amelia Reeber’s movement was like an office chair suspended with one wheel touching the floor, turning over and back in on itself, (what I thought of the last section of this is a forgery) than that she was “frolicking like a Greek nymph.” Or, perhaps focusing the unbearably fast movements of her fingers instead of what she’s wearing (for the fourth time).
Sure, give the show an honest review (admittedly hard to do in two paragraphs, and no, Kiley’s review of Glimmer, though I haven’t seen it, was not that bad) but it didn’t take the opportunity to focus on the movement, (what the dance is made of, after all). I only see this continuing to reduce the art form that’s already lumped in the theater section, and doesn’t have regular dance reviews in a city which, according to discussion at The Vancouver Problem panel, is known, if anything, for its dance.
If Kiley is going to continue covering dance for The Stranger, I mainly suggest he start looking at the movement of the piece, “open himself up to a visceral, unmediated response to what he’s seeing” so that the audience might have the hope of doing the same, and go from there. If not, I’d be happy to do it.
Graves herself called for better art criticism in Seattle, and I don’t see how that can stop at dance. I’m glad this conversation is happening. Thanks, Stranger, for letting KT (and dance) speak, and let’s hear way more of it. I’ll wait for “Seattle’s Only Newspaper” to first make a Dance tab and then put it on the same level as the Theater one (like The Times) and I’ll wait for more interesting movement reviews from both. I’ll also be busy writing my own, so as not to be a hypocrite.
[I’m going to see crushed, part of SCUBA on Saturday. Brendan, let’s see it, and talk!]
The most important letter you received this year. Your paper has been suffering from ignorance for far too long. While I appreciate that you probably don’t pay your staff all that well, at least not as much as they should be getting paid, like KT I expect you to do your jobs and do it well. I’ll continue to hold you to a higher standard than you seem to hold yourselves to.In the meantime I’ll just assume you’re a bunch of hacks.
Honestly, I don’t know why the Stranger continues to employ Brendan Kiley. I’ve seen so many hatchet jobs that feel personal instead of grounded in artmaking.
I don’t read the stranger because there’s never really anything worth reading. The writing is boring and the reviews are inept, almost universally. I just came to see what resulted of KT’s statement; it was pretty much as I expected, with stranger apologists reducing KT to “lol u suk”. Par for the course these days…
I was “blown away” the other day randomly finding myself at “On The Boards” watching Aiko Kinoshita. She made me feel scared and embarrassed. All in a dance show?! Beautifully so. A new door opened. If only I was younger and could become a dancer, but I’ll try anyway. And now I’m hooked for life. I know my post is off topic. TY KT and Aiko.