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    The Washington Post Pulitzers: Sarah Kaufman, Criticism
    The Washington Post Pulitzers: Sarah Kaufman, Criticism
    The Washington Post Pulitzers: Sarah Kaufman, Criticism
    Ebook67 pages53 minutes

    The Washington Post Pulitzers: Sarah Kaufman, Criticism

    By Sarah Kaufman and The Washington Post

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    Recipient of the Pulitzer Prize for Criticism.

    Sarah Kaufman covers one of the high arts’ most illustrious forms—dance. What emerges from her criticism is always fresh and thought-provoking.

    From exploring Cary Grant as an overlooked artist to her bold assessment of The Nutcracker, Kaufman tackles the subject of dance and movement with daring honesty and dazzling creativity.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherDiversion Books
    Release dateAug 26, 2014
    ISBN9781626813700
    The Washington Post Pulitzers: Sarah Kaufman, Criticism

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      Book preview

      The Washington Post Pulitzers - Sarah Kaufman

      The Washington Post Pulitzers: Sarah Kaufman, Criticism

      The Washington Post Pulitzers

      Sarah Kaufman

      Criticism

      Copyright

      Diversion Books

      A Division of Diversion Publishing Corp.

      443 Park Avenue South, Suite 1008

      New York, NY 10016

      www.DiversionBooks.com

      Copyright © 2014 by The Washington Post

      All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever.

      For more information, email info@diversionbooks.com

      First Diversion Books edition July 2014

      ISBN: 978-1-62681-370-0

      Letter of Introduction

      January 28, 2010

      To the Judges:

      Art takes itself seriously. High art takes itself highly seriously. The Washington Post’s Sarah Kaufman covers one of the most exalted corners of high art–dance–and she writes it as she sees it. The result is the best kind of criticism: refreshing, original, and conversation kindling.

      She shook the establishment, for instance, with a provocative essay on the deity of American dance, George Balanchine. She declared that preoccuopation with him has held dance as an art form back–a view that ignited a debate among dance aficionados around the country.

      She took aim at another dance convention with her piercing condemnation of The Nutcracker, in which Kaufman argued that the annual holiday ritual around the ballet conditions audiences to expect sameness, thus confining the creativity of American ballet. Another out-of-the-box perspective, another bold take on the status quo that bloggers, broadcasters, and fellow print critics could not, and did not, ignore. The same goes for her breakdown of a YouTube wedding video that went viral and made network news.

      Kaufman’s fresh thinking about the art of movement extends beyond dance to television, music videos, and films. Casting her knowledgeable eye on Cary Grant, she wrote and inspired piece on the central and much-overlooked role that physical movement plays–or ought to play–in acting. Nobody who read her piece will look at movies the same way again.

      Cary Grant an overlooked dance artist? Balanchine a mere mortal? Dance may seem an unlikely perch for writing about culture, but look around you: Dance, and movement, are pervasive in our culture. And with fearlessness, intelligence, and original spark, Kaufman helps to shape her readers’ perceptions of it as an art and as a fundamental human behavior. Such writing has made Kaufman compulsory reading for those in the field and beyond.

      I am pleased to nominate her for the 2010 Pulitzer Prize in Criticism, Category 10.

      Sincerely,

      Marcus Brauchli

      Executive Editor

      One-Man Movement

      Cary Grant Set a Pace for On-Screen Grace That’s Left His Followers Mostly in the Dust

      Sunday, January 11, 2009

      North by Northwest, Alfred Hitchcock’s sprawling 1959 thriller that takes us to the top of Mount Rushmore by way of a near-miss with a killer crop-duster, begins with the basics. A man is walking down a corridor.

      But because the man is Cary Grant, the moment is anything but ordinary. He has us at the first step: that long, brisk stride and its driving rhythm, a ticktock pace that telegraphs purpose, clarity and elegant efficiency. We watch him stroll out of an elevator toward the street, dictating correspondence to the secretary at his side. He’s not some stiff, starchy suit. There’s a relaxed, easy give in Grant’s body as he moves, and as he leans toward his secretary while he speaks to her—he’s so very pleased with his own labors, and yet so exquisitely courteous to his assistant. A nice guy, and smooth as whiskey, too. He’s getting further under our skin with every move.

      What Grant’s character, advertising executive Roger Thornhill, is actually saying in this scene isn’t nearly as important as his movement. It’s the movement that hooks us. It always does. Intuition? Training? Astute directors? Whatever its source, Grant knew a timeless truth: There is nothing we watch so keenly as the human body in action, because the way it moves tells a story.

      The art of moving well, call it kinetic acting, has nearly vanished from movies today. I don’t mean among dancers on the big screen—that’s a different subject altogether—but among actors. The attention to physical expression, to one’s carriage and gestures and their dramatic and emotional implications, has faded. I’m talking about a sense of grace. About acting that involves a meaningful motor impulse. A signature style of moving, bigger than just body language or bits of what actors call business—lighting a cigarette, picking up a drink. Think of Gary Cooper’s quick, impatient stride across town to the church in High Noon, when he thinks

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