Nearly every week during the 1970s – on the night the Village Voice hit newsstands – clusters of women gathered on the newspaper’s steps, eagerly awaiting the latest column by dance critic-turned-lesbian-feminist provocateur, Jill Johnston. In the decade prior Johnston had been the writer who chronicled the emergence of postmodern dance in New York, particularly the West Village’s Judson Church movement, and by the seventies she had become the most prominent voice of lesbian feminism, especially in the wake of her 1973 book, Lesbian Nation.
Though many of her fans still treasure her published writing, searching out dog-eared copies of her 1971 Marmalade Me, Johnston’s prolific writing has been mostly unavailable and underexamined for decades. In recent years, Johnston has staged a return: her writing has appeared in a new collection, academic and popular writers have rediscovered her, and artists in the US and abroad have made art inspired by her writing and lesbian celebrity.
This three-day series of events, on campus and in the Village, honors Jill Johnston’s commitment to experimentation in all things writing, lesbianism, and life – through performance, conversations, film, and more.
Curated by Clare Croft, author of “Jill Johnston in Motion: Dance, Writing, and Lesbian Life” and editor of “The Essential Jill Johnston Reader” and J de Leon, Director of Engagement @ NYU Skirball.
Please note! All events are at specific locations, on and off campus; NYU Skirball will host the Saturday, Feb 8 events, 1-5PM. Please confirm the location when you RSVP.
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Thursday, Feb 6 @ 7PM – BOOK TALK
Bureau of General Services – Queer Division @ The Center
Clare Croft reads from her new book, Jill Johnston in Motion, which focuses on the dance critic turned lesbian provocateur Jill Johnston. Following the reading Croft will be in conversation with Ksenia Soboleva. Learn more about BGSQD.
Location: 208 W 13th St, Room 210
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Friday, Feb 7 @ 3PM – WORKSHOP
Center for Ballet and the Arts
In this “performance criticism” workshop, dance critic and scholar, Clare Croft, guides writers through a series of exercises exploring the relationship between writing and motion, description and embodiment. No previous experience with dance or dance writing is required.
Location: 16 Cooper Square
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Friday, Feb 7 @ 6PM – FILM SCREENING
Cantor Film Center
French artists Pauline Boulba and aminata labor screen their new film JJ (2023), an experimental ode to Jill Johnston inspired by feminist classic, The Watermelon Woman (1996). Post-screening conversation to follow, with the artists.
Location: 36 E 8th St, Room 101
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Saturday, Feb 8 @ 1PM – SYMPOSIUM
NYU Skirball
Three panels organized to highlight Johnston’s contributions to dance, criticism, and lesbianism. Speakers include Jess Barbagallo, Pauline L. Boulba, Clare Croft, Jennifer Krasinski, Aminata Labor, Mara Mills, Kristina Satter, Nola Sporn Smith, Kay Turner, Anh Vo and more to be announced. Full details & run of show below.
Location: 566 LaGuardia Pl
Saturday Schedule @ NYU Skirball
Jill Johnston: A Performance Experiment
1PM
In the late 1960s, Jill Johnston became known for creating forums she termed “panel performances,” events where artists and writers gathered to discuss a topic. But while such gatherings usually involve those designated as experts telling a supposedly less-knowledgeable audience what to think about a central topic, Johnston hated hierarchies and the elevation of experts. Johnston invented the panel performance format to help identify strategies for upending hierarchies of knowledge–often to spectacular ends. One 1968 panel performance ended with no panelists left onstage and a pig loose in NYU’s Loeb Student Center–a building that is now the home of NYU Skirball.
Inspired by Johnston’s panel performances, this performance experiment focuses on Johnston’s body of writing and life with direction by Tina Satter and a panel composed of artists and thinkers.
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Jill Johnston in Context
2PM
This conversation, moderated by writer and critic Jennifer Krasinski, places Jill Johnston in context, bringing together Johnston’s contemporaries in dance and art and situating her work in longer trajectories of feminist and queer thinking and journalism and arts histories.
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Thinking with Jill Johnston
3:30PM
This panel brings together artists and thinkers who have been inspired to create new work based on Jill Johnston. Each panelists will share excerpts from their work, and then be in conversation with one another, moderator writer and critic Jennifer Krasinski, and the audience.
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Bios
Clare Croft is a writer, a dance historian and theorist, a dramaturg and curator, and someone who dances. She is the author of Jill Johnston in Motion: Dance, Writing, and Lesbian Life and the editor of The Essential Jill Johnston Reader, both published by Duke University Press. She is also the editor of Queer Dance: Meanings and Makings; the founder and curator of the EXPLODE queer dance festival; and the author of Dancers as Diplomats: American Choreography in Cultural Exchange. Clare’s dance criticism has appeared in The Washington Post, the Austin American-Statesman, and The Brooklyn Rail. She is Associate Professor of American Culture at the University of Michigan, and holds a PhD in Performance as Public Practice from the University of Texas-Austin.