Authors
Jerry has been reviewing dance and dance-related performances for CriticalDance for more than ten years, and has also interviewed dancers and members of the dance community. He is a member of Dance Critics Association. A graduate of Rutgers University and Columbia University School of Law, he attended his first live ballet performance on a whim more than forty years ago, and has been hooked ever since. Writing from the point of view of a member of the audience rather than as a dance practitioner, his wealth of viewing experience not only provides an appreciation of the art form and the power of a choreographer and dancer to move an audience, but an ability to place what he sees in a context and make it accessible to the average reader.
Carla DeFord has written about Boston Ballet since 1996. A free-lance writer based in a suburb of Boston, she is a native New Yorker and graduate of City College and Columbia University. Her writing, mostly on education and the arts, has appeared in the Boston Globe, Ballet Review, Diverse: Issues in Higher Education, School Band and Orchestra, JazzEd, and ballet.co, among other publications. As a reviewer she combines a literary-critical perspective with the unabashed enthusiasm of a fan.
Cecly Placenti received her MA in Dance Education from NYU and her BFA in Dance from Montclair State University. Cecly is Artistic Director of Six Degrees Dance, a NYC based contemporary company, and as a dancer has performed with various companies including Chris Ferris and Dancers, The Next Stage Project, Manuel Vignoulle, and ESS/Danceworks. On par with her love for dance is her love for writing. Cecly has been writing dance criticisms for Ballet-Dance magazine for 15 years and is currently full time dance teacher at Bronx Preparatory Charter School in Bronx, New York.
Lori Ibay, Cherry Hill, NJ - Clara Barton Elementary School, Cherry Hill High School West, University of Pennsylvania, and Drexel University College of Medicine alumna
After performing in the Bay Area, Catherine Pawlick transitioned to dance writing in 2000. She became the moderator of the Kirov-Mariinsky Forum in 2001, relocating to Russia in 2004 in order to provide unique on-site coverage, in-depth interviews and English language content from Russian-speaking dancers. Since 2005 she has been the Russian correspondent for Dance Europe, and has also written for the San Francisco Chronicle, Dance Magazine and Ballet Review. In 2011 her first book, "Vaganova Today," was published by University of Florida Press. She continues to reside in Saint Petersburg.
Azlan Ezaddin helped launch CriticalDance in 1999 as an experiment. More than a decade later, he is still experimenting. In between tinkering with CriticalDance, he is distracted by structural engineering as a vocation, soccer as a sport, and writing as a compulsion.
Dina McDermott, after earning her B.F.A. in Dance at The Juilliard School, performed Off-Broadway and in the downtown New York scene. During over three decades in the dance world, she has been a contemporary dancer, choreographer, artistic director (LEAVING GROUND/DANCE) teacher and dance writer. She is currently writing a book on world dance forms which she has encountered in her travels to Cuba, Bali and elsewhere. Dina has served on the faculty of Pacific Northwest Ballet School in Seattle since 2001.
Irene Hsiao is a columnist and contributor for CriticalDance. She also dances and takes photos.
Stephanie Burridge (PhD) lectures at LASALLE College of the Arts and Singapore Management University. She was Artistic Director of Canberra Dance Theatre 1978-2001, awarded the first Choreographic Fellowship at the Australian Choreographic Centre and Australia Council, National Arts Council (Singapore) and Singapore International Foundation funding for creative and research projects. She is Series Editor for Routledge Celebrating Dance in Asia and the Pacific; co-edited Dance Education around the World: Perspectives on Dance, Young People and Change, (Foreword by Sir Ken Robinson) and the Research and Documentation Network Co-Chair for WDA Asia Pacific.
Toba Singer, author of “Fernando Alonso, the Father of Cuban Ballet” (University Press of Florida 2013), and “First Position: a Century of Ballet Artists” (Praeger 2007), writes for international dance journals and websites, and has served as an advisor to the San Francisco Museum of Performance and Design. She was the University Press of Florida author representative at the 2013 Miami International Book Fair. “Fernando Alonso, the Father of Cuban Ballet” was nominated for the Latin American Student Association Bryce Award, the de la Torre Research and Dance Scholars Award, and the Commonwealth Club California Book Award.