Sarah L. Kaufman is the Pulitzer Prize-winning chief dance critic and senior arts writer for The Washington Post. Kaufman’s commentary covers a wide range of subjects including the performing arts, pop culture, entertainment, and the intersection of art and science. Her book, “The Art of Grace: On Moving Well Through Life,” was a Washington Post Notable Book of 2015. Kaufman is a member of Harvard University’s 2021 cohort of Nieman Fellows and is also a 2018 Princeton University McGraw Professor of Writing.
This interview has been edited for clarity.
Harvard Political Review: As the chief dance critic and senior arts writer of The Washington Post, you navigate a wide range of coverage including but not limited to performing arts, pop culture, personal expression, and sports. How does your reporting differ from journalists who focus on one specific subject, and what aspects of this wide coverage do you find uniquely fulfilling?
Sarah Kaufman: What I do with dance, I will say, has been unusual from many other dance and arts critics in the sense that I focus more on the expansion of it and the creative conception of dance than on the standard. So it’s a small part of my job to cover performances inside a theater. I specialize in dance and try to see everything I can through that lens and think imaginatively about what I — as someone who specializes in dance — can bring to telling that story.
HPR: When people think about dance, there is a traditional understanding that ballet is dance, that somebody on a stage constitutes as “dance.” You were mentioning, however, how your coverage has moved beyond conventional performances. In your opinion, what can be categorized as “dance,” and what are some unconventional ways the art form exists in our everyday spaces?
SK: I go back to something very fundamental. It used to be that thousands of years ago, we all danced, we all sang, and we all made music. That was a form of expression that was not limited to certain people. Then we specialized. It became that only these people get to dance, and the rest of us watch. I guess my view is that we all have in us the ability to dance. Humans come out in a form that’s given to dancing, even if you have disabilities. It doesn’t really depend so much on the body itself, but more on the will. There’s this fluttering inside the human body when music happens, movement is just triggered as a spontaneous response.
Broadly speaking, I think there’s a universal love that many, many, many of us — more than we give ourselves credit for — want to do, love to do, and feel good doing. To some extent, I see that as part of my goal. To reveal that dance is in us, that we all have the power to to appreciate it, to do it to the extent that we can, and to enjoy it.
HPR: When people tend to think about journalism, they may have a tendency to imagine breaking news stories and articles pertaining more explicitly to United States politics. Could you speak towards the unique role that cultural commentary plays in the world of journalism, and its enduring importance in our status quo?
SK: Journalism has been called the first rough draft of history. In that respect, you want to swallow everything up in that. You don’t want to leave out the people who act on stage, who sing, dance, and create these works and express themselves in that way.
Cultural commentary can also add more perspective to the current events that directly deal with politics, the economy, jobs, the pandemic, racial justice, and criminal justice. A lot of art talks about that in ways that the rest of us can’t talk about. For instance, look at all of the art that’s always shown — street art, and all kinds of art — whenever we talk about George Floyd, these artistic interpretations. It really goes hand in hand.
HPR: Your first book, The Art of Grace, received widespread critical acclaim. As a journalist familiar with writing articles, how was the book-writing process? In what ways were the two writing forms different, and in what ways did they inform one another?
SK: I loved writing this book. It was just a delight to research it, talk to people about it, think about it, and write about it. It was a lot different [from writing articles]. As soon as my book leave started — I took several months off from The Post to work on it — I realized I have to teach myself how to write a book. How to organize it, how to write differently. In a longer format, in a more conversational way with the reader. I had in mind a reader who was with me on this journey, and I had to reveal myself more than I do in my journalism and get comfortable with that idea and work that. So it was both more personal in terms of writing, and it was also more broad because I was able to bring in sculpture, cultural history, ancient history, literary works from the Renaissance, pop culture from the current era, Motown from the 60s. I brought in so many references and examples of grace because I really wanted to show that it’s everywhere, kind of like this notion of dancing. We all have the power to enact and embody it.
HPR: In 2010, you became the first dance critic in 35 years to win the Pulitzer Prize. Could you speak towards the importance of covering the performing arts, dance particularly, both historically and in our present moment?
SK: One reason is to keep a record of what’s going on historically. I first started teaching about 25 years ago, I taught at American University and taught a course in dance and theatre criticism. This was in the 90s, so before the Internet, and there were no textbooks on it. In order to get reading materials for my students, I went to the Library of Congress and looked at microfiche and microfilm for dance reviews. And I realized this was a form of recorded history. There were very few history books, and I wasn’t really interested in a scholarly approach to dance anyway. I wanted my students to get a sense of how critics viewed dance of the day, and this was the way to do it. It also formed a written record.
Without journalism in the arts… We would have a few quick clips with YouTube videos that are wonderful but brief and maybe not complete in a full, produced way. I think that coverage of the arts both fixes a point of view and a philosophy as well as allows it to reverberate in ways that we can then continue thinking about.
HPR: In your 2009 article titled “Breaking Pointe: In an art form that’s struggling to stay on its feet, The Nutcracker is a gift that takes more than it gives,” you argue that the “tyranny of ‘The Nutcracker’ is emblematic of how dull and risk-averse American ballet has become.” In what ways do you envision American ballet becoming more courageous in terms of exploration, subversion, and reimagination? What’s the importance of such a transformation?
SK: Diversity was a big problem in ballet for many, many, many years, for its entire history, essentially, until quite recently. That’s not to say the problem is solved; it’s not. But there’s been some movement over the past few years. It’s gathered force given the racial reckoning that started happening.
Bringing in people of color, bringing in those stories that people of color have to tell and stories of underprivileged communities who are generally not part of the ballet world — that’s a way that the art form can be more courageous.
HPR: You have written extensively about how grace and physical movement can be inherently political, and have analyzed the body language of individuals ranging from politicians to pop culture icons. In what ways can grace and movement be cultural phenomena unto themselves?
SK: It can reveal a lot about the mind and what’s inside the person. There’s a lot of examples I could choose, one that jumps to mind is Hillary Clinton. When she was running for president, she was not a woman of great, grand physical gestures. She always kept her arms and her hands kind of within the frame of her body versus Donald Trump, who was more wild. With Hillary Clinton — she was a diplomat with the State Department — so she didn’t want to excite people. She came from a very different point of communication. Donald Trump is very different, more of the entertainer, more fast and loose, has to be the center of attention. Everything we know about Donald Trump was there in a 2o-second clip of his behavior in a debate. That’s just an example of what movement can reveal.
To take a very different example, last summer, when the George Floyd, anti-police violence protests were really at a crest, I wrote a story about a young man who, in Los Angeles, went to a protest and performed a dance in front of the police called krumping. Krumping is a type of dance that came out of Los Angeles neighborhoods, Black and Latinx neighborhoods that had been under gang injunctions and a lot of police surveillance.
This particular dancer went with some friends and performed his dance style in front of a line of police. This dance, if you watch it on YouTube, does look kind of aggressive but you could tell that he’s not someone out of control. It’s sort of percussive and very physical, but it’s not hostile. Afterwards, the police talked to him. One of them came up to him and said, “Oh, I know that dance. I’m from this neighborhood and I’ve seen that before. Thanks for doing that.” He was a dancer, this is how he wanted to get his frustration out and get his emotions out, and he didn’t know what was going to happen, but he ended up having this moment with a police officer where he felt seen. That was another way in which, through movement, he created a connection.
HPR: As a Pulitzer Prize-winning critic, author, journalist, and educator, you have had extensive experience in the realm of journalism and the world of writing at large. What advice do you have for aspiring journalists, and how has your approach to the craft transformed over the years?
SK: As someone who has been in this field for decades, you never reach a point where you feel like you know it all and you feel like you’re an expert. I guess what I have is confidence. I know that given any assignment, I’ll be able to do it in the end. But that’s not to say it won’t take a lot of work and research and thought. I guess the advice I would give is just to have confidence in yourself that you can do it, and always be on the lookout for people and examples of writing that you can learn from. Whether that’s actual teachers or other journalists, novelists, playwrights, poets, magazine writers, I get inspiration from all over.
HPR: Quoting your personal website, your coverage “[focuses] on the union of art and everyday living.” What are the various ways that art and the everyday are in conversation with one another, and what is the importance of recognizing and celebrating this connection?
SK: If I’m interviewing somebody and have the opportunity to ask someone, “What’s the art of what you do?” that generally causes a lot of reflection and a deep answer about how that person thinks about excellence and strives for it. We all have that ability to be artists. There’s art in so much that we do. If you think of it as creativity, as bringing in principles of balance and design and proportion, what just looks good together. What feels good, what brings about a certain emotional response. What flavors and scents from your childhood you still vibe to today and how you incorporate that into your life. That’s all art.
Appreciating art that other people have created connects us with one another, and I think that’s one of the fundamental joys and purposes for which we’re here, is to be connected with one another.
Photo: Asa Rogers
