Marina Harss / Dancing Around
image © Marco Nisticò/Marina Harss
New York-based Marina Harss writes about dance for many publications and is quite simply one of the best dance writers I know. Her reviews, in particular, are a fine mix of frankness and support. In a way few others do, she captures the essence of the movement she sees and also puts it into context — Marina sees an awful lot of dance of all varieties.
She wrote nearly 450 pieces for me at DanceTabs, each beautifully crafted and readable. But you can find her work in (amongst others) the New York Times, The New Yorker, Dance Magazine, Pointe Magazine, Fjord Review and Hudson Review, although sadly much of it is behind paywalls. Because her work is so spread out, you might not be as aware of her as you should be.
Where all her writing and dance observations come together is on her Substack site called ‘Marina Harss / Dancing Around’ @ https://marinaharss.substack.com/.
Marina started on Substack a year ago (February 2024), and it serves as a focal point for her work generally and often rapid thoughts on seeing a show — it’s the main link I give at the top of this page.
But from 2013 to 2020, Marina ran her own independent blog @ www.marinaharss.com — it is sadly no longer active, but you can still see Internet Archive WayBack Machine versions.
To complete the picture, besides all the short-form writing, Marina also published a book about the great classical choreographer Alexei Ratmansky - ‘The Boy from Kyiv — Alexei Ratmansky’s Life in Ballet’). Anyway go follow her!