My International Dance Day

Andy Warhol, Letter to the World - The Kick, 1986.

Today we celebrate the International Dance Day, a day promoted by the UNESCO International Dance Council. As a precarious and independent  dance historian I will celebrate it in an unusual way by going to a trade union meeting which deals with my part-time job, a job which economically sustains that of the historian (which is not remunerating at all for the present moment) and by regularly going back to my years long (to tell you the truth it is a question of thousands of years, but let’s not move into this direction) study on Martha Graham. I do hope the first aspect will bring good news, even though I doubt about that, with regards to the second aspect it mostly depends on me (even though it is more complicated than that, will come back to this) and I think the time has come for me to share the outcome of my research once and for all.

This research has now gained a significant political value as I have discovered that it bothers numerous people and groups in the Italian and Anglo-American academic world. It is centred on one of the most neglected Graham’s choreographic works, Letter to the World, which is dedicated to Emily Dickinson’s poetic personality. I therefore choose today to launch a kind of diary that can trace the pathways I will from time to time go through to work on this project and get it published. Good day, everybody!

NOTE – The image is one of the many screenprints Andy Warhol created on Letter to the World.