Against Reactionary Dance Writing — A Conversation in Writing Between Benji Hart and Hallie Chametzky
By
Benji Hart
Benji Hart is an interdisciplinary artist, author, and facilitator. Their essays have appeared in Hammer & Hope, Time, and The Funambulist, and their performances have been featured at venues such as the Seattle Art Museum, OUTsider Fest, and Den Frie.
Hallie Chametzky
Hallie Chametzky is a Bronx-based movement artist, writer, archivist, and organizer whose dance theater works have been supported by MOtiVE Brooklyn, University Settlement, and the New York City Artist Corps. Her dance writing has appeared in The Brooklyn Rail, Culturebot, In Dance, and Dance Magazine, and she organizes with Dancers for Palestine and Jews for Racial and Economic Justice
From July 13–17, 2026, NCCAkron hosted Dancing Lab: MoBBallet Writing Workshop (MWW), facilitated by Theresa Ruth Howard. The weeklong convening was dedicated to examining the role, responsibilities, and relevance of dance writing in the evolving ecosystem of the field. Throughout the lab, invited writers Hallie Chametzky and Benji Hart became increasingly interested in the notion of “lenses”–the core identities that shape writers’ perspectives–and began to ask how our political values and commitments might also influence the ways we view performance. As the two drew parallels between their practices as dance writers and their work as Palestine liberation and abolitionist organizers respectively, a central theme emerged around the ways in which dance writers can be reactive in their writing. For Chametzky and Hart the word “reactionaryism,” connecting the rise of fascism with limited forms of dance criticism that often reinscribe rather than challenge systems of power, struck a cord that kept reverberating long after the convening.
The following is a written conversation between the two writers, in which they define “reactionaryism” as an immediate, authoritative, and unquestioning way of engaging artworks, ideas, and people, in contrast with “responsiveness,” an act of slowing down, self-reflecting, practicing curiosity, and engaging empathy. Modeling this prioritizing of process over speed, the two take the time to dialogue about how a reflective writing practice has application far beyond the field of dance.
HC: Hi Benji. I’m really glad we’re doing this. I can’t even recall how this idea of “reactionary” or “reactionaryism” initially came up for us, but it’s been sticking with me. My first train of thought is about the way that we as artists, writers, and people are inextricably bound to broader cultural and societal forces. Living and working in these deeply right-wing, conservative, reactionary times is no joke. How do you feel reactionaryism shows up in our field? Do you feel it in yourself? I know I sometimes do.
BH: Thank you for inviting me into this conversation! From my recollection, you first used the term “reactionary” to describe traditional forms of dance criticism, and the word immediately struck me. As an organizer whose work centers around police, prison, and military abolition, reactionaryism is something I encounter as a political force often. Yet, I don’t think I’d ever heard it applied to the creative side of my practice. I thought back to the essays, criticism, and analysis of my own that I’d been least proud of. “Reactionary” was a great way to describe all of them–lashing out with an immediate feeling, without allowing real time to process, reflect on, and interrogate from whence those feelings originated, and what they were trying to teach me.
This, for me, feels like a big difference between reaction and response: The former is immediate, assumes righteousness, and often doesn’t have a clear goal other than centering one’s own feelings–a stance which I think often leads to harm. The latter is about noticing feelings, interrogating their origin, and giving oneself time and space to connect those feelings to the felt realities of others.
HC: I think about how the dance field mirrors our national and global political power structures. We had a recent, brief experience of diversification of the voices who were listened to and the types of people who ascended to positions of gatekeeping authority. And then, way more quickly, we’ve seen the opposite. Many presenters and funders seem to have shifted back to old models of “safe” artists after experimenting briefly with supporting radical, queer, Black and brown, and otherwise “untraditional” artists. I personally feel that the traditional powerholders and gatekeepers are not long for this world given their resistance to adaptation, but for now they still exert a disproportionate influence.
BH: Your example of how reactive reforms in the dance field (and everywhere else) are often abandoned just as quickly as they were instituted, precisely because they were never anchored to a collective shift in understanding, is a good one.
I think another great set of questions raised in our conversations at MWW were about where the writer locates themselves in their own writing. A tension was noted between the centering of the writer in ways that take up space meant for the dance to which they are responding. On the other hand, a practice of reflection demands the writer reject the myth of objectivity, taking stock of their own identities, experiences, and biases. I’m still interested in reflection as an opportunity for the writer to pause and go inward, not to center their own perspective, but as a practice of humility, of openly acknowledging their own biases and cultural limits, and bearing witness to someone else’s work in ways that invite them into a shift in their own understanding. I think this kind of practice strengthens the exact muscles–empathy, consideration, slowing down, connecting back to the collective–that when we stop using them, allow fascism to thrive.
HC: I so appreciate you invoking the myth of objectivity and how reactive writing can play into our worst impulses to reaffirm our existing worldview and preferences. I’m reminded of what Alice Sheppard, founder of disability arts ensemble Kinetic Light, shared with us about critics neglecting the intricacies and aesthetic details of wheelchair technique or crutch technique and instead trying to “crack the code” about which dancers needed which mobility devices for which movements. Their existing bias told them that they should see mobility devices as impediments to be overcome rather than essential to Kinetic Light’s aesthetic mode. Their reaction to a wheelchair or crutch made them unable to critically respond to the actual movement they witnessed.
BH: What are other ways the practice of responsiveness can actually model a new set of values, ones that have application well beyond dance writing?
HC:There’s a tricky balance as a dance writer between the idea of reviewing the work “on its own terms” and contextualizing it as a piece of the broader sociopolitical and cultural moment. Some of the pieces I react most instinctively and negatively against are ones that I perceive as subscribing to specific Eurocentric ideals and trends of beauty, virtuosity, and audience pleasure, such as contemporary dance forms like Gaga that claim to be “visceral” or “sensation driven” while still prioritizing thinness, flexibility, and homogeneity among the dancers (not to mention their political complicity as ambassadors of the Israeli state). On the one hand, if I’m evaluating those works “on their own terms,” I have to accept that the terms of the work are that people should look and move a certain way. On the other hand, I can’t (and shouldn’t, I think) disregard the fact that those standards of beauty and virtuosity are both a reflection and reinforcement of cultural norms grounded in a specific set of values.
This is where nonreactivity comes in for me. I have to get serious about what I value in a dance work beyond the aesthetic surface. I want to see work that has something specific and unique to say, that baffles me, thrills me, engages my mind and senses, leads me down pathways I didn’t know existed, challenges me. When I encounter a work that I reflexively react against, I can stop myself, hold it up to these metrics, and assess it both as an individual work of art and a piece of the culture.
As an organizer and member of a society often hellbent on identifying the good guys and bad guys, this tool feels similar to how I can engage with people who may not share my exact beliefs, but may not truly be my enemy. In my Palestinian solidarity work, my position as a white Jewish organizer means I may be able to take someone by the hand and help them down the path of solidarity, even if that process includes empathizing with their current views and beliefs that may rub up against my own. In those moments, my ability to not react with my first impulse is crucial. Just like I have to measure dances against my real values, getting real about my metrics for who is well meaning and organizable vs. who is fundamentally not aligned with me is key.
At MWW, we had conversations about this very thing—organizing along difference. I know you have profound experience in that. Is nonreactivity part of that work for you? How do you think it might emerge in your life and work now that we’ve spent time identifying and naming it so centrally?
BH: I think what I hear you talking about is discernment, which is such a crucial and generally underdeveloped form of intuition.
The primary space in which I’m currently organizing is a Black baptist church on the south side of Chicago. As a Black, queer, abolitionist, it’s actually been healing to build deep relationships with other Black people with whom I’m not in political alignment, a spiritual practice in and of itself to be reminded of the ways we all need each other, even when we are not in agreement on how we collectively move forward. But it’s taken a lot of discernment to figure out when and how to engage with elders, religious folks, and those still defensive of the police system.
A huge part of that process, which I think connects back to our convos about dance writing, has been learning to go inward and discern whether I’m the one coming with assumptions or fear of rejection, versus another person or group of people actually rejecting me. Awareness of the lens through which we’re viewing an interaction (or dance) can completely change its nature, and provide us with our own opportunity for growth.
A powerful example of this type of reflection from our retreat was when, during one exercise, Theresa asked us to generate a few short angles for potential responses to individual dance performances. She gave us a list of links, and I clicked one randomly. The video was an ensemble ballet performance, which is really not my bag. I was struggling to find anything in the performance I could respond to, until a soloist hit this striking pose, doubled over with their arms in a cradling position. The pose hit me, and suddenly I was making all these connections from that pose to the costumes, the lighting. It was like that one pose suddenly made the piece legible to me.
When we returned to the larger group, another writer, Joe Bowie, expressed that in his process of response, he always looked at spacing and staging first. I was floored because those are elements I rarely consider, and definitely not off the bat. And it hit me: As a voguer, of course I first look for poses, lines, and angles as my safe way into a piece of dance. After sharing this revelation with the larger group, Theresa challenged me, the next time I write a response, to try and find a way in, other than poses, like staging, music, etc.
This was such a rich and useful moment that reminded me it is possible to meaningfully connect with people and projects that may seem disparate from our own, but not without first developing an awareness of the lenses we bring into the interaction, where we developed those lenses, and how they have served us in the past.
Can you think of any ah-ha moments for you from the retreat that made you reflect on what your own lenses are, and how you might be called to grow and shift them?
HC: Theresa led us through an inventory of our social identities such as race, gender, education, language(s), etc. as a way to understand our own lenses. Afterward, I recall that you shared that you find the most meaning in thinking about lenses beyond those of personal identity. You mentioned that abolitionism and decolonialism can be lenses, too. This was a helpful framing for me, and served almost as a challenge—though my identity clearly shapes my perspective, I can’t fall back on my identity as a guarantee that I will or won’t understand a work of art. I have to view dances with the same critical lenses and worldviews I engage with in my political life.
It was also a good reminder that as a critic, I’m not taking in the same piece as any other critic, or any other audience member. We may see the same dance, but we each read it differently. That’s another good reason to remain curious and inquisitive about my responses to a work rather than reactionary—does the reaction say more about the piece or about me? I don’t think the critic should strive to have an irrefutable “take” on a dance. There is, of course, the old school model of the critic as tastemaker who tells the reader whether or not the piece is worth their time. But I think it’s much more fun, as a writer and reader, to experience a taste of the ineffable, slippery thing that is created in the space between one artwork and one viewer. That space is the magic of performance. It’s quite intimate, and getting to share it is a gift. This slo-mo conversation is also a gift. Thank you, Benji, for spending this time on the page with me.
BH: Thank you so much for all the contributions your analysis has added to my writing toolkit, and for inviting me into this process with you!