Dancer was a monthly newspaper mailed mostly to dance studios in the mid to late 1990s. There were columns on ballet and tap, but nothing on jazz. I contacted publisher Owen Goldman and offered to write a monthly column. He was fine with that, as long as I realized that it was without pay. And thus my editorial career was born. My goal was to write seriously about jazz dance, in the manner of former
Dance Magazine jazz dance columnist Joe Mazo (who was also a reader on my NYU master's degree thesis). I also wanted to bring visibility to jazz dance companies and choreographers. Jazz companies must apply for grants, yet they often had difficulty in securing the supporting documents and articles necessary to prove to funding agencies that they were legitimate. I feel that this column was successful in achieving both of my goals.
