Sally Banes

Banes was married to fellow art and film philosopher Noël Carroll. In May 2002 Banes suffered a massive stroke, from which she never recovered. She remained cognitively and physically severely handicapped until her death of ovarian cancer on June 14, 2020.

There is also a Biennial Sally Banes Publication Prize in her honor. This prize awards $500 to the publication that best explores the intersection of theater and dance or movement and has been published within the previous two years. The nominees are judged based on the innovation and rigor with which they explore their topic and the intersection therein. The first Publication Prize was awarded in 2009.

In 2003, Banes won the Lifetime Achievement Award for her Outstanding Contribution to Dance Research from the Congress on Research in Dance. The Society of Dance History Scholars has also given her a similar lifetime achievement award and Banes has won a Bessie Award for her Lifetime Contribution to Dance Criticism.

In this specialized academic journal, Banes and Carroll debate Gregory Scott, at the time the Director of Doctoral Studies in Dance Education, NYU, in a series of 3 articles (and in conferences), when a reaction to post-modernism in dance has begun. Scott argues for a traditional view of dance that has been applicable for over 2000 years, stemming from Plato's Laws II (665a), as “ordered body movement”, which Plato says makes choral art when combined with music or song (harmonia) in the theater. Ironically, this conception even allows Rainier's Trio A, which Banes championed, to be dance. Nevertheless, Scott critiques some of the principles of post-modernism as Banes and Carroll define them, setting up a further debate stemming from Carroll and Banes's ″Dance, Imitation and Representation″ (1999; espec. pp. 14-20), that continue most recently until 2019, in Scott's A Primer on Aristotle's DRAMATICS (also known as the POETICS), espec. p. 103.

Banes was a past president and Honorary Fellow of the Society of Dance History Scholars. In 1989 and 1998, she presented at the Society of Dance History Scholars Conference. The first time her lecture was titled, "Merce Cunningham's Story." The second conference she presented "The Last Conversation: Eisenstein's Carmen Ballet".

Banes also collaborated with Ellen Mazer on a series of works about an imaginary 19th century woman named "Sophie," who was "sometimes a ballerina, sometimes a communist." In the piece Sophie Eats Shrimp, Banes and Mazer load cartons on and off a rental truck. In another piece, an old-fashioned washing machine and pieces of broken glass litter the stage. Banes continued to explore "Sophie" upon reaching New York in her piece Sophie Heightens the Contradiction which was performed at P.S. 122 in 1983.

Upon reaching New York, she continued working as a dance critic for the Village Voice, the SoHo Weekly News, and Dance Magazine, as well as working as editor for the Dance Research Journal from 1982 to 1988. Since these times, she has authored eight major books about dance, frequently of the post-modern era.

On top of an extensive written portfolio, Banes has taught at various institutions. She was an assistant professor at Florida State University in 1980. From 1981 to 1986, she taught at SUNY Purchase. From 1986 to 1988, she taught at Wesleyan University and from 1988 to 1991 she taught at Cornell University. Finally, starting in 1991, she began teaching at University of Wisconsin – Madison where she was the Marian Hannah Winter Professor of Theater and Dance Studies. She was also the chair of the dance program at UW – Madison from 1992 to 1996.

In 1976, Banes moved to New York City. She continued exploring the post-modern world and attended workshops with members of Judson Dance. She also performed for Simone Forti, Kenneth King, and Meredith Monk. As she grew older, Banes continued to take dance classes in both Chicago and New York City. She studied ballet with Ed Parish and Peter Saul. She also studied modern with Jim Self, Maggie Kast, and Shirley Mordine as well as taking class at both the Martha Graham and Merce Cunningham studios. At one point she raised $70,000 for an alternative multicultural bicentennial celebration. In 1978 Banes produced a film of Yvonne Rainer's 1966 dance piece "Trio A (The Mind is a Muscle, Part 1)."

This book is a collection of Banes’ reviews and articles concerning New York performance art and paratheater from 1976 to 1985. These articles were published chiefly in the Village Voice and the SoHo Weekly News, two alternative publications based in New York City. This time period was the height of the performance art genre, which had surpassed other forms of avant-garde to become “the preeminent form of avant-garde art.” This volume contains 90 articles and reviews including those of Yvonne Rainer, Meredith Monk, The Ringling Brothers, and Whoopi Goldberg.

Unlike mainstream theater productions, which can flourish or die according to critical reaction, performance art – usually operating on a shoestring budget or with funding subsidies – did not depend on a critical mass of spectators for economic well-being. And alternative press critics like me certainly did not wield the make-or-break power of the mainstream press. In any case, most of the performances were one-night stands or short runs and had ended by the time my reviews were published. So I felt a certain freedom in knowing that my role as a critic was not that of a judge, arbiter of taste, or consumer guide. Rather, my role was to join a longer-term conversation about performance art in a public yet immediate way. – Sally Banes, Subversive Expectations: Performance Art and Paratheater in New York 1976–1985

After graduating college, Banes continued to live and work in Chicago. In 1974, she founded the Community Discount Players which was a loosely organized company of actors, dancers, filmmakers,and visual artists. Like The Collective, the Community Discount Players focused on collaboration to produce work and performances. She also founded MoMing, which was a collectively owned theater where actors and dancers could come to teach one another class. It also provided an environment for further collaborative efforts and the performance of these partnerships. This is where she first performed for Kenneth King. She also performed in ‘’Paris/Chacon,’’ a dance-theater collaboration by Meredith Monk and Ping Chong.

Banes first worked for the Chicago Reader starting in 1973. Initially, she was in charge of theater and restaurant reviews. She also wrote book reviews for the Chicago Tribune. Sweet Home Chicago: The Real City Guide, coauthored by Banes, was her first published book. One day, a colleague approached her with a proposition. This colleague had been commissioned to write a book about modern dance but was claustrophobic and therefore could not sit through shows. Banes took over the project and decided that the best way to learn how to write about dance was to practice. Thus, she convinced her editor at the Chicago Reader to allow her to write dance critiques, and eventually became the Dance Editor. This book eventually became Terpsichore in Sneakers: Post-Modern Dance, published in 1980. She stayed at the Reader until 1976 when she moved to New York City.

Born and raised in Silver Spring, Maryland, a suburb of Washington, D.C., Banes studied dance, and particularly ballet, throughout her childhood. She attended the University of Chicago and graduated in 1972 with an interdisciplinary degree in criticism, art, and theater. While at college, she worked as a lighting assistant and wardrobe mistress. She also belonged to a group known as The Collective. Joining in 1970, Banes became one of several actors who met several times a week to collaborate on work. These collectively written theater pieces were performed in workshops as well as public performances.

This book is an anthology of published and unpublished essays and talks about dance since the 1970s. Through this collection, as well as the evolution of her own writing and style of analysis, Banes explores the evolution of postmodern dance throughout the 60s, 70s, and 80s.

This book focuses on the year 1963 and the changing face of the art world. It specifically focuses on Greenwich Village and the performing arts.

While in New York, she continued her education by enrolling in NYU’s Department of Graduate Drama. She earned her PhD with a dissertation on Judson Dance Theater. This dissertation was later published as ‘’Democracy’s Body: Judson Dance Theater, 1962–1964.’’ While doing her doctorate work, she studied under and with some of the biggest names in dance research. Her doctoral advisor was Michael Kirby and she also learned from Deborah Jowitt, John Mueller, Dale Harris, Gretchen Schneider, David Vaughan, and Selma Jeanne Cohen. Some of her classmates were Sally Sommer, Barbara Barker, Brenda Dixon-Gottschild, and Joan Acocella.

This book is a collection of essays analyzing the revolutionary and experimental art world of the 1960s. It consists of eleven essays, including one by Banes herself and a section of choreographers' statements from the White Oak PASTForward project, organized by Mikhail Baryshnikov. These choreographers include Trisha Brown, Lucinda Childs, Simone Forti, David Gordon, Deborah Hay, Steve Paxton, and Yvonne Rainer.

The 1960s was a decade of ferment in the arts, society, and politics. So many things that had been viewed complacently, in a world that seemed always to be the same as it ever was, were suddenly cast in a new light. And this led to a desire to cast off the old ways, to break all the rules, to find new directions and new freedoms. There were no limits, nothing that could not be tried, from rising up to protest injustices like racism, sexism, and the Vietnam War to ingesting mind-expanding drugs to sexual experimentation. – Sally Banes, Reinventing Dance in the 1960s: Everything was Possible

Banes' first work, A Day in the Life of the Mind: Part 2, was created in collaboration with dancer Ellen Mazer. It was a day-long performance beginning at the lagoon in Hyde Park and ending at a popular local bar, Jimmy's. The audience followed the performers from the lagoon and down 57th Street while listening to a Charlie Parker record on repeat and having soybeans thrown at them. On the way, the performance traveled through Banes' apartment, conveniently located on 57th Street, where they were greeted by her grandmother. They exited onto her back porch and continued on. When it became dark nightgown-clad dancers appeared in the large lighted windows of the Regenstein Library as the performance continued to its end at Jimmy's. This work was meant to be a celebration of Hyde Park as well as the blurring of lines between everyday life and art.

Sally Rachel Banes (October 9, 1950 – June 14, 2020) was a notable dance historian, writer, and critic.

Banes' attempts to retell the familiar dance canonical history from the purely feminist perspective. She covers everything from mid nineteenth century Romantic ballet in France and Denmark to historical modern dance of the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s in Germany and the United States to contemporary ballet from the 1930s to the 1950s in Europe and the United States.