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Taking it on the chin.

Article Excerpt
Anyone who signs on as a dancer or choreographer inevitably faces the battering ram of criticism. It comes with the owner's manual. Whether in its extreme form--canewielding, Stalinesque teachers hurling verbal grenades, of poison-penned critics cavalierly slicing up art for the garbage disposal--or through more moderate examples, like a ballet mistress routinely dispensing a correction, the touch-and-go awkwardness of criticism can trip up even the most savvy recipients.

The emotional baggage accompanying criticism spills open as embarrassment, rage, shame, frustration, insecurity, shut-down, despair, revenge, of a retreat to the exit sign. For those with sharpened psychological tools, survival, self-introspection, and improvement prevail. Winston Churchill may have boasted that he did not resent criticism, even when "it for a time parts company with reality." But for those with thinner skins and less than Churchillian resolve (i.e. sensitive artists), criticism stings, and dealing with it becomes a confusing affair.

Given that dance training normally begins at a tender age, youngsters bear the brunt in an art form where physical and technical perfection are demanded at a time when they are least prepared to field judgment.

"You're terrible. How can I look at you right now?" "She'll never get a job." Those are just a few of the remarks prematurely aimed at Lisa Thorn,...

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