When it comes to dance, the breaking of rules, the flauting of convention, is funnier when you know the rules.
Elizabeth Zimmer writes about the arts for print, broadcast, and online media on three continents. She was the dance editor for the Village Voice from 1992 to 2006. In “Foot is a Funny Word,” Zimmer uses video to peer back to the Renaissance and scan forward through Romantic ballet and the 20th century to the present, tracking instances of the funny, the giddy, and the absurd within the Western concert dance tradition.
Pictured above, image of ballet dancers from the Library of Congress.