There is little formal training in dance criticism, other than a single introductory course in some dance departments. The best dance critics writing today in this country generally do not hold full-time academic positions. Rather, they are journalists, publishing in magazines and newspapers C e.g., Anna Kisselgoff of the New York Times , Arlene Croce of the New Yorker , Tobi Tobias of Dance Magazine and New York Magazine . None of the leading critics writing today have doctorates. Many of these are worthwhile collections, but they typically lack the length and systematic analysis of criticism of other art forms.
Many critics earn their living in unrelated areas.
In Washington, D.C., the Post has one full-time dance critic on its staff, Alan M. Kriegsman, the only dance critic ever to have won the Pulitzer Prize for criticism. The rest of the many writers in the city publish their criticism as freelance writers and earn their primary income in other ways. This makes it difficult for them to find time and energy for sustained critical writing. Much of the dance evaluation published in newspapers and magazines, especially by those noted above, is criticism in the best sense. Thus such criticism has much in common with the humanities disciplines and their focus on art as a cultural phenomenon.