Relationship of critics and dancers

The asymmetry of the relationship between critics and dancers, where critics de facto have more power, is thus quite obvious. Dancers are vulnerable, since critics review them in public and have an impact on their professional identities and careers, but not the other way around (unlike what happens with academics and writers who review each other).

. . . .

Dancers often felt called upon to state, firstly, that 'critics don't understand how much power they have' and, secondly, that 'critics don't know anything about ballet'. Dancers' knowledge is an absorbing, bodily one, the knowledge of an insider. Many dancers have performed various roles in certain productions over a long period of time. Critics know other things: they tend, for example, to be more versed in dance history than dancers. Many critics have moreover seen a larger number of companies in different productions that the dancers have. After all, since the latter have to concentrate on their own dancing all the time, they do not have very much time to go to other performances in their city or abroad. Those critics who used to dance on one level of course remember what it was like, but are now involved in a different kind of career project.

It is the discrepancy between doing ballet and watching ballet that is at work again.

Ballet Across Borders: Career and Culture in the World of Dancers by Helena Wulff. 1998. Page 134, 135.