At this moment in my life, I am learning to be a dance critic. To sharpen my gaze and my pen. To use my words.

I had the privilege of taking part in the Spring Forward Festival as a member of the Springback Academy, a week rich in encounters, discoveries, learning, and questions. Among them, one that has stayed with me ever since: what is the power of the words we choose?

They seem harmless. We say them, they come and go. And yet.

Perhaps we underestimate how long words survive us.

Let us never forget the responsibility we hold toward artists. To comment with precision, with expertise, to advocate for excellence. And always remember that in our reviews, there is an artist with a tender offering, a soft and vulnerable heart, a strong soul that managed to carry its performance all the way onto a stage. May we show gentleness in our honesty. May our criticism remain sincere and principled. They are only words, and yet, a careless word can travel further than its speaker ever will.

Let us never forget the responsibility we hold toward our cultures. Our words and the judgments they carry, in their biases and their habits. Let us remember to situate ourselves on the chessboard of criticism, not as neutral observers, but as people arriving with our assumptions, and our privileges. A word does not carry the same weight depending on who speaks it, there is no disembodied voice. Every critique comes from a body, a history, a language. It’s a whole social world. 

Let us never forget the responsibility we hold toward ourselves. To offer criticism, one must accept knowing how to receive it. ‘Twenty times over, put your work back on the loom: polish it ceaselessly and repolish it; add sometimes, and often erase,’ as Boileau said. What do we create under the constraints of time, of sleep, of limited means? When should we take up the pen, and when should we set it down? Before whom do we wish to be read, and why? So many questions we may ask ourselves.

Words are as much a matter of skill as they are of character. To handle words is a precious, weighty, important responsibility. We write the words that will remain once emotion has drifted away into space. We write words that others will read at another moment entirely.

The power of words is to look at the present, to speak into the future, and to echo through the past. It is to be an omnipotent architect, almost all-powerful, and yet so vulnerable.

Blessed is the one who knows how to wield words wisely. For behind each of them, there is always more than language. And perhaps that is why they must be handled with such care.