Jill Johnston in Motion

“Clare Croft’s book is a love letter to Jill Johnston, an ode to the lesbian feminist potential that unfurled with dance investigations in the 1960s, a call for writing as a kind of touching through time, pleasure, juxtapositions, and passionate political imaginings. Gorgeously written and deeply researched, it puts the reader in a richly woven world of thinkers and ideas about what bodies in motion can upend when in sync with feminist possibility. It has an ease, a slouch, and funny adjacencies to queer pleasures and adamancies that helps us sense and move more queerly.” - Jennifer Monson, Professor of Dance, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

“Jill Johnston in Motion is a smart and engaging read that sheds light on one of the most significant writers of the twentieth century. Clare Croft tells a compelling story about Jill Johnston’s transition from dancer to dance critic to feminist cultural critic over the course of her life as a writer. With remarkable care, Croft not only underscores the importance of Johnston’s contributions to dance and feminist history, she also demonstrates how Johnston’s writing was itself an embodied practice and performance. This important book will be a primary text for performance studies and gender and sexuality studies.” - Ricardo Montez, author of Keith Haring’s Line: Race and the Performance of Desire

"These are just such good books; I am boggled by them. Anyone who dances, thinks about dance, or writes about dance should read Croft’s book, and simultaneously take to bed the Reader, a collection of Johnston’s legendary pieces." - Elizabeth Zimmer, WendyPerron.com

"Through the synthesizing project of the Reader and the analysis of Johnston’s multi-faceted persona and writings in Jill Johnston in Motion, Croft has given us the gift of Johnston’s full radical power while also giving Johnston her due, putting her in context with her more famous peers like Susan Sontag and Audre Lorde. Jill Johnston in Motion also has a creative structure that lets Croft, and her research process, enter the narrative, as well as letters from many of Johnston’s Village Voice readers. Gaps in the archives are felt, and filled, with these individual experiences." - Candice Thompson, Fjord

"Without neglecting the contradictions and blind spots in Johnston’s work, Croft deftly examines the centrality of the body in her queerness and writing practice and considers writing (and reading) as embodied acts." - Natalie Haddad, Hyperallergic

"To read Croft’s analysis alongside of Johnston’s writing is a deep pleasure and an excellent learning resource. . . . Croft’s analysis plus anthology shines a spotlight on the intersections of Johnston’s various strengths and audiences. This pair of books presents the breadth of Johnston’s work to a more diverse audience that speaks across the fields of dance studies, performance studies, gender and sexuality studies, queer studies, criticism, and writing." - J Dellecave, Dance Chronicle