Tobi Tobias passed away on February 13th after a long illness. She leaves her husband Irwin, her children, John and Anne, and four grandchildren. Those are bleak words, unlike any that usually come to mind when I think of Tobi and the wonderful, illuminating dance criticism she wrote for decades. I’ve just been re-reading with delight some of the pieces she posted on her artsjournal.com blog between 2002 and the end of October of 2013. Like many dance writers, she came into prominence when the field began to flourish, not long after President Lyndon Johnson established the National Endowment for the Arts in 1965, and choreographers received government funding for the first time. When it turned out that dance merited—needed— enlightened criticism, the NEA helped make it possible for dance critics from all over the United States (and some from abroad) to attend summer workshops, either in the east or on the west coast. Tobi was in on the founding of the Dance Critics Association and vital among those laboring to obtain funding and plan its annual conferences. Who knew that we critics—often paid skimpily or not at all—could form a fellowship?
And she wrote and wrote and wrote. New York Magazine published her reviews for over twenty years. She wrote for Dance Magazine and edited its criticism for almost ten years. She contributed reviews to Bloomberg News and the Village Voice before she began writing for Arts Journal.She wrote wonderfully well about fashion, although only when I became a mother did I realize that while Tobi was raising her offspring, she was writing dozens of children’s books. She gifted my son Toby with a bunch of them.
Her Arts Journal blog also featured what she called her “Personal Indulgences.” Re-reading the witty one she called “Pick-Up Danish,” I marvel all over again that New Yorker Tobi Tobias—who had travelled to Denmark for the Royal Danish Ballet’s 1979 Bournonville Festival—revisited Copenhagen many times, compiling an oral history of the technique and training that lay behind August Bournonville’s 19th-century ballets, learning quite a lot of Danish, and receiving a knighthood from Denmark’s Queen Margrete II.
That means, perhaps, that I should long ago have saluted her on bended knee. I do so now for other reasons: her support, her comradeship, her writing.
Thank you, Deborah–I hadn’t heard the sad news. Tobias set a standard & had a breadth & depth of dance knowledge that will be seriously missed. I remember her extraordinary discussion of Ratmansky’s Namouna in which she named a slew of comic allusions to other ballets that I was not equipped to recognize on my own. Thanks so much for this lovely tribute.
I endeared myself to Tobi, when I gave Anne Tobias — not realizing the connection between them — a praiseful review for her perfjoamcne in the Pearl Lang Company; something about her beautifully powerful torso, a legacy of the Martha Graham technique. She wrote me a personal thank you note on behalf of her daughter. I was thrilled! While I didn’t always agree with her harsher opinions, I greatly admired her writing. I remember one line in particular her remark about the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater’s dancers, when she observed that they danced as though their lives depended on it.”
A great loss at a grave time when NEA funding is once again challenged.
Thank you for this warm, wise, tribute to Tobi, who was one of my dearest friends; we met when we were 18-year-old college students. In 1979 she changed my life by inviting me to be a guest columnist at Dance Magazine–I had been a visual arts critic, an advertising copy writer, a children’s book editor, an unpublished children’s book writer, a technical writer. Neither of us expected it, but I got hooked on dance writing and have been engaged, and I mean engaged, in that profession ever since. Several years ago, she invited me to be a guest columnist on Seeing Things; I wrote about ballet in Oregon.
Tobi taught me a tremendous amount over the years, but it wasn’t all serious discussion of what we saw together in New York, or what I’d been seeing in Portland, Oregon. A good wisecrack was something we both appreciated, as well as a well made whiskey sour. We knew each other’s work, all right, and we knew each other’s parents, and spouses, and each other’s children. And one fine day my pre teen aged daughter performed for Tobi, in her living room, the result of an exercise her dance teacher had given her pupils: look at a photograph of a celebrity in a magazine, or watch someone on the news, and make up a dance based on their body language. The other kids in the class made up dances based on voguing–Cheryl Tiegs was all the rage. My daughter? Oliver North testifying before congress, crossing his fingers as he swore to tell the truth, combing his hair. Tobi acknowledged her craft and her humor and both of us laughed. Yes, I miss her wise counsel, I miss her criticisms, I miss her writing and oh lord do I ever miss the laughter we shared for more than sixty years.
Everything you said.
I am hoping that somehow, someone will anthologize at least a portion of her criticism.
One of Tobi’s most memorable pieces was a moving in-depth interview she did with dancer-choreographer Bill Carter, who died in 1988. Lou Torres and I requested permission to reprint it in Aristos, but Tobi regrettably declined, saying she hoped to include it in a collection of her writing. It should be high on the list for any future anthology.
On a personal note, as a near neighbor and fellow Barnard alumna, I would bump into Tobi in the park from time to time and always valued our brief conversations. I’d missed seeing her of late and am truly saddened to know that no future meetings will be forthcoming.
Deborah, I deeply appreciate your words about my mother. And then the responses that your words inspired. These small stories each hold a part of who she was to each of us.
Tobi was one of the most bracing people I’ve ever known–very much like Twyla Tharp, another Barnard alumna, in that respect. She occupied what I regarded and do still as a kind of moral high ground ( a hill I admire from a lower pasture). Tobi operated from a kind of ethical as well as critical imperative. She did things not only on time, but early. She was superbly disciplined. She was generous, empathetic, and knew when to brush her hands together and say no. She was organized. She was stylish. She was productive. So imagine when I was off to Paris to see some Cunningham premiere or other, and she called and asked me to bring her a particular kind of French mascara. This was another of her gifts. To establish sisterly bonds with a sister from, shall we say, a very different mother. I’ve missed her voice. Now we can hear her as she was over the years without thinking so sadly of her being missing while still here. She was an uncommon woman. I admired her so. Anne, I sent you all love. You lit up her life.
Nancy Dalva, this is spot on, except there was nothing kind of about her ethical imperative…that was absolute. As for her request for a certain kind of mascara, I was expecting stationery, from a special shop. And Anne, absolutely you lit up her life and through her words and some snapshots, mine, too, when you were very small.
This “Now we can hear her as she was over the years without thinking so sadly of her being missing while still here.” is too true, too often.
Thank you all for your eloquent responses. They stir our memories of Tobi in wonderful ways,
Deborah, thank you so much for these words about Tobi. I could not agree more, especially with your final paragraph: “That means, perhaps, that I should long ago have saluted her on bended knee. I do so now for other reasons: her support, her comradeship, her writing.” Tobi had an acute, brilliant mind and was so impassioned about the subjects that interested her. She was also a generous friend, and I always considered her a mentor, We shared many loves, not just dance and writing, but also Paris, vintage clothes, and children’s books. She taught me so much about all of them. I admired her greatly and will miss her deeply.
I remember during the “Noise/Funk years, how Tobi picked up on Bakaari Wilder as a promising actor/hoofer. He had a key role in the show, but wasn’t “the star.” I always thought that was interesting.