Introducing our new guest editor

I met Camille for the first time through MinnesotaPlaylist when we had the clever idea to gather all the main theater critics in town together for a video interview. (You can watch it here.) Have you noticed that all the theater critics in town are men? We knew that we had to get some kind of other perspectives in there, and someone recommended Camille for the job. (Are all the dance critics women? What is going on here?) And she fulfilled the job quite nicely. She was funny and opinionated, and she often brought an entirely different angle to the conversation. I was grateful and decided to keep in touch. Since then, she has written two articles for MinnesotaPlaylist, and we thought that if she was half as much fun as an editor, we'd be in good shape. Thanks to Max "Bunny" Sparber for being our first guest editor. You should continue to read his witty commentary on the arts in Minnesota in his "Max About Town" column on minnpost.com--and we hope, occasionally, here. Meanwhile, Camille will be guest editing this site for the next two months, with a focus especially, though not exclusively, on dance--which we have always wanted to cover better and more. We have an incredibly smart, brave, and challenging dance scene here. More people should know it and support it. You're welcome to send your own ideas for stories, or any questions you may have about the magazine side of the site, directly to Camille. All other questions can still come to me. Thanks for reading. For those who are curious where we find our guest editors, below is Camille's bio. Short version: She's got chops:

Camille LeFevre has been an interdisciplinary arts journalist and critic for more than 20 years. She was dance critic for the Star Tribune newspaper for 15 years and MinnPost.com for three years. She continues to cover dance for Dance Magazine and mnartists.org; she critiques performance art, visual art and architecture/design for mnartists.org; and she writes about visual art for City Pages. She was the founding arts editor of Metro Magazine where she covered the performing arts, architecture/design, visual art, film and pop music. She also founded, published and edited The Prairie Reader for five years. For almost two decades she’s written for Architecture Minnesota and was the magazine’s editor for five years. She’s the author of Charles R. Stinson Architects: Compositions in Nature, and has written about architecture and design for Architectural Record, Metropolis, Twin Cities Business, Midwest Home and Garden, and a variety of University of Minnesota publications. She has received grants and/or fellowships from the Center for Arts Criticism, Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival, and the Jerome Foundation. As an Adjunct Professor at the U of M, she has taught JOUR 4990 Covering the Arts: New Media, New Paradigms from Criticism to Communications; JOUR 4171 Covering the Arts: Backstage at the Guthrie Theater; JOUR 4990 Covering the Arts: Dance Writing Demystified; ARCH 3250 Writing Architecture: From Criticism to Communications; and DNCE 1401 Introduction to Dance. In Fall 2011 she teaches a new course in the Graduate School that she developed: “Human Identity in the Cyber-Technical Age.” Her Master of Liberal Studies thesis, “Cyborg Ballerina, Cyber Warrior: A Study of Dancing Human/Machine Hybrids from Sylphide to Science Fiction,” integrated research and theory from the disciplines of film, dance, television, art history, critical media studies and popular culture. She is currently co-editing an anthology tentatively titled, The Human Body as Cultural Metaphor in Science Fiction and Fantasy: Machine-Age Utopias to Digital-Era Dystopias. She presents her scholarship on site-specific dance, and on ballet in science fiction and fantasy, at academic conferences around the country.