Margaret Lloyd

Margaret Lloyd ( Thayer; 1887 – March 1, 1960) was an American dance critic in the field of modern dance. Lloyd was one of the first full-time modern dance critics for an American newspaper, covering dance for The Christian Science Monitor from 1936 until her death in 1960. Her 1949 review of the field of modern dance, The Borzoi Book of Modern Dance, remains an important work, and has been reprinted into the 21st century. Lloyd lived in Massachusetts her whole life, and covered dance performances across the Northeastern United States. Biography Margaret Thayer was born in South Braintree, Massachusetts in 1887. According to her longtime friend Pauline Chellis, she was a descendant of Sylvanus Thayer, and took the name "Margaret Lloyd" as a pen name after a stepfather. Lloyd was a follower of the Christian Science movement, and began writing film reviews and feature stories for The Christian Science Monitor by 1931. Her work expanded to dance in 1936, focusing especially on the rapidly-expanding field of modern dance.

Lloyd continued her work in the field of dance criticism after publishing The Borzoi Book of Modern Dance, writing for the Christian Science Monitor until her death in 1960. Lloyd's final piece was her review of the Roberto Iglesias ballet company at Boston's Symphony Hall for The Monitor, published after her death. Conner highlights a moment of change in reporting on modern dance in 1903, when a report of Isadora Duncan's German performances was transmitted by submarine cable and republished in The New York Times.

Personal life Lloyd married The Monitor 's music and theater editor Leslie A. Sloper during her employment at The Monitor. They had three children, and Lloyd also had one child from a previous marriage.

Critical perspectives Fellow dance critic Walter Sorell described Lloyd's criticism as personal, story-driven, and authentic. Concurringly, her biographer and peer Doris Hering argues that "In [an] era when writings about dancers tended to treat them as exotic creatures, Lloyd's pragmatic view of her subjects as social beings was a major contribution to the field."

Choreographer Alwin Nikolais described Lloyd's critical analysis as less formulaic and more contemporary than that of her peers, highlighting his observation of a conversation between Lloyd and four other critics. Nikolais recalls that the four peers each detailed their rules for evaluating a performance, which he believed were outdated. Nikolais claims that Lloyd refuted them, recounting that "she turned to the other four and frankly said, 'I really don't know what you are talking about. I just go and look.'"

Lloyd condemned the presence of left-wing politics in modern dance during the Great Depression. This included the rhetoric of the National Dance Congress, an organization led primarily by left-wing Jewish modern dancers such as Helen Tamiris and Anna Sokolow. The New School history professor Julia Foulkes highlights Lloyd's criticism of the organization's May 1936 meeting, where Lloyd argued that leftist politics would "only succeed in turning the remaining liberals into fascisti." Northwestern University history professor Susan Manning concurred on Lloyd's views on liberalism, arguing that Lloyd's chronology in The Borzoi Book of Modern Dance primarily attributed the success of modern dance to "American ideals of freedom and democracy," which Manning believes "echoed the emerging rhetoric of Cold War liberalism."

Lloyd detailed her opinions on dance criticism in her correspondence with Lewiston Evening Journal reporter Charlotte Michaud in the late 1930s. In one letter written in 1938, Lloyd argued that dance critics should be journalists and not dancers, to maintain a broader view of the field and insulate their coverage from the influence of jealousy.

Legacy Pearl Lang dedicated Shira, a piece that would become one of her best-known works, to Lloyd's memory. Shira was performed at the American Dance Festival at Connecticut College in the summer of 1960.

Publications