Emma R. Cohen


is a writer and dancer from Chicago. Her writing has appeared in the New York Times, Times Literary Supplement, Los Angeles Review of Books, and BOMB, among other outlets.  As a performer she has worked with artists including Gillian Walsh, Neal Medlyn, and Ligia Lewis. She is a PhD candidate in English at Northwestern University.

Dance Portfolio

Writing Portfolio



︎ emma.rachel.cohen [at] gmail [dot] com

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Features


“In Chicago, Keeping the Heritage of Black Dance Moving” in The New York Times

Essays


The Cruel Optimism of Cheer- tD
Sassy, Moody, Nastyan exploration of dance on TikTok - tD
Parsing the Significance of a New Archive - tD

Book Criticism


Picturing Disease and Desire, on Annie Ernaux’s The Use of Photography - Momus
Olga Tokarczuk’s The Empusium: A Health Resort Horror Story - The Brooklyn Rail
Solidarity, Not Sameness, on Xi Xi’s Mourning a Breast) - Times Literary Supplement
Jenn Shapland’s Thin SkinThe Brooklyn Rail
Performing the Patient: On Emily Wells’s ‘A Matter of Appearance’LA Review of Books
Sick History: On Kate Zambreno’s “To Write as if Already Dead” - Cleveland Review of Books
Ntozake Shange Expresses the Poetry of Black Dance - tD
Dance, Reanimated on the Page, on Drawing the Surface of Dance - tD
Dance Studio Life, on Ballet Class - tD

Interviews


Hannah Levene, author of Greasepaint - BOMB
‘The Inexplicable Facets of Living in a Human Body’: An Interview with Emma Bolden - Hazlitt
Sex and Ghosts in an Empty Theater, an interview with Anh Vo - tD
Generating Solidarity, Even Through Screens, an interview with the Dance Artists’ National Collective - tD

Dance Criticsm

Ralph Lemon’s Tell it Anyway, 2024 - BOMB
Coming Undone and Becoming Again, onJaamil Olawale Kosoko’s American Chameleon - tD
Intimacy Made Public, on Gabrielle Revlock’s SEX TAPE - tD
Settling Into Slowness, on a conversation between Okwui Okpokwasili, Saidiya Hartman, Simone Leigh, and Tina Campt - tD

Film Criticism


Cunningham in Three Dimensions - tD