For San Francisco Bay Area dance critic Rita Felciano, who works daily with language, delving for this issue’s cover feature (page 24) into the mechanics of how choreographers deal with words has been a singular pleasure. “Talking with them about the challenge that these very different mediums present was an eye-opener—and fun,” she says. “I kept thinking of what the late Pina Bausch, who inaugurated the era of dance-theatre in Europe, once said: ‘I am not interested in how people move, but what moves them.’”

As theatre editor and chief drama critic of Time Out New York, David Cote’s beat is pretty well-defined. Still, he was intrigued by the prospect of reporting a far-ranging story on the most influential theatre critics across America (page 30). In addition to gaining a wide-angle view of arts media across the 48 contiguous United States, he boned up on programming trends in those regions. “Having grown up in rural New Hampshire and lived in New York since 1992, I’ve had the best of both worlds,” he reasons. When Cote’s not busy teaching arts criticism at Brooklyn College or disappearing up his own critical navel, he tries his hand at writing plays and libretti.