Alan M. Kriegsman

Alan Mortimer Kriegsman ( born February 28, 1928 in Brooklyn, New York City; † August 31, 2012 in Washington, DC ) was an American dance critic and Pulitzer Prize winner.

Biography

Kriegsman was born in 1928 as the son of a lawyer and a secretary in the New York City borough Brooklyn and grew up in Far Rockaway neighborhood of Queens. He attended the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and earned his bachelor 's degree at Columbia University. After serving in the army, he decided to concentrate on the music. His passion for dance was sparked by a performance of the ballerina Alicia Markova in 1946.

After he had made ​​in 1953 a master's degree in music at Columbia University, Kriegsman worked until 1966 as a teacher and in the management of several colleges and universities. By means of a Fulbright scholarship he attended in 1956 and 1957, the University of Vienna. In 1957 he married his wife, Sali Ann Ribakove.

In 1966 Kriegsman began his career as a journalist for the Washington Post, first as a music critic. In the following years he began to extend its work to other performing arts. In 1974 he was awarded the dance critic of the Washington Post and in 1976 for his criticisms with the Pulitzer Prize for Criticism. In 1996, he went to a 30-year - critic career in retirement.

Alan M. Kriegsman died on August 31, 2012 in his home in Washington, DC at the age of 84 years from heart disease.