Sasha Anawalt

Sasha Anawalt is an acclaimed critic, writer and media entrepreneur. Co-founder of USC Annenberg Master’s Program in Arts Journalism in partnership with the university’s arts schools in 2008, she was chief dance critic for the Los Angeles Herald-Examiner, LA Weekly, and KCRW, and authored The Joffrey Ballet: Robert Joffrey and the Making of an American Dance Company, called a “milestone in dance writing” by The New York Times. A documentary film about the Joffrey Ballet based on her book aired on PBS American Masters in January 2013. She ran the Getty Arts Journalism Program for 13 years and NEA Arts Institute for Theatre and Musical Theatre for seven — both at USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism. An arts journalism innovator, Anawalt co-produced the Engine Series and co-founded with Doug McLennan, the esteemed DanceMapLA. She taught dance in a women’s prison in Montreal, worked as a chambermaid at the Wawona Hotel, co-authored a children’s astronomy textbook for Goddard Space Institute’s late director, Robert Jastrow and interviewed Martha Graham, Jane Goodall, Yo-Yo Ma, Art Spiegelman, Twyla Tharp, Rudolf Nureyev, Mikhail Baryshnikov, and Julia Child among other greats, including lately, Carmen de Lavallade.