I suppose that was kind of the Village Voice at least to allow Deborah Jowitt to celebrate her fortieth anniversary as dance critic. Because the storied New York alt weekly, now owned by cost-cutting conglomerate, New Times, has laid her off. We were forwarded this email: "Motherfucking assholes just fired three more people — one a dance critic who's been here since 1968." The Village Voice says she's been asked to continue writing but, because of "budgetary constraints", as a freelancer. (Nathan Lee, the film critic, also lost his staff job.) That's fair enough: alt weeklies everywhere have been decimated by the exodus of classified advertising to the web; dance is increasingly irrelevant, culturally; and Jowitt had a good run. But the Village Voice's owners should slash costs once, and thoroughly, rather than allow the newspaper to suffer this debilitating torture of a thousand cuts.