Born in Tianjin, China, the son of an American diplomat, Edwin Denby (1903-1983) was the most influential American critic of his era. He was educated at Hotchkiss and Harvard, but first became interested in dance while studying in Vienna. He attended the Dalcroze-based Hellerau-Laxenburg school, danced at the State Theater in Darmstadt, and later as Clare Eckstein's partner-collaborator in Berlin. Returning to New York, he wrote his first criticism for Modern Music in 1936. In 1942-1945 he took over the dance column of the New York Herald Tribune, replacing a mobilized Walter Terry. After the war, he contributed essays to magazines and other publications. A poet who was close to the painters and poets of the New York School, he wrote with easy erudition and a friendly, confidential tone, concentrating on specific qualities of movement and the meanings that arise from them. "He was the first writer," Arlene Croce has said, "to give a clear account of the dynamic process of choreography—to capture in precise imagery the means by which dancing . . . exerts its power over the imagination."