I hadn't known Joan personally. I was there because I'd reviewed her final book, and that piece—written after she died in 2024—had become a kind of eulogy. For many years she was the dance critic at the New Yorker, and I wrote about how, when I later saw the performances she'd described, I watched them through her eyes. She helped me see things I wouldn't have on my own. In my review I called her “a wonderful imaginary seatmate.” One of her family members read that piece, wrote to thank me, and later invited me to the memorial.

Before the speeches began, a slideshow traced Joan through the decades: impossibly young with a baby in her arms; standing beside artists whose careers had been made by her writing; sitting at her desk surrounded by piles of paper.

Then a face appeared on the screen that I knew intimately. In the photo, he looked much as he had when I'd met him years earlier. Seeing his full lips and teeth again, I suddenly remembered his breath—not the smell but the heat of it.

When I'd learned he was single—he'd mentioned it in a New York Times interview—I'd sent him a note saying how much I admired his work. It was really an excuse to ask him out. In fact, I sent him a valentine. A blind date in a French restaurant became a passionate but short-lived romance. For both of us, being in love came naturally; for him, being in a relationship did not.

Was he somewhere in the room? Backstage? When he came out to give his speech, would he notice me sitting in the room's only red chair? Would I go up to him afterward? Would he remember me? So many years had passed. My hair, now white, had been dark when we met.

One by one, people took to the stage to share their memories of Joan. Many were legendary names from the dance world: Mark Morris, Mikhail Baryshnikov. They told stories that were funny, wistful, sometimes off the cuff. These anecdotes revealed the person behind the writer: Joan's habit of furious notetaking during performances, the pokes, the gasps, the rolled eyes. She sounded just as I'd imagined her.

Joan's partner spoke about her writing habits: how she cut pages from a yellow legal pad into squares, wrote notes on each one, and taped them together into long scrolls. They sometimes grew so long she'd tape them to her bookcase. I smiled in recognition. I'd worked that way once, too.

Finally, according to the program, it was his turn to speak. He didn't come to the stage, though. Instead, he appeared on the screen in a prerecorded video message. He looked older and grizzled but still sweet and boyish, and he spoke the way I remembered: playful and sincere. I realized I'd been sitting there—expectant and upright—waiting for something that would no longer come.

When the lights came on after the program ended, I noticed the gray heads in the seats around me. I remembered seeing Baryshnikov on television when I was a child, leaping impossibly high on PBS's Great Performances. Later, as a teenager, I clipped photos from Vogue of the bell-bottomed party guests in Mark Morris's version of “The Nutcracker,” “The Hard Nut.” These artists had shaped the way I see the world. As I looked around the room, I had the feeling of being on a slow-moving conveyor belt, watching the generation ahead slip quietly into the unknown. Joan had already gone.

Of course, I'm somewhere on that conveyor belt too—how close to the end, I don't know. I thought of what I must seem like to the people around me: a man nobody knew—just a man with white hair in a red chair.

Before I left, I found the woman who had written to me and told her how much her note had meant. She said she always made a point of writing to people whose work touched her. She'd once asked Joan whether that was a good idea. Joan had told her: “No writer ever tires of hearing how wonderful their work is.”