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"The Devil Ties My Tongue" by Amy Seiwert performed for the SKETCH Series, 2013. Photo by David DeSilva. Courtesy of Amy Seiwert's Imagery
July 31st: Community Engagement Artists and Creatives Grant, December 31st: New England Presenter Travel Fund, December 31st: Central Pennsylvania Youth Ballet Scholarship, December 31st: 24 Seven Dance Convention, December 31st: National Theater Project Presenter Travel Grant, December 31st: Breck Creek Artist-in-Residence Program
×"The Devil Ties My Tongue" by Amy Seiwert performed for the SKETCH Series, 2013. Photo by David DeSilva. Courtesy of Amy Seiwert's Imagery
DDP will cover stories from the corporate, for profit world regarding issues surrounding pay equity and transparency where relevant, such as other industries with low representation of women: tech, the sciences, venture capital, the entertainment industry, etc. to examine parallels between these male dominated spheres where informal hiring and word of mouth is the norm.
By Alex Marshall
30 January 2020
LONDON — The Royal Ballet has suspended Liam Scarlett, its artist-in-residence, after accusations of sexual misconduct involving students at the Royal Ballet School.
The company was made aware of the accusations against Mr. Scarlett in August, it said in an emailed statement on Thursday. Mr. Scarlett was suspended immediately and an investigation is ongoing, the statement added.
Mr. Scarlett, who was heralded as a “choreographic wonder boy of British ballet,” has created work for the New York City Ballet, American Ballet Theater and Miami City Ballet, among others.
The impact of the accusations is already spreading beyond Britain. On Thursday, the Queensland Ballet in Australia suspended Mr. Scarlett, an artistic associate of the company, and canceled its planned productions of his new ballet “Dangerous Liaisons,” The Australian newspaper reported.
Read the full article in the New York Times.
By Caitlin Huston
A group of protesters gathered outside the Broadway Theatre Friday night to speak out against the casting of Amar Ramasar in the “West Side Story” revival.
Ramasar, who plays Bernardo in the musical currently in previews, has been accused of sharing explicit images of female ballet dancers without their permission during his time as a principal dancer with New York City Ballet.
One of those female dancers, Alexandra Waterbury, brought these allegations forward in September 2018 after filing suit against her former boyfriend, Chase Finlay, and other dancers at New York City Ballet, including Ramasar. Waterbury alleges in her suit that Finlay had sent unauthorized nude images and videos of her to Ramasar and others, who sent back illicit images of other women in exchange.
Ramasar and Zachary Catazaro, another dancer reportedly involved, were fired from the ballet in September 2018. Finlay had already resigned. Ramasar and Catazaro were reinstated to the New York City Ballet in April 2019, after an arbitrator, hired by the union for ballet dancers, the American Guild of Musical Artists, handed down a ruling.
The civil suit Waterbury filed against New York City Ballet, as well as Finlay, Ramasar and Catazaro and others in State Supreme Court in Manhattan is still ongoing. The defendants have filed motions to dismiss.
Read the full story here.
By Hakim Bishara
15 January 2020
Fallout continues from Joshua Helmer‘s departure from his job as executive director of Pennsylvania’s Erie Art Museum. Hundreds of current and former staff members at the Philadelphia Museum of Art (PMA), Helmer’s workplace prior to the Erie, signed a petition in support of the women who came forward with allegations of sexual misconduct against Helmer in a New York Times article. The signatories call for a structural change in the museum’s sexual harassment policy.
Helmer worked at the PMA as assistant director of interpretation from 2014 to February 2018. During that period, he engaged in several romantic relationships with women in the workplace in violation of the museum’s policy while dangling promises of professional advancement and favorable treatment. But the revelations brought by reporting by the New York Times and Philadelphia Inquirer “barely scratch the surface” of abuses committed by Helmer, the signers say.
“Former and current staff of the Philadelphia Museum of Art listed below wish to express solidarity with our current and former colleagues who so bravely spoke out in the New York Times and those in Erie who did the same,” the petition, which has garnered 365 signatures as of this writing, reads. “We believe their stories and admire their courage.”
The statement will be shared publicly with the hashtag #MuseumMeToo
Read the full article on hyperallergic.com.
By Steve Sucato
21 January 2020
It’s fitting that New Zealand, the first country to give women the right to vote, should also be the place where, for the first time, a major ballet company will present an entire 12-month dance season devoted to works by female choreographers. But according to Royal New Zealand Ballet’s artistic director, former Pacific Northwest Ballet star Patricia Barker, programming this historic season was far less difficult than it might sound.
At the start of your tenure in 2017, there was some controversy around the ratio of non–New Zealander dancers and staff hired. Has the dust finally settled?
That really never had anything to do with me. I was just the unlucky one that stepped into it. My goal was to turn the attention back to the art. As soon as we did that, all of that uproar dissipated.
Read the full article from Dance Magazine.
By Jeanne Allen
September 18, 2015; WBUR (Boston Public Radio, “The ArtEry”)
In 1963, the Ford Foundation used the power of its grants to help create eight ballet companies across the U.S. Most of these companies were founded and cultivated by leading female artistic directors. Today, all of these companies are headed by men. Additionally, men also head the choreography.
According to a recent article on NPR, many of the current female leaders in the arts, and in ballet, seem to share similar perspectives. According to scholar Lynn Garafola, “The more professional a company becomes, in my observation, the more likely women are going to disappear from the leadership positions, and they’re going to be replaced by men. I think this is very typical of organizations when they get larger, when they get more important.”
And, indeed, this is a dynamic that cuts across organizational types, as is reflected in this recent review of studies of nonprofit diversity profiles.
Twyla Tharp, the famous choreographer who started her own dance troupe 50 years ago, is touring this year to celebrate that lifetime achievement. She comments, about the vanishing number female choreographers, “It’s not a woman’s prerogative to be an artist. We all know women have a high hill to climb whatever they do.”
Why the change? Well, in ballet schools, girls outnumber boys by almost 20 to 1. This creates a “culture in which the boys are trained to be much more individuals, to do solos,” according to Rachel Moore, who will serve as CEO of the American Ballet Theatre until October 5th, when she leaves to take on the role of president and CEO of the Los Angeles Music Center. “Girls are taught to stand in line and be obedient.”
Read the full article on Nonprofit Quarterly.
December 23, 2019 Northfield, Illinois Dance Data Project® (DDP) research was discussed in a Here & Now piece on National Public Radio (NPR) on Friday, December 20. Following reporter Sharon Basco’s initial investigation of the lack of women choreographers in ballet, published in WBUR’s The ARTery and covered in a Here & Now story in 2015, the program discussed the shifting “no girls allowed” atmosphere in the artform.
The 2012-2013 ballet season research by Amy Seiwert and Joseph Copley – in which of 290 ballets programmed by a sample of companies that season, just 25 were choreographed by women – set the stage for the story. “Major companies went year after year without staging a single ballet by a woman,” narrated Basco, “People began to take notice.” Former chief dance critic of the New York Times, Alastair Macaulay, was one of those people, Basco shared, “[Macaulay] points to an awakening in the past few years – and changes are underway, starting with several companies hiring female artistic directors.”
The notion that having more women running ballet companies may serve as a catalyst in the growing equity in ballet, has often been discussed, and has been reflected in the seasons of companies like the English National Ballet, Cincinnati Ballet, and more. Basco interviewed the artistic director of the former, Tamara Rojo, who agreed, stating, “Today it will be very, very strange for any company to announce a season where there is no female representation.”
Basco noted, however, that female representation in programming is just the tip of the iceberg. Citing DDP’s July 2019 report, she said, “This season, fewer than 20% of ballets are by female choreographers.” Furthermore, she noted, “The women commissioned for major work do so mainly as freelancers, not resident choreographers.” As the DDP team conducted research this month on global resident choreographers, indeed, not one of the “Top 10” U.S. ballet companies (ranked by budget) had a female resident choreographer in 2019. Women are rarely afforded the “luxury of an institutional home,” and, beyond this, they are often paid only a fraction of the compensation offered to male choreographers. Twenty-seven-year-old choreographer (and principal dancer at New York City Ballet) Lauren Lovette weighed in, saying, “That is the next step. It’s like, okay, thank you for giving an opportunity, now will you pay me the same?”
One of the rare “exceptions” to the glass ceiling is veteran choreographer Helen Pickett, who concluded the piece on an optimistic note, saying, “This is the ground we walk on now – that WE walk on now – and let’s keep on going forward with that.”
DDP will release more findings in January following an investigation of the role of equity in major U.S. dance venue leadership and programming, as well as the first global study of resident choreographers.
Listen to the story on WBUR’s website or below:
Dance Data Project® (DDP) research was discussed in a Here & Now piece on National Public Radio (NPR) on Friday, December 20. Following reporter Sharon Basco’s initial investigation of the lack of women choreographers in ballet, published in WBUR’s The ARTery and covered in a Here & Now story in 2015, the program discussed the shifting “no girls allowed” atmosphere in the artform.
Listen to the story here.
By Elizabeth Rosner and Kate Sheehy
10 December 2019
A city ballet dancer who accused several male stars of trading nude photos of her and other unsuspecting female colleagues blasted the appearance of one of the men in Tuesday night’s Broadway preview of “West Side Story.”
“Ya know, I was going to protest tonight at the opening of @westsidestorybway because you shouldn’t be on a playbill; you should be on a sex offender list,” Alexandra Waterbury seethed on Instagram alongside a photo of dancer Amar Ramasar, who stars as Bernardo in the musical classic.
“I’m not protesting because it’s my best friend’s 25th birthday and her life is more important to me than anything you could ever do or be involved in,” Waterbury wrote in addressing the star dancer — while also posting the headline from an online editorial in September titled, “Why You Should Boo Amar Ramasar in the ‘West Side Story’ Revival.”
“Many people are wondering, ‘if he’s working still, he must not have done anything wrong.’ No. The District Attorney of NYC looked into my case, conducting a criminal investigation and similarly to how the DA handled the allegations against Harvey Weinstein, they’re claiming there’s not enough to prosecute the case with,” Waterbury said, referring to criticism of the Manhattan DA’s Office for allegedly not properly handling a slew of sex-abuse claims against Harvey Weinstein.
Read the full story in the New York Post.
By Rosalind C. Barnett, Ph.D. & Caryl Rivers
In recent months, three exceptionally prominent female journalists with large TV followings appeared on the air visibly pregnant and worked right up to their delivery dates.
Margaret Brennan of Face the Nation, NBC News correspondent Katy Tur, and Kasie Hunt — a political correspondent and host of MSNBC’s weekly program Kasie DC — did not leave TV when their pregnancies became very evident.
Perhaps most remarkably, Face the Nation, the largest of all Sunday public affairs programs, which in 2017 had an average of 3.538 million viewers, broke all the rules. The network hired Brennan, a CBS News senior affairs correspondent, to replace John Dickerson as anchor while she was expecting. Just two months after her hiring was made public, Brennan announced that she was five months pregnant with her first child.
Until recently, viewers almost never saw visibly pregnant women broadcasting news on television — much less heading up a major Sunday network news show. The Baby Bump Ceiling was very real for women. Will these three cracks in that ceiling put a dent in a harmful stereotype? Maybe so.
Read the full article on Women’s Media Center.
By Lauren Floyd
19 November 2019
When Robin Pitts, founder of the dance studio Dance Makers, started dancing at 7 years old she didn’t see many people on TV who looked like her.
Her mother wasn’t even sure she’d like dance, after it didn’t take with her older sister.
Still, the aspiring ballerina begged until her mother relented.
More than 30 years later, she still hasn’t stopped dancing.
“I’m a studio kid,” Pitts told Atlanta Black Star Nov. 12.
She’s focusing more on the administrative side of dance these days, having founded the Maryland-based Dance Makers studio in 2001 and leading the organization into its 18th year.
Read the full article in the Atlanta Black Star.
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"The Devil Ties My Tongue" by Amy Seiwert performed for the SKETCH Series, 2013. Photo by David DeSilva. Courtesy of Amy Seiwert's Imagery