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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

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DDP Talks To

"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.

Pointe Magazine: Stella Abrera to Take on New Role as Artistic Director of Kaatsbaan

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By Chava Lansky

19 November 2019

Yesterday, Kaatsbaan, the Tivoli, NY-based cultural park for dance, announced that Stella Abrera will join the organization as its new artistic director, effective January 1. This news come just weeks after we learned that Abrera will be taking her final bow with American Ballet Theatre in June.


While we’ll miss seeing Abrera on the ABT stage, we’re excited to see her grow into this new role. As artistic director, Abrera’s position will including working with artists to develop their projects and strengthen their ties to Kaatsbaan. She’ll also continue to teach and coach dancers in her role as the head of Kaatsbaan’s ballet intensives and the Pro-Studio/Stella Abrera program, which launched last summer.

Since its inception, Kaatsbaan has been closely linkedto ABT, making Abrera’s appointment all the more natural. ABT artistic director Kevin McKenzie and ABT’s Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis School faculty member Martine van Hamel are among the organization’s four co-founders, and McKenzie still chairs its board. As part of this transition, Van Hamel will take on the role of principal ballet teacher for Kaatsbaan’s ballet and special weekend intensives.

Abrera brings much more than her decades at ABT to her new position. In 2014 she founded Steps Forward for the Philippines to benefit victims of Hurricane Haiyan, and since 2018 has directed an annual benefit gala in Manila to raise money for the Stella Abrera Dance and Music Hall at CENTEX (Center of Excellence in Public Elementary Education) in Batangas. She was also part of ABT’s first Crossover Into Business class at Harvard Business School, and has been recognized by the New York State Assembly and New York’s Philippine Consulate General for her service to the community.

Read the full Pointe Magazine article here.

LA Dance Chronicle: IT’S TIME TO CELEBRATE THOSE MASTERS OF MOVEMENT…. CHOREOGRAPHERS!

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By Joanne DiVito

9 November 2019

It’s the 9th Annual World Choreography Awards (WCA) on Monday, November 11, 2019 at the Saban Theatre, 8440 Wilshire Blvd., Beverly Hills, CA 90211.  That’s the time we celebrate the glorious “designers of dance” by honoring the outstanding work of global media choreographers.  It salutes the future, celebrates the present and honors the past in dance.

From 1994-2004, the dance community had the good fortune of having the American Choreography Awards (ACA) co-created by Julie McDonald of MSA fame.  In lieu of the Oscars, which did not recognize the “choreography” category, the ACA’s special event began years of recognition for our hard working dance artists and craftsmen, but ended in 2004.

Not until 2010, when dance and choreography could no longer be ignored, and was growing at such a frenzied pace, (thanks to  “So You Think You Can Dance” and “Dancing with the Stars”), did the World Choreography Awards throw down the gauntlet.  The Producer and Director, Allen Walls with Cheryl Baxter insisted on creating the vehicle that recognized the incredible talent that was soon to become household names, not only in the dance world but the civilian world.   They felt it was important to honor the work in all forms of media not only TV, Commercials, music video and motion pictures, but also adding Digital Content and Digital Content Independent.  They’re feeling is, everyone is important and it is necessary that their work gets seen.

Read the full article in The LA Dance Chronicle.

Zora: What It’s Like to Perform Ballet While Black

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By Felicia Fitzpatrick

5 November 2019

The lights dim. An anticipatory hush settles over the audience. The air feels warm and sweet. The string section begins their quick and staccato phrasing of the overture, launching us into ballet’s beloved holiday tradition, “The Nutcracker.”

This is the moment my mom would pinpoint as the beginning of my love of dance. I was only two years old, and she bravely took me to see Texas Ballet Theater’s “The Nutcracker.” We didn’t make it past Act I, but she insists that the lush orchestrations of Tchaikovsky’s composition filtered into my brain. Soon after, I was enrolled in creative movement classes at the local Children’s World.

After outgrowing toddler classes and moving to San Jose, California, I joined a competitive jazz and tap dance group full of Brown, curvy bodies. Yes, we were different shades and our curves sloped at different angles, but we loved to dance and we were a family. It was that simple. Each time we stepped on a stage to dance, I felt a surge of liberation rush through me. I felt empowered. I felt like the most authentic version of myself. I felt the purest sense of joy.

Read the full article on Zora.

DDP Reference in The New Yorker: Goings On About Town

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Read the following excerpt from The New Yorker‘s Goings On About Town, written by dance critic and writer Marina Harss. DDP gets a shoutout within her recommendation of the Guggenheim Works & Process this Sunday (a discussion of the experience of women choreographers of color in dance).

The dearth of ballets choreographed by women is a matter of record—a new group called Dance Data Project has calculated that less than twenty per cent of the ballets that premièred in 2018-19 were made by women, and works created by women of color represents a tiny fraction of that. Dance Lab New York and the Joyce Theatre Foundation have partnered to create a Choreographic Lab, designed specifically to offer opportunities to this grossly underrepresented demographic. At the Guggenheim, four choreographers who have taken part in the lab—Margarita Armas, Courtney Cochran, Amy Hall Garner, and Preeti Vasudevan—show their work and discuss the challenges of breaking out in this male-dominated field.

MARINA HARSS

See the full list of Goings On About Town in The New Yorker.

Broadway World: Photo Coverage: Take a Look Inside Dance Lab New York’s Collaboration With The Joyce Theater

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31 October 2019

Dance Lab New York (DLNY) is halfway through its Lab Cycle in collaboration with The
Joyce Theater Foundation supporting female choreographers of color in ballet. Over the past two weeks, Amy Hall Garner and Preeti Vasudevan, have been exploring the classical and neoclassical ballet idioms with a company of eight professional dancers, supported by the DLNY Lab Cycle grant in space provided by The Joyce Theater Foundation. DLNY provided each of them with 30 hours of incubation, a stipend, eight paid professional dancers, a rehearsal director, insurances, and administrative support from DLNY staff and Founding Artistic Director, Josh Prince.

“I am a dancer with bare feet and bells, and I’m working with ballet dancers en pointe,” said Preeti Vasudevan. “It was an incredible experience, taking what’s in my mind and what I could imagine and trying it out for two weeks with dancers who are wonderful collaborators. It opened a massive door.”

Amy Hall Garner added, “As a choreographer, you don’t have these opportunities unless you’re commissioned. It’s not easy to get professional dancers in a studio who are so willing to investigate, with the right floor and insurance, but DLNY gave me the opportunity to do this and to explore. This experience gave me time. It may sound simple, but it’s not.”

Read the full article on Broadway World.

Dance Business Weekly: Why Arts Business Leaders Should Not Try to Do It All

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By Rachel Moore

30 October 2019

Rachel Moore has the kind of deep background in the arts that compels people to listen when she speaks. After identifying as a dancer all her life and dancing professionally with American Ballet Theatre for six years, she found a calling in advocating for artists’ rights. Eventually she returned to ABT as executive director/CEO, a position she held for 11 years. In 2015, she became president and CEO for The Music Center in Los Angeles, the largest performing arts center on the West Coast. —DBW

While there are those who suggest that executive leadership requires you to have “all the answers,” I don’t agree. Instead, I believe that true leadership articulates where one wants to go; why the desired destination is important; and what the values are that those on the journey should embrace. The nuts and bolts of how one gets there is a collective process that requires the talents and skills of a diverse team of people. 

Rather than them trying to do it all, I offer this advice for leaders in our field:

1. Build a team that does not look or think like you, and be sure it represents a diverse set of skills.

As Doris Kearns Goodwin famously noted in her biography of Abraham Lincoln, “Good leadership requires you to surround yourself with people of diverse perspectives who can disagree with you without fear of retaliation.“ The point is not to get to your decision; but, rather, to determine the right decision. Research shows, time and again, that diverse teams are smarter, more productive and more innovative. (See “Why Diverse Teams Are Smarter,” by David Rock and Heidi Grant, for instance, in Harvard Business Review.)As you build your team, be honest about your strengths and weaknesses and hire people who are different from you and who have differing skills sets. Reach outside your comfort zone and curate your team to be strong and capable as one unit.

Read the full article in Dance Business Weekly.

Dance Magazine: Without $1 Million By December, This Essential Residency Program Might Be In Danger

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By Lauren Wingenroth

24 October 2019

Just last year, the previously Rockville, Maryland-based American Dance Institute—now called the Lumberyard Center for Film and Performing Arts—moved to a 30,000-square foot-former lumberyard in Catskill, New York, spending 5 million dollars to renovate the building.

Now, the organization needs to raise 1 million dollars by the end of 2019, or risk having to shut down their pre-premiere technical rehearsal program.

What happened between last May, when the much-talked-about facility opened its doors, and today, when Lumberyard’s signature program faces potential closure?

The costs of opening the facility were just part of the problem, says Lumberyard’s executive and artistic director Adrienne Willis. It cost more to get the building operating than they expected, and some support they were counting on didn’t come through.

But Willis says the problem Lumberyard is facing is a more systemic one, that speaks to how the creation process has changed in recent years—but funding models haven’t kept up.

Since 2011, Lumberyard has been providing artists with space to hold extended technical rehearsals before a work’s premiere. (Part of the reason for their move was proximity to New York City, where most of these works end up premiering.) Lumberyard is the only facility of its kind in the United States, giving artists one or two weeks in the space with housing, a full crew and a public work-in-progress showing.

Learn more in Dance Magazine.

East Bay Times: Hung Jury Forces Mistrial in Case of Bay Area Ballet Teacher Accused of Raping Students; DA Will Retry

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By Annie Sciacca

22 October 2019

MARTINEZ — A mistrial was declared Tuesday after a jury failed to deliver a verdict in the case against a Bay Area ballet teacher accused of raping and molesting former dance students.

After deliberating Monday and Tuesday, the jury announced it could not unanimously agree on the counts against Viktor Kabaniaev, attorneys confirmed Tuesday. Kabaniaev was charged with and pleaded not guilty to 14 counts including rape, forced oral copulation and molestation of girls younger than 15.

“We’re delighted that six jurors kept their eyes open on the evidence — the devil is in the details,” said Kabaniaev’s defense attorney, Ken Wine. “The details showed there were too many inconsistencies.”

According to Wine, Contra Costa Superior Court Judge Mary Ann O’Malley polled jurors and asked whether anything could be done to change their minds, but they said ‘no,’ and reported they had taken four votes. For the majority of the counts, Wine said, the jury was split. He noted the votes swung from 9-to-3 to 7-to-5 to 6-to-6, but the jurors did not indicate whether they leaned toward guilty or not guilty.

Read the full article in The East Bay Times.

Dance Magazine: Ballerina in Chief: Viengsay Valdés Takes the Reins at Ballet Nacional de Cuba

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By Marina Harss

18 October 2019

For decades the name Alicia Alonso has been virtually synonymous with Ballet Nacional de Cuba, the company she co-founded in Havana in 1948. Alonso died on October 17, just shy of what would have been her 99th birthday. In recent years, she had stepped back from day-to-day decision-making in the company. As if preparing for the future, in January, the company’s leading ballerina, 42-year-old Viengsay Valdés, was named deputy director, a job that seems to encompass most of the responsibilities of a traditional director. Now, presumably, she will step into her new role as director of the company. Her debut as curator of the repertory comes in November, when the troupe will perform three mixed bills selected by her at the Gran Teatro de la Habana Alicia Alonso. The following has been translated from a conversation conducted in Spanish, Valdés’ native tongue.

Were you expecting this appointment?

Not at all. The decision came from the Ministry of Culture. Because of her delicate health, Alicia Alonso had been forced to delegate much of the significant responsibility of running the company, and so they thought of me. I’m in charge of all the artistic and technical aspects: casting, organizing tours, programming.

How will you mark Ms. Alonso’s centenary in 2020?

I’ve been communicating with several companies in New York City and elsewhere. We will be celebrating all year, culminating in next year’s International Ballet Festival of Havana.

Read the full article on Dance Magazine’s blog.

USA Today:

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By Savannah Eadens

17 October 2019

This weekend’s Louisville Ballet production — a three-bill performance called “Serenade + at High + Velocity” — will feature a dance designed by the company’s newest addition and first-ever female resident choreographer, Andrea Schermoly. 

Before 2018, the Louisville Ballet company did not have designated positions for resident choreographers but did hire female choreographers for dozens of shows. So, while Schermoly is not the first woman to ever choreograph a show at Louisville Ballet, she is the first official resident choreographer, a yearslong contracted position with the company that includes consistent commissions and collaboration. 

It’s a high-profile gig in a male-dominated industry. 

Schermoly’s choreographed dance, “at High” — accompanied by a live orchestral performance of Gustav Mahler’s Fourth Symphony — is not her first work with the Louisville Ballet. She choreographed the company’s performance of Martha Graham’s “Appalachian Spring” in February and has been involved in previous years of the Choreographer’s Showcase. 

Before her dancing career was ended by an injury and she began choreographing in full force, Schermoly danced professionally for the Boston Ballet Company and the Netherlands Dance Theater, and trained at the National School of the Arts in Johannesburg, where she grew up.

Read the full article on USA Today’s Courier Journal.