Upcoming Deadlines | click here to see if you are eligible for any of these opportunities

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

×

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.

WHO: Innovations in addressing violence against women in the context of COVID-19

/0 Comments/in /by

25 November 2020

The International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women, marked every year on 25 November, is a global advocacy effort aimed at preventing and eliminating violence against women. Women worldwide continue to face unacceptable levels of violence.

WHO estimates that nearly 1 in 3 women worldwide have experienced physical and/or sexual violence, mostly by an intimate partner. The COVID-19 pandemic has further contributed to increasing risks of violence, particularly domestic violence against women.

From 25 November to 10 December, during the 16 Days of Activism against Gender-Based Violence, WHO and partners will be raising awareness about the global need to prevent and respond to violence against women, and provide support to survivors.

Join us

On 26 November, join WHO, representatives from select countries and partners for a virtual panel discussion on “Innovations in addressing violence against women in the context of COVID-19”. Hear how countries and partners are implementing innovative ways to continue to provide services for survivors of violence during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Speakers to include: WHO Deputy Director General Zsuzsanna Jakab and representatives from Ministries of Health and service providers in Argentina, India, Iraq and Spain.

Register for the virtual event

bit.ly/VAWandCOVID19

Read the full article here.

Stance on Dance: Thinking about Western Dance Culture

/0 Comments/in , /by

An Interview with Bradford Chin

by Emmaly Wiederholt

16 November 2020

Can you tell me a little about your dance history – what shaped who you are today?

My name is Bradford, and I use he/him/his pronouns. I am a San Francisco native, which is becoming increasingly rare and comes with its own privileges. I did not take my first ballet or modern classes until I was a freshman in college at Cal State Long Beach. I started as a pre-med biology major. I was introduced to and encouraged to dance at the end of high school by Nina Mayer, but as far as what people would consider “formal training” in Western dance culture, it wasn’t until college. Somehow, I got into the program when I auditioned to minor, which happened to be the same audition to major, and then I switched.

I had a very conservative Christian upbringing coupled with my experience as an Asian American. Undergrad, for me, was a lot of struggle, both internally and externally. I was trying to navigate my sexuality without having role models or support. Doing that alone, along with not having familial support on my new dance journey, was really hard. But it also felt like the right path, and those experiences informed my interest in the minoritized student experience in Western dance culture. I didn’t have the vocabulary to iterate or understand the questions I was dealing with at the time. It’s only after I’ve graduated and continued with this line of work that I’ve been able to contextualize it.

As a freelance choreographer, my questioning revolves around Western dance performance practices, conventions of Western dance theater, why we do the funny things we do, what is it about the choreographer/dancer/audience relationship, etc. Unpacking that led me into questioning how educational practices in dance continue to perpetuate those practices in performance.

I have had the privilege of working with marginalized student populations, like students from very low-income households, people of color, and people with disabilities, which has significantly impacted my pedagogy and how I consider equity in dance. I’m currently a dancer and teaching artist with AXIS Dance Company, a physically integrated dance company which is one of the world’s leaders in inclusive dance education. Physically integrated means we have dancers with and without physical disabilities.

All these experiences continue to build on my questioning of Western dance practices, and now I’m going into the next iteration of these research interests: How does inequality impact the aesthetics of Western concert dance?

Read the entire article here.

Inside Philanthropy: As Individual Giving Drops, Performing Arts Leaders Weigh in on the State of Fundraising

/0 Comments/in , , /by

By Mike Scutari

19 November 2020

Over the summer, Inside Philanthropy surveyed performing arts professionals about COVID-19’s impact on the sector’s fundraising fortunes. Their pessimistic outlook reminded me of an old quote by Stephen King: “There’s no harm in hoping for the best as long as you’re prepared for the worst.”

I realize it’s pretty macabre to cite the “master of horror” when talking about the state of performing arts fundraising, but these aren’t normal times, and if recent research from TRG Arts and arts data specialists at Purple Seven is any indication, respondents’ worst fears are now coming to pass.

The report found that in the first nine months of 2020, the number of gifts received by performing arts organizations in North America increased by 15%, but the average value of those gifts fell by 24% from the previous year. And while gifts from “super-active patrons”—defined as those who had donated to the organization and/or attended performances at least 10 times—were up 47%, total revenue and average gift size were down 38% and 8% for the nine-month period.

The report is all the more unsettling given the broader economic context. TRG Arts/Purple Seven found that aggregate gift revenue from June to September was down 29% compared to 2019. Yet that tried-and-true barometer of philanthropic giving, the S&P 500 Index, was up 8.4% from June to September 2020, and up 12.9% from September 2019 to September 2020.

“If donors don’t support arts organizations now, when stocks are doing well, they may not be around in the future when the market is uncertain,” said Suzanne Appel, managing director of New York’s Vineyard Theater.

With performing arts nonprofits facing what Julie Wake, executive director of the Arts Foundation of Cape Cod, calls a “long and dark winter,” the TRG Arts/Purple Seven report highlights two questions that will make fundraisers feel as if they just read “The Shining” in a darkened room: Why are donors dialing back giving when the market is enjoying a historic run, and what can they do to ensure their organizations can hang on for another 12 to 18 months?

 

Read the entire article here.

Now or Never: Ballet must shift to survive the Covid era

/0 Comments/in , /by

By Hannah McCarthy

30 October 2020

In mid-June, I heard the ping of a notification from my phone. The resulting email and waterfall of news articles I saw soon after would resonate as an important moment in ballet history and performance in general.

The cancellation of American Ballet Theatre’s and New York City Ballet’s Fall Seasons may not have been the first of the year, but they were some of the first to be highly publicized and seal the fate of ballet for the rest of 2020. It’s as if the performing arts community knew this would happen all along, yet we lamented the solidification of our fears into realities. An all-too-familiar feeling during this pandemic, which has affected so many of our friends, neighbors, families, and colleagues.

As expected, once one major ballet company announced the season’s cancellation, many others followed suit, even adding that dancers would be furloughed and administrative employees laid off. Cancellations came with commission dreams deferred for choreographers and uncertainty regarding ballet’s survival, as the art form was already losing audience and donor participation.

With Nutcrackers cancelled, budget cuts increasing, and theaters tightly locked, the impending doom of a 600 year old art form weighed heavily on my heart and the hearts of fellow dance educators, artists, and ballet lovers. We weren’t ready to lose the craft that had seeped deeply into our identities, lives, and passions…or were we?

In early June, George Floyd’s murder at the hands of police officers reawakened a movement which has percolated through American soil for almost 600 years, since colonization by Europeans began. The fight for equality and equity in this country is as old as this country, still some traditions have yet to change.

Today, the Covid-19 outbreak continues to disproportionately affect women and POC. The numbers directly illustrate the existence and persistence of a patriarchal, inherently racist system.

The trouble is, ballet is one of the key living art forms that still embraces that system. In fact, it thrives upon it and often caters to it. If we’re going to change it, the time is now.

In mid-August, I heard the ping of another notification from my phone. The resulting email and trickle of articles I saw soon after would resonate as the glimmer of hope in a bleak-looking, locked down world.

Read the full article on NDEO’s blog.

New York Times: Could Dance Be a Weapon All Over Again?

/0 Comments/in , /by

By Gia Kourlas

22 October 2020

When the coronavirus pandemic started, the first thing I did was panic. I didn’t want to bum anyone out, but it didn’t take me long to leap to a certain conclusion: With theaters and studios shutting down, the dance world would be devastated. What would come out of the ashes?

For a while I thought that the answer had to do with digital dance and how it might develop into something exciting. (That could still happen! It has its moments! People are trying!) But soon I started to obsess about the radical dance movement of the 1930s. Back then, protests and social justice were part of the fabric of modern dance as it met the moment of the Great Depression and the rise of authoritarianism. “The Dance Is a Weapon.” That was the title of the first recital of the New Dance Group, a socially minded collective formed in 1932.

For me, that period of dance haunts the time we’re living in — the pandemic, the election, the uprisings against racial injustice — like a good, progressive ghost. It reminds us that dance is about what’s happening in the world as much as it’s about the poetry of bodies on a stage. This art form that I love is undernourished and undervalued, full of inequity among forms and an uneven balance of power among funders, presenters, choreographers and — always last, though hopefully not for long — dancers.

But instead of staying silent, the dance world is becoming more vocal by addressing issues — amplified by the pandemic — that have plagued it for years. It’s because the show can’t go on that there is finally time to deal with the bigger picture, especially issues of inequity.

In New York, it’s no big mystery why the dancers who have been able to perform and work together in bubbles outside of the city predominantly come from ballet. Compared with other forms, ballet — the rich uncle on the dance family tree — is where much of the money and institutional power reside.

Read the full article here.

Louisville Business First: “I know that theater always comes back,” Louisville Ballet’s new executive director shares hope for performing arts rebound

/0 Comments/in , /by

By Sarah Shadburne

19 October 2020

After arriving in Louisville on March 12 with her Derby hat, a few cocktail dresses and a couple pairs of jeans, Nichole Gantshar was officially named executive director of Louisville Ballet on August 12.

Gantshar joined Louisville Ballet initially on an interim basis, after most recently serving as executive director of Rochester City Ballet in New York. She works alongside Artistic Director Robert Curran, who had previously been both executive and artistic director for the dance company since 2015.

Gantshar said she had admired Curran’s work from afar and being that she arrived at the beginning of a global pandemic, she dreaded that their first conversation would be about whether to cancel shows due to the coronavirus.

“I was thinking, ‘Oh should we cancel the upcoming show? I need to talk to Robert about that when I get there, that’s going to be an awkward first conversation to have,’” Gantshar said in an interview. “But you know what, it was the first conversation he had with me. He brought it up before I did.”

Gantshar said if her profession was basketball and not ballet, Curran would be a point guard for his ability to read the evolving pandemic situation and employ the right play. She said her job is giving him the tools to execute his vision.

Read the full article here.

Dance Teacher: Ballet West Academy’s New Director on Dream Building During COVID-19

/0 Comments/in , /by

By Haley Hilton

19 October 2020

Evelyn Cisneros-Legate is bringing her hard-earned expertise to Ballet West. The former San Francisco Ballet star is taking over all four campuses of The Frederick Quinney Lawson Ballet West Academy as the school’s new director.

Cisneros-Legate, whose mother put her in ballet classes in an attempt to help her overcome her shyness, trained at the San Francisco Ballet School and School of American Ballet before joining San Francisco Ballet as a full company member in 1977. She danced with the company for 23 years, breaking barriers as the first Mexican American to become a principal dancer in the U.S., and has graced the cover of Dance Magazine no fewer than three times.

As an educator, Cisneros-Legate has served as ballet coordinator at San Francisco Ballet, principal of Boston Ballet School’s North Shore Studio and artistic director of after-school programming at the National Dance Institute (NDI). Dance Teacher spoke with her about her new position, her plans for the academy and leading in the time of COVID-19.

Congratulations on your recent appointment! What does this hiring mean to you?

For me, it’s kind of the pinnacle of my after-dancing career. To join a wonderful, large organization with such a fantastic reputation in the industry is really rewarding. To have used all my experience with San Francisco Ballet, Boston Ballet and NDI—all of that comes together to give me the experience I need for this.

Read the full article here.

The Lily: Quitting was her only option. She is one of 865,000 women to leave the workforce last month.

/0 Comments/in /by

By Soo Youn

7 October 2020

Jenai A. Rossow was working full time at a county clinic near Ithaca, N.Y., when shelter-in-place orders forced the first overhaul of her work life. The mother of two and social worker was able to use paid emergency leave as schools and day cares shut down.

Her workplace was great about it, she said. Her husband is an essential worker who never stopped going into the residential treatment facility where he works to teach independent living skills to children in the foster care system. The family gets health insurance through her husband’s job, but Rossow said she made “light-years” more money.

Throughout the summer, she waited to see what would happen with schools. In the meantime, she continued her leave of absence to care for her children, ages 3 and 7. Then the paid leave dried up and the family got word that come September, public schools would return with a hybrid learning model. That sealed the deal.

“We just couldn’t afford to put the 7-year-old in part-time care,” Rossow said.

She left her job completely.

And she’s not alone.

Read the full article here.

Hyperallergic: Artist Residencies Need to Start Thinking About Parents

/0 Comments/in /by

6 October 2020

By Daniel Gerwin

In hell’s innermost circle, exhausted parents search eternally for tiny Lego pieces needed to complete rocket ships, houses, and robots. This particular corner of Hades has been my home since the arrival of COVID-19. While artists without children post images of themselves making more work than ever, I and other artist parents I know are struggling to find time and energy for the studio at night, or working on the kitchen table while keeping an eye on the kids, or making no work at all.

Like all primary caregivers, since March I have simultaneously run a home school, a restaurant, and a hyperactive playground that occasionally becomes a boxing ring. The coronavirus challenges the canard that art (and all work) requires a devotion incompatible with family life. The virus also demolishes the corollary: that raising children requires the sacrifice of all else. With the quarantine’s interruption of virtually all forms of childcare and education, we acknowledge as never before that professional work must be somehow integrated with family life.

Artist-parents have always faced unique challenges. Art careers are forged in an informal economy where personal networks generate opportunities for exhibitions and introductions to curators, collectors, and other important players. It can be of major importance to be present at the right parties and openings, and to build relationships with other artists by visiting their studios. But for people with young children, it has always been a problem to attend openings that primarily occurred at night, and now, without schools or daycare, it requires new levels of innovation to make any art at all. The problems of working at home with children are now faced by parents in virtually every industry.

Read the full article on Hyperallergic.