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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
By Gia Kourlas
14 June 2018
The notion that female choreographers are underrepresented at major dance companies has hit the mainstream, so much so that just about any program with the word “women” in its title is starting to feel more than merely unimaginative: It has an air of pandering.
On Wednesday night, Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater continued the trend by opening its season at the David H. Koch Theater with “Celebrate Women,” featuring works by Jessica Lang, Judith Jamison and Jawole Willa Jo Zollar, and concluding with “Revelations,” Alvin Ailey’s 1960 masterpiece and the company’s meal ticket. It keeps the crowds coming back (just in case an all-female choreographer program doesn’t),
Leading off the company’s brief Lincoln Center season was Ms. Lang’s “EN,” her first work for the company and her 100th dance in total.
Ms. Lang and Robert Battle, Ailey’s artistic director, have known each other since their days at the Juilliard School. Ms. Lang’s husband, Kanji Segawa, is a member of the Ailey company and previously danced with Mr. Battle’s troupe, Battleworks Dance Company. (He was featured in “EN,” naturally.) It was a chance, you hoped, for Ms. Lang to dig beneath her usual sleek, designed surface. But while handsome, “EN,” named after a Japanese word with multiple meanings — a circle, destiny, fate or karma — fizzled out.
Read the full article in the New York Times.
Claudia Schreier in the studios of Ballet Academy East; courtesy of Schreier. Photo by Rosalie O’Connor.
By Jennifer Stahl
9 May 2018
American Ballet Theatre is putting more women in charge of its ballets.
Today, artistic director Kevin McKenzie announced that the company is launching a multi-year initiative called the ABT Women’s Movement.
ABT will hire at least three female choreographers each season. The idea is that, in general, one woman will create a new ballet for the main company, one will make a work on the Studio Company, and one will workshop with dancers from either group for a choreographic residency without the expectation of a final product.
Lauren Lovette choreographing in the studios of NYCB; courtesy of NYCB. Photo by Erin Baiano.
The launch will be celebrated this October during ABT’s Fall Gala. That program will be devoted entirely to work by women: a premiere by Michelle Dorrance, Lauren Lovette‘s Le Jeune for the ABT Studio Company and Twyla Tharp’s iconic In The Upper Room, which has been in ABT’s rep since 1988.
Read the full article in Dance Magazine.
Margo Sappington working with dancers courtesy of Cleveland Ballet. Photo by Peter Sampson.
By Steve Sucato
10 May 2018
Nearly four decades ago, choreographer Margo Sappington made a long-lasting impression on Gladisa Guadalupe. Back then, Guadalupe was just a 17-year-old member of Venezuela’s Ballet Nuevo Mundo de Caracas, and Sappington was choreographing on the company. Guadalupe told a fellow dancer that, someday, when she had her own company, she’d have Sappington create a ballet on it.
Guadalupe has kept that promise. Now the artistic director of Cleveland Ballet, a 14-member company launched in 2015, Guadalupe has commissioned the 70-year-old Sappington to create a ballet based on Lewis Carroll’s books Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland andThrough the Looking-Glass.
An original Sappington creation bodes well for the young company. A former Joffrey Ballet dancer, Sappington is also a Tony nominee who’s choreographed six Broadway shows and numerous works for ballet companies worldwide. Pointe spoke with Sappington about Alice ahead of its May 11–12 premiere at Cleveland’s Ohio Theatre at Playhouse Square.
Read the interview with Sappington in Pointe Magazine.
By Isabelle Vail
9 May 2018
Dance/USA calls for “Equitable Culture” in the field, but its statement is a little less deliberate and forthright regarding this change.
The statement reads, “We challenge and commit ourselves to celebrating our art form of physical expression while ensuring our field is a safe and equitable place for all. This is an opportunity for everyone in the dance field to audit themselves and their organizations and ask: Is the culture in my dance environment healthy? Are individuals who need to speak up empowered and given a supportive path to do so? Is everyone, in all levels and positions, educated about what behavior is inappropriate and about what constitutes an equitable workplace? Are the individuals in power respectful of everyone around them? None of us should be exempt from honestly conducting this personal evaluation.” A call for action, but without reference to any incidents that incite the need for such action.
Where is the mention of abuse at New York City Ballet? The inequitable representation of women at all levels of leadership and creativity? Dance/USA claims to be an advocate for progress and says it wishes to “support the cultural movement towards a more equitable future.” So, tell us, what’s next on the Dance/USA list to promote equity? Where is the research into the disparity? The organization moves the field forward, but with this statement online, we must also call Dance/USA to deliberate action – beyond making statements.
Read the full statement at Dance/USA
Courtesy of Les Grands Ballets for Pointe . Photo by Sasha Onyschenko.
The below excerpt from Pointe magazine is a direct reminder of why our mission is so important in the present culture of the dance world.
By Avichai Scher
14 March 2018
“The latest front in the controversy over the underrepresentation of female choreographers in ballet is at Les Grands Ballets Canadiens de Montréal. They’re facing a petition and choreographer resignation that forced them to rebrand a season and publicly defend their programming.
On February 26, artistic director Ivan Cavallari, who started the job in the summer of 2017, announced the 2018-2019 season, which included a program titled Femmes. The program announcement said the evening would have “woman as its theme,” and that Cavallari had “chosen three distinctive voices, rising stars of choreography, to undertake this great subject.”
The three voices Cavallari chose to create on the theme of women, however, were all men.
“This was just too much for me, it was the last straw,” says Kathleen Rea, a former member of National Ballet of Canada who now freelances, choreographs and teaches in Toronto. Rea says she’s been bothered by the dearth of women choreographers throughout her career. But referring to women as “subjects” and excluding them from choreographing on a program about them compelled her to take action.
She started a petition, which currently has almost 3,000 signatures, calling for a female voice to be added to the program and for the marketing language to be more sensitive to women. Press attention, both local and international, immediately followed.
Then, one of the program’s choreographers, Medhi Walerski, pulled out in protest.
“I am aware of the pervasive misrepresentation and lack of predominance they (women) have been often subjected to in their own careers, and I do not stand for that,” he said in a statement. “It’s time to question and revert the pervasive gender imbalance.”
Cavallari responded by changing the name of the program to Parlami d’Amore, an Italian phrase that means “let’s talk about love,” saying “I didn’t want to talk about women as objects, but from a broader perspective: in relation to life, to love and to the Earth.”
Cavallari will replace Walerski with a different choreographer, but will not budge on the gender issue here, saying the replacement will be male.
In a statement, the company pointed out that they have two women choreographers on the program this year: American Bridget Breiner (whose Firebird premieres March 15) and Annabelle Lopez Ochoa, who is creating the full-evening narrativeVendetta: Storie de Mafia. They also said that another full-evening work, Lady Chatterley’s Lover, will be created by choreographer Cathy Marston next year. An all-female triple bill is planned in two years, for the 2020-2021 season.
Cavallari invited Rea to Montreal to meet with him, at her own expense, on Monday. Rea says that Cavallari listened to her concerns but did not change his mind on replacing Walerski with a male choreographer. According to Rea, he shared that he’s exploring “a symposium to discuss gender issues in the dance world that could include both ballet and modern dance companies’ from across Canada.’” (End of excerpt.)
Read the full article in Pointe.
Cavallari is one of the many male leaders in the dance community acting completely out of self-interest and oblivion to a major issue plaguing the art. No, you cannot create a program honoring women, when the production itself is hypocritically directed and created by men.
Note Scher’s sly nod to another major problem constantly perpetuated by leadership in dance, “Cavallari invited Rea to Montreal to meet with him, at her own expense.”
Women choreographers are not only on their own artistically. Fiscally, these women are unsupported and misdirected. A female artist trying to correct an issue is forced to travel on her dollar to report to a man and help him understand what should be a very blatant mistake. It is also not unlikely for women choreographers to perform “for publicity” without pay. They have almost no resources to negotiate contracts and pay for commissions, and mentorship is far less prevalent than it is for male choreographers.
As Les Grands Ballets moves forward from this great step backwards, let us hope that the rest of the community stands by women like Rea and stands up, like Medhi Walerski, to the leaders that are perpetuating inequity.
By Courtney Escoyne
13 March 2018
American Ballet Theater has commissioned a female choreographer, according to an article from Dance Magazine. The company, known for producing classical works often created by famed choreographer (and controversial traditionalist) Alexei Ratmansky, has stepped out of its comfort zone to bring in the exciting Michelle Dorrance.
Dorrance’s commission is funded in-part by Vail Dance Festival, where she is choreographer-in-residence, according to this article. This is hopefully one of the first of many steps in the right direction for ABT with its new executive leadership in Kara Medoff Barnett (and longtime Artistic Director Kevin McKenzie).
Read the full article in Dance Magazine.
By Joshua Barone
10 April 2018
A female has been made the director of dance at Julliard, according the the New York Times. Alicia Graf Mack, the article reports, takes the post as Damian Woetzel becomes the new president of the Julliard School.
The school will aim towards diversity, according to Mack, and will also encourage and support the individuality of students.
Read more in the New York Times.
By Alastair Macaulay
8 August 2017
Alastair Macauley acknowledges the talent of some female choreographers in this article for the New York Times. He enjoys Michelle Dorrance but questions the other women. He also discusses- in a very mixed review, the work of the future resident composer at Vail’s festival, Caroline Shaw.
Read more in the New York Times
By Luke Jennings
11 March 2018
With the future of ballet very much up for discussion, and directors faced with the knotty problem of how to honour the classical canon while also producing groundbreaking work, it’s exhilarating to see the confidence with which Vancouver-based Ballet British Columbia takes the stage. The Canadian company has been directed since 2009 by Emily Molnar, formerly a dancer with William Forsythe’s Ballet Frankfurt.
Forsythe’s choreography shows how the classical technique can, while remaining true to its essence, be employed as the basis for any number of radical evolutions and Molnar has taken this idea and run with it. The dancers of her company display the rigorous, coolly centred control implanted by classical training, while performing work that looks nothing whatever like traditional ballet.
Read the full article in The Guardian.
By Boer Deng
17 August 2015
In an article for the Washington Post, Boer Deng describes the shock of whitewashed audiences amidst a time of diverse dancer promotions and talk of equity:
” In 2012, 80 percent were white, two-thirds were female, and more came from families earning $150,000 a year — that’s more than attendees of any other arts performances except the symphony — hardly figures suggestive of a democratic art. “
Read the full article in The Washington Post.
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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