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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

Dance Spirit Magazine: Netflix’s “Tiny Pretty Things” Faces Ballet Stereotypes Head-On

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By Abigail Rasminsky For Dance Spirit

02 December 2020

Finding the Right Cast

To ensure the show would feel authentic, the creators set out to cast dancers who could act, not actors who’d require dance doubles. The process spanned three months and many continents. It often felt—especially when casting two of the leads, roles that ultimately went to Kylie Jefferson and Barton Cowperthwaite—like “trying to find unicorns,” head choreographer and dance consultant Jennifer Nichols says. “To be at that level of dance skill is already a huge feat, and to be a brilliant actor on top of that is hard.”

Nichols was also tasked with making sure every other element of the production accurately reflected the ballet world. “The team consulted about how the shoe room would really look, how the studio was set up, how to tie a pointe shoe ribbon,” Nichols explains. “These are all dead giveaways unless they’re supervised by someone in the dance world. I was worried we wouldn’t have the time and money to make it all look right, but it was never pushed aside.”

Ballet-World Realness

“Tiny Pretty Things” explores issues many young ballet dancers grapple with: How do you befriend your biggest competition? How has racism stained the ballet world? How does a young dancer figure out their sexuality? How common are eating disorders among dancers? “In the past, entertainment often hasn’t done justice to the dance world,” Nichols says. “Not just the ups and downs of it, but also all the difficult work that goes into it.” Oren, played by Barton Cowperthwaite, struggles with his sexual identity and an eating disorder. June, played by Daniela Norman, is tortured by a mother who doesn’t believe in her talent. Bette, played by Casimere Jollette, lives in the shadow of her more gifted sister, a principal dancer in the company. Shane, played by Brennan Clost, worries that his male lover will leave him for a woman.

Kylie Jefferson, 25, who plays Neveah and earned her BFA at The Boston Conservatory, says her character’s storyline reflects her own experiences with racism in ballet from “top to bottom.” In the first episode, the head of the ballet school, played by Lauren Holly, glibly claims that Neveah, who is Black, was plucked out of Compton (she wasn’t); fellow dancers make fun of a YouTube clip of her dancing hip hop; and her ballet teacher critiques her every move (and clothing choice).

Read the full article here.

Dance Magazine: Will COVID-19 Shift the Dance Industry Away From Major Cities?

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By Haley Hilton

24 November 2020

It’s clear that COVID-19 has grossly impacted every facet of American life, but could it lead to the decentralization of the dance industry? In the wake of the pandemic, major cities saw dancers leave hot zones and epicenters for middle America—many relocating indefinitely in the face of lost income as the crisis endures. Some are wondering if this sudden scattering may alter the size and makeup of the field, leading to a geographic shift in the dance industry.

In mid-March, service organization Dance/NYC began collecting data on how COVID-19 was impacting the New York City dance landscape. While Dance/NYC did not specifically ask if dancers were migrating away from the city, some sources volunteered that information in open-ended responses. Out of 1,166 respondents, 7 percent noted they had relocated to stay with family and “escape the virus,” with additional respondents stating they were considering leaving.

The exorbitant cost of living in New York City has long plagued dancers striving to make ends meet on artist wages. With coronavirus cutting off income from performances as well as service and retail industry side hustles, the city has become unaffordable for many. Dance/NYC executive director Alejandra Duque Cifuentes fears some dancers may stop dancing altogether post-pandemic. “This crisis has highlighted the severity of income inequality,” she says. “People may need to change careers entirely in order to afford to eat.”

Read the entire article here.

Stance on Dance: Thinking about Western Dance Culture

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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.

Ludwig van Toronto: IN MEMORIAM | With The Passing Of Patricia Beatty Canada Has Lost A Titan Of Dance

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By Paula Citron

21 November 2020

Choreographer, educator, writer, collaborator, producer, dancer – Patricia Beatty’s influence has touched generations of contemporary dance artists who work in every corner of this country. Inspired by American dance pioneer Martha Graham, Beatty became a pioneer of modern dance in Canada. She is credited as being among the first to introduce Graham technique to this country.

As a youngster, the overly energetic, Toronto-born Beatty was sent to Jean Macpherson’s creative dance classes for children, followed by ballet studies with Gladys Forrester and Gweneth Lloyd. As Beatty told me in a 1998 interview, she felt hemmed in by ballet’s autocratic system. Her liberation came when she attended Bennington College in Vermont whose liberal arts curriculum stressed creativity. Although she had never seen contemporary dance, Beatty enrolled in the dance program as a performance and choreography major under teacher William Bales. She also attended the summer programs at Connecticut College, where the New York modern dance luminaries gathered.

After graduation she studied at the José Limón School, but switched to the Martha Graham School of Contemporary Dance, mentored by Bertram Ross and Helen McGehee. As she said, “I became enamoured with the modern dance principle of internal, organic movement. I changed from Limón to Graham technique because I needed to be more grounded than was possible with the lighter Limón style.”

Read the full article here.

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

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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.

We-Ha.com: Getting ‘Up Close’ with Ballet Theatre Company

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Article submitted by reader

10 November 2020

Ballet Theatre Company of West Hartford is getting “up close” while socially distancing this fall season with its digital performance season titled, “Up Close.”

Two brand new works choreographed by BTC’s Artistic Director, Stephanie Dattellas, will premiere featuring BTC’s Season Dancers, guest dancer Roman Mejia of New York City Ballet, and select members of BTC’s Corps de Ballet. “Up Close: Part 1 – Autumn Aurora” will premiere on Nov. 14 at 7 p.m. followed by “Up Close: Part 2 – Flashes” which will premiere on Nov. 28 at 7 p.m. – both on a digital platform.

Autumn Aurora is a neo-classical ballet set to Vivaldi’s “Autumn” concerto from The Four Seasons. The pre-recorded performance will feature footage taken outside in Winchester, CT, capturing the beautiful and appropriate fall foliage as the backdrop for this ode to the season.

The ballet includes three movements: “Allegro,” “Adagio,” and “La Caccia” – that celebrate change in the colors of leaves and the transition of seasons from summer to autumn. “Allegro” will feature a pas de deux that highlights Vivaldi’s intricate instrumentation and use of repetition playing between the two dancers. “Adagio” features a duet of two female Season Dancers portraying the slower, monotone music complimented in the reflection of autumn colors in a nearby pond. Lastly, “La Caccia” features a sextet of selected BTC Corps de Ballet dancers that showcase power, unison and fleeting moments. Autumn Aurora is sponsored in part by Reid and Riege Attorneys.

Read the full article here.

Dance Magazine: From Stage to Screen: Andrea Miller Turns One of Her Beloved Works Into an Epic Dance Film

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By Jennifer Stahl

5 November 2020

Now that most dance performances have migrated online, we’re seeing a lot of work that was never meant to be experienced through a laptop screen. Some are streamed in an attempt to capture that thrill of being “live.” Others are filmed from multiple angles so we get shots of the dancers up close. But most choreography that was created for the theater still feels like it would work best…in a theater.

Choreographer Andrea Miller is taking a different approach. Her company, Gallim, had long had an engagement planned at the University of Minnesota’s Northrop theater for this month, and director of programming Kristen Brogdon was committed to finding a way to make it happen. So they started brainstorming options. “I think Kristen was really quick to say, ‘I would love to see BOAT‘—one of the pieces scheduled to tour—’turned into a film,’ ” says Miller.

Miller first made BOAT in 2016 in response to forced migration, exploring the idea of searching for home. “One of the things we wanted our North to be was how having connection is so deeply fundamental to us, and how the loss of that is tragic. Losing someone, or being pulled apart is one of the biggest strains in life,” she says. “It seems like now is a time where that’s very clear to us all.”

There’s also a perpetual presence of a TV and static in the piece; Miller describes it as “having this constant weight of tragedy chewed into bite-size content.”

Although she’d taken part in a handful of film projects before COVID-19 hit, Miller had never before made her own video productions. Then she was commissioned to make a dance film with Ballet Hispánico, then for Works & Process Artists Virtual Commissions, both times working with filmmaker and director Ben Stamper, whom she’d met four years earlier at Grace Farms.

“When you have an opportunity to work with a filmmaker and a director, it’s entering a new creative space,” says Miller. “There’s so much interesting storytelling and perspective that Ben brings to his work that I wanted to open the door for BOAT to become its own work on film. It has connection of course to the original choreography, but isn’t trying to be a re-creation of it.”

Read the full article here.

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

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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.

Pointe: English National Ballet Preps Future Dance Leaders With Its New Mentorship Program

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By April Deocariza

30 October 2020

English National Ballet first soloist James Streeter has practically grown up with the company. Since completing his training at the English National Ballet School, he went on to join the main company in 2004, rising up the ranks to first soloist in 2018. He’s danced his favorite roles, including Tybalt in Romeo & Juliet and Albrecht in Akram Khan’s Giselle. He even met his wife while dancing with the company, ENB lead principal Erina Takahashi. What’s left to do when you’ve accomplished so much as an artist? For Streeter, it meant learning more about the business side of the company. In November 2019, Streeter was named the first mentee of ENB’s Dance Leaders of the Future mentorship program. The program offers ENB’s dancers the opportunity to develop leadership skills and gain a greater understanding of the running of an arts organization.

Streeter says he wants to give back to the art form. “I’ve always been interested in how the company works as a whole,” he explains during a phone call from London. “I have a desire to enable this art form to continue and be able to do something bigger than what I can as an artist.”

Filling a Gap

The inspiration for the program came from a need to help more dancers prepare for the next step in their careers.

“One of the aspects that I felt was lacking in the industry was towards leadership,” says ENB artistic director Tamara Rojo. “Dancers rarely get the opportunity to experience all the other aspects that are necessary for a show to go on, like marketing, fundraising and finance. We wanted to offer those in the company who have leadership aspirations to shadow myself, be present at board discussions, converse with different departments, and then eventually produce something.”

Prior to taking the helm of ENB, Rojo shadowed National Ballet of Canada artistic director Karen Kain through a program called Rural Retreats, organized by UK organization Dance East. The program brings together international dance leaders to discuss and prepare for the future of the industry. It was an enlightening experience for Rojo, which she hopes to pass on through ENB’s mentorship program.

Artistic director and lead principal Tamara Rojo with Streeter in Akram Khan’s Giselle

Laurent Liotardo, Courtesy ENB

“What was a revelation for me was seeing all the other areas of a ballet organization and how intrinsically linked they are,” she says. “I learned that a good artistic vision will inspire the marketing department; will allow the development department to fundraise successfully; will allow a finance department to make the sums add up. A healthy ecosystem between all the different departments is what makes a strong organization.”

Learning the Ropes

For Streeter, preparing for a leadership role began as soon as he applied for the program. All applicants had to submit a curriculum vitae and undergo a panel interview.

“They were really giving us insight into what to expect for the future,” Streeter.

Once he was selected, he was immediately immersed in the various facets of ENB’s business. In addition to working with Rojo, Streeter also shadowed executive director Patrick Harrison and chief operating officer Grace Chan.

“One of my first meetings was with some of the trustees who were reviewing the company’s finances,” says Streeter. “One of my big questions has been ‘How can we maintain our artistic value while still meeting our financial needs in order to sustain as a company? How do we decide on repertoire that strikes that balance?’ Being in that meeting was eye-opening in understanding how to persuade someone who may not necessarily understand the artistic value of something but can understand the financial value. They are two different things but need to be understood equally. Grace Chan, our COO, is absolutely incredible at doing that.”

Read the full article here.

Dance Business Weekly: Kaatsbaan Cultural Park May Be the Dance Community’s Best-Kept Secret

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By Karen Hildebrand

28 October 2020

Who could have predicted that in August 2020 it would be a singularly unique experience to attend a live dance performance? But after more than four months of complete shutdown of live arts and entertainment throughout New York State, the Hudson Valley had entered stage four of reopening, and outdoor gatherings of 50 or fewer were now allowed. When Kaatsbaan Cultural Park in Tivoli announced its festival of free outdoor performances, the nine weekends “sold out” immediately.

With stringent social-distancing protocols in place, and contactless admission instructions and program brochure delivered via email, guests entered a rustic barn to a light-and-sound installation of poetry and images. From there, the barn door opened to a majestic sweep of lush greenery—153 acres that were once a horse farm where Eleanor Roosevelt spent her childhood summers. On a newly built raised stage in the meadow on the third weekend of the series, Robbie Fairchild and Claudia Rahardjanoto tap danced together, Tamisha Guy & Lloyd Knight and Emily Kikta & Peter Walker performed duets, and Christopher Wheeldon, the host, presented a lyrical pas de deux for Fairchild and Chris Jarosz. It was a perfect antidote for the long months of anxious uncertainty.

The Summer Festival was the brainchild of the new generation of leadership at Kaatsbaan. Hired in December 2018, Sonja Kostich is the organization’s first fully dedicated executive director after 30 years of operation under the original founders. Former ABT star Stella Abrera joined her at the helm as artistic director in January 2020. Together they are committed to putting Kaatsbaan on the cultural map as the year-round arts center its founders envisioned long ago.

Read the full article here.