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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 Magazine: Diana Vishneva Hasn’t Let the Pandemic Stop Her Festival

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By Oksana Khadarina

27 October 2020

What does it take to organize a dance festival in the middle of a pandemic? International ballet superstar Diana Vishneva has an answer or two. Her festival of contemporary choreography, Context. Diana Vishneva, currently in its eighth season, is taking place from October 14 to November 29, with live performances at a number of venues in Moscow and St. Petersburg, Russia. This year, for the first time since its inauguration, the festival also features an impressive online program.

Dance Magazine spoke with Vishneva about the challenges and the rewards of holding this event during the pandemic, her return to the stage of the Mariinsky Theatre and her avid new fan: her 2-year-old son, Rudolf.

Why did you decide to go ahead with the festival during the pandemic?

We never thought of canceling. Our mission is to support young choreographers, and there were more than 100 applicants this year. We launched our own digital platform to connect with the audience and to have the option to switch to the online-only format, if we had to. A number of live performances had to be postponed until 2021, including Revisor, by Kidd Pivot, and Playback, by Batsheva Dance Company. Fortunately, we were able to present our key live event, the Young Choreographers Competition, which opened the festival on October 14 at the Gogol Center in Moscow. In November, we are planning live performances of two one-act productions, Schaherezade and The Buffoon, by the Perm Ballet, which also will be available for streaming.

What are some of the new projects of the festival?

This year, we introduced a new digital platform to present online the main events of the festival, including educational programs: master classes, lectures and roundtable discussions. The livestream of our Young Choreographers Competition attracted nearly 100,000 viewers. I was surprised, even shocked, by this number. At first, I thought that there was an extra 0.

We have a brand-new initiative, Context Open, designed to give the opportunity for dancers, choreographers and companies, without restrictions on age, education or citizenship, to create and showcase their work.

We are also exploring unconventional performance spaces, such as museums and industrial buildings. One of the winners of our choreographic competition, Olga Labovkina, adapted her work Air as a piece of “immersion theater,” in which the audience actively participates in the show. It will be performed as part of this year’s festival at Moscow’s Hlebozavod No. 9 (a former bread factory turned into an art space) and St. Petersburg’s Sevkabel Port.

Read the full Dance Magazine article here.

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

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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.

USC Annenberg: Inclusion in the Director’s Chair: Analysis of Director Gender and Race/Ethnicity Across 1,300 Top Films from 2007 to 2019

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By Dr. Stacy L. Smith, Marc Choueiti, Kevin Yao, Hannah Clark & Dr. Katherine Pieper

January 2020

Annenberg Inclusion Initiative

Each year, we examine the gender and race/ethnicity of directors working across the 100 top fictional films theatrically released in the U.S. A total of 1,300 of the most popular movies were included in the analysis, from 2007 to 2019. Put differently, 1,448 directors were assessed across two inclusion metrics (e.g., gender, race/ethnicity). Given the recent conversation surrounding women directors in the press, we conducted 3 additional analyses: a slate analysis of director inclusion across all the movies distributed by 8 major companies from 2015-2019; a pipeline analysis of female directors in entertainment (e.g., Sundance Film Festival, episodic television, Netflix movies), and an examination of female directors’ award nominations across the last 13 years at 4 organizations (Golden Globes, Academy Awards, DGA, Critics’ Choice). Findings are presented below for each section of the report.

Key Findings: 1,300 Top Grossing Movies from 2007-2019

Female Directors

A total of 113 directors were attached across the 100 top movies of 2019. A full 89.4% (n=101) were male and 10.6% (n=12) were female. This calculates into a gender ratio of 8.4 males to every 1 female. Across 1,300 films and 1,448 helmers, only 4.8% of directors were women. Has the prevalence of female directors changed over time? Yes. 2019 had a significantly higher percentage (10.6%) and number of female directors than 2018 (4.5%, n=5) or 2007 (2.7%, n=3). Of the major studios, Universal Pictures had the most female directors attached to the films they distributed (15 women), followed by Warner Bros. (13 women) and Sony Pictures Entertainment (11 women). The company with the worst track record for distributing films helmed by female directors was Paramount Pictures, which had only 3 pictures out of 134 movies distributed from 2007-2019 directed by a woman. Critical reception of male- and female-directed films was assessed using Metacritic scores. The average Metacritc score for films with only male directors attached (Mean=54.2, Range=9-100) was virtually identical to those with a female director attached (Mean=55.8, Range=22-95). The medians across these two groups were also evaluated, and revealed no difference between male- and female-directed films. Despite receiving the same average critical review, female directors were given substantially less access and opportunity than male directors to helm these highly visible films.

Underrepresented Directors

Of the 113 directors of 2019, a full 83.2% were white (n=94) and 16.8% (n=19) were underrepresented. This is substantially below U.S. Census, which is 39.6%. The ratio of white directors to underrepresented directors is 4.9 to 1. Only 13.5% of all helmers across the 13-year sample were from an underrepresented racial/ethnic group. 2019 (16.8%) was not meaningfully different from 2018 (21.4%) for underrepresented directors nor was it Annenberg Inclusion Initiative — 2 significantly higher than 2007 (12.5%). 2019 was practically different only from 2008, 2010, 2011, and 2012. Of the major studios, Universal Pictures has the highest number of underrepresented directors attached to their distributed films (39 directors) followed by Sony Pictures Entertainment (34 directors) and 20th Century Fox (29 directors). Disney has the worst track record (10 directors) from 2007 to 2019. No differences in average Metacritic scores were observed between white (Mean=54.2, Range=9-100) and underrepresented directors (Mean=54.9, Range=11-99). Medians also did not differ, with both groups having the same Metacritic mid-point in the distribution of their movies (54).

Women of Color Directors

Only 13 women from underrepresented racial/ethnic groups have directed any of the 1,300 top movies from 2007 to 2019. This is less than 1% of all directing jobs (n=1,448) whereas white males held 82.5% of jobs, underrepresented males 12.6% of jobs, and white females 3.9% of jobs. The ratio of white male directors to underrepresented female directors was 92 to 1. Yet, this group of women represents 20% of the U.S. population. Only two underrepresented female directors – Ava DuVernay and Jennifer Yuh Nelson – have helmed more than one movie appearing across the 1,300 films and 13-year sample. Four of the women of color were added to the list in 2019 (i.e., Kasi Lemmons, Melina Matsoukas, Roxann Dawson, Tina Gordon). No company has distributed the stories of more than 4 underrepresented female directors across 13 years. The average Metacritic score was higher for stories directed by women of color (Mean=62.5, Range=44- 89) than those stories directed by white males (Mean=54.2, Range=9-100), white females (Mean=54.3, Range=22-95), or underrepresented males (Mean=54.3, Range=11-99). The medians in the distributions followed the same pattern. Clearly, there is a major disconnect between hiring practices in Hollywood and who has the cinematic heft to carry stories.

Read the full study here.

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

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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

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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 Guardian: Tamara Rojo: ‘Despite everything, it’s a very creative moment’

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By Lyndsey Winship

12 October 2020

Tamara Rojo may be a great tragic dancer on stage, but in person she is far from the voice of doom. “The performing arts and dance have survived millennia,” she says, sitting in her office looking out onto a floor of empty desks. “They’ve survived pandemics and hundred-year wars and all kind of disasters. Getting together to share stories is intrinsic to humanity. People will gather, live performance will continue to exist.” Just maybe not quite in the way we’re used to, yet.

Ballet is finally putting its pointe shoes back on for a live audience. This month there are performances by the Royal Ballet, Northern Ballet and Birmingham Royal Ballet – and English National Ballet, where Rojo is artistic director, has just announced two live shows. In November, a live version of their upcoming digital season will feature five new short ballets at Sadler’s Wells, and in December there’s a slimmed-down version of The Nutcracker at the London Coliseum. Christmas isn’t quite cancelled after all.

There will be some drastic differences to pre-Covid shows, with less than half the usual audience (423 at Sadler’s instead of 1,400, and 1,100 at the Coliseum, where ENB usually sell out 2,300 seats). Will it be worth their while financially? “We are trying to find a way to not lose money, that’s all we want to do at this point,” says Rojo. “I passionately believe we need to restart the sector and rehire choreographers and technicians and lighting designers and composers and film-makers so that the engine starts moving, even if it doesn’t make financial sense.”

Making sure there’s still an industry on the other side of this pandemic is Rojo’s main concern. ENB had to furlough 85% of its workforce and many of the staff took pay cuts (20%-25% for most, more for Rojo herself). They haven’t replaced nine dancers who left this year, so the company is reduced in size. But on the upside, ENB’s swanky new Docklands building has seven studios, so there is plenty of room for distancing, and the biggest doubles as a stage, so they can broadcast from there. She thinks the UK’s larger and more established dance companies will be OK in the long term, but it’s the independent artists and freelancers and those working backstage who are in trouble.

“The situation cannot be sustained much longer. The loss of talent and skill breaks my heart,” she says. “The UK’s creative industries are the best in the world, consistently reinventing themselves and at the forefront of everything, it’s the reason for so many of us to be here.” She’s also worried about the ballet world internationally. Talking to directors and dancers in the US, she fears the lack of public subsidy there could mean even big institutions disappearing. “Nobody wants a smaller, less diverse, less interesting ballet world,” says Rojo.

Read the full article here.

AP News: Wave of ‘Nutcracker’ cancellations hits dance companies hard

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By Andrew Welsh-Huggins

12 October 2020

COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) — For many, it’s not Christmas without the dance of Clara, Uncle Drosselmeyer, the Sugar Plum Fairy, the Mouse King and, of course, the Nutcracker Prince.

But this year the coronavirus pandemic has canceled performances of “The Nutcracker” around the U.S. and Canada, eliminating a major and reliable source of revenue for dance companies already reeling financially following the essential shutdown of their industry.

“This is an incredibly devastating situation for the arts and in particular for organizations like ours that rely on ticket sales from the Nutcracker to fund so many of our initiatives,” said Sue Porter, executive director of BalletMet in Columbus, Ohio.

“The Nutcracker” typically provides about $1.4 million of the company’s $2 million in annual ticket sales, against a $7 million budget. That money goes to school programing and financial aid for dance class students, Porter said. It’s the first year since 1977 that the company isn’t staging the ballet in Ohio’s capital.

The cancellations have meant layoffs, furloughs and salary cuts, with companies relying heavily— sometimes exclusively — on fundraising to stay afloat. Beyond their financial importance, “Nutcracker” performances are also a crucial marketing tool for dance companies, company directors say.

Children often enroll in classes for the chance to dance in the performances as mice, young partygoers and angels, among other supporting roles. For adults, the shows are sometimes their initial experience watching live dance.

“It tends to be the first ballet that people see, the first time they experience attending a production, that thrill when the curtain goes up, the hush of the crowd,” said Max Hodges, executive director of the Boston Ballet. “So for that reason it’s a key part of the pipeline in welcoming audiences into the art form.”

After deciding to cancel this year’s live performances, the Boston Ballet will use archived footage of past performances for a one-hour version to be shown on television in New England. The annual $8 million in “Nutcracker” ticket sales accounts for about 20% of the company’s annual budget.

The pandemic has cost the arts and entertainment industry about 1.4 million jobs and $42.5 billion nationally, according to an August analysis by the Brookings Institution.

The economic vulnerability inherent in arts organizations is exacerbated when they rely on a major seasonal event — like “The Nutcracker” — for large portions of revenue, said Amir Pasic, dean of the School of Philanthropy at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis.

One silver lining is the opportunity for organizations to improve their online offerings, which could also help open up markets to younger consumers, he said.

That’s the case in Toronto, where the National Ballet of Canada is contemplating future hybrid programming that offers tickets for in-person “Nutcracker” performances and less expensive tickets for those who want to watch it online. The company canceled its “Nutcracker” in August.

“We’re going to build into our model regular capture of content to build a more robust catalogue,” said Executive Director Barry Hughson. “So when we face this at some point in future — hopefully a long way away in the future — we will have solved that part of this equation.”

The cost of the digital equipment needed to record broadcast quality performances has been a sticking point for companies in the past, said Amy Fitterer, executive director of Dance/USA, a dance service and advocacy organization. Now, companies are working on ways to access such equipment to prepare for a hybrid future of performances, she said.

Other cancellations this year include performances by the New York City Ballet, the Charlotte Ballet, the Milwaukee Ballet, the Sacramento Ballet and the Kansas City Ballet, which is forgoing about $2.2 million in ticket sales.

Making it through this season is tough enough, but “if this goes beyond next year, then I think we’ve got some serious issues to attend to,” said Jeffrey Bentley, the Kansas City Ballet’s executive director.

Some companies that canceled are offering online streams of a past performance, such as Seattle’s Pacific Northwest Ballet. Others are offering in-person performances of a sort, such as Atlanta Ballet’s “Drive-In Movie Experience” allowing patrons to watch a filmed past performance from their car.

Still others are proceeding, for now, with plans for live performances. The Eugene Ballet in Oregon canceled its normal four-state tour but expanded its stage offerings from four to 10 performances, with a socially distanced audience of 500 in a 2,500-seat auditorium. The company is shortening performances to 70 minutes, reducing the number of student participants and going without a live orchestra.

“We’re just all trying to be resilient, and our dancers are champing at the bit to get in the studio and start rehearsing things,” said Eugene Ballet Artistic Director Toni Pimble.

Of the 50 dance companies with the largest annual expenses surveyed by the Dance Data Project, only eight were proceeding with in-person performances. Others either canceled, planned to offer streaming versions or still haven’t made an announcement.

Read the full article here.

Chicago Tribune: In ‘painful’ decision, Joffrey Ballet of Chicago cancels 2020-21 season

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By Chris Jones

1 October 2020

The Joffrey Ballet of Chicago said Thursday that it has canceled its entire 2020-21 season at the Lyric Opera House.

The canceled programing includes the world premiere of Cathy Marston’s “Of Mice and Men” and the Joffrey premiere of George Balanchine’s “Serenade” (slated for Feb. 17-28, 2021), as well as the Chicago premiere of John Neumeier’s “The Little Mermaid” (April 21-May 2, 2021). Previously, Joffrey had canceled this fall’s production of Kenneth MacMillan’s “Manon” (Oct. 14-25) and the first staging at the Lyric of Christopher Wheeldon’s “The Nutcracker” (December 5-27), typically a huge source of revenue for the company and a highlight of the holiday season in Chicago, drawing tens of thousands to the Loop.

The Joffrey said that the decision, sparked by the COVID-19 crisis, will cost the non-profit institution in excess of $9 million at the box office. A philanthropic fund, dubbed the Joffrey Crisis Stabilization Fund, has been set up to address the disparity and cover basic operations costs through the fall of 2021. The ballet said the fund currently has raised about $7 million toward its $12 million goal. The company has not laid off its company of dancers, guaranteeing their existing contracts through next May.

Read the full article here.

The Salt Lake Tribune: Ballet West will start letting dancers wear tights and shoes in their own skin color

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By Sean P. Means

1 October 2020

Ballet West dancers soon will be wearing tights and shoes that more closely resemble their own skin color — an effort to push back against a white bias in the ballet world going back decades.

“I believe a more diverse and inclusive organization is a stronger Ballet West,” Adam Sklute, Ballet West’s artistic director, said in a statement issued by the troupe Thursday. “It is time we hold a mirror to ourselves and examine how our art form — and how Ballet West — can do better in dismantling systems that do not foster equity, and to institutionalize structures that do.”

The Salt Lake City-based troupe announced a series of policy changes to make Ballet West’s studio and stage “more welcoming to dancers of color.” These changes are:

• Ballet West will no longer allow makeup that indicates a race or ethnicity other than the dancer’s own.

• The troupe will no longer use historic “paling” body makeup for women in works — “Swan Lake” and “Giselle” are mentioned — whose major roles are traditionally depicted as pale white.

• The company will provide tights and shoe straps that more closely match the dancer’s skin tone.

Read the full article here.

Pointe Magazine: “My Plate Is Full”: Sofiane Sylve on Her New Leadership Roles at Ballet San Antonio and Dresden Semperoper

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By Claudia Bauer

28 September 2020

Sofiane Sylve had huge plans for 2020: Departing her post as a principal dancer at San Francisco Ballet, she embarked on a multifaceted, bicontinental career as ballet master and principal dancer at Dresden Semperoper Ballett, and artistic advisor and school director at Ballet San Antonio—and then COVID-19 hit, sidelining performances and administrative plans at both companies. But ballet dancers are nothing if not resilient. In her new leadership roles, Sylve is determined to help shepherd ballet through this challenging time—and transform it for the better. Pointe caught up with her by phone while she was in Dresden.

You started these amazing new positions, and then COVID happened. How have you had to adapt?

In Dresden, La Bayadère can’t happen because of the amount of people in the cast, and the costumes and wigs. BSA had to cancel October’s Don Quixote. We’re not sure Nutcracker is going to happen. I can’t have it on my conscience to have 25 dancers in a room, even if I do everything in San Antonio that Germany has been doing. In Germany, you have to wear a mask everywhere you go, and you can’t use the dressing rooms. They open the studios five minutes before you can go in, it’s only an hour class, they shuffle you out and clean for the entire hour. You need cleaning staff 24/7—no U.S. company has a budget for that.

How are you juggling these pivotal responsibilities at two companies—not to mention the travel?

I wanted my plate to be full, and it’s full, and I’m loving it. But with COVID, the travel is very difficult—I can get into Texas, but I could get stuck because of travel restrictions. I am on Zoom all day; I’ve hired BSA dancers and ballet masters on Zoom, and we do a lot of classes online. You see people in their homes, they see me running around with my dogs. In a way, it’s made us seem more human to each other.

Read the full article here.