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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

Examining other art forms with historic issues in hiring women: theater, symphonic/classical music, opera. Also including more contemporary fields: lack of women in country music, hip hop, contemporary pop music, and other genres.

Vibe: Queen Latifah Aims To Bring Diversity To Filmmaking Through Queen Collective Initiative

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6 May 2019

Queen Latifah has teamed up with Procter & Gamble and Tribeca Studios for an epic project aiming to promote the importance of gender and racial equality behind-the-scenes in Hollywood. The Queen Collective in partnership with Procter & Gamble and Tribeca Film Studios provides mentorship and production support, while also creating various distribution opportunities for the next crop of female directors of color.

Through the forward-thinking collective, budding directors B. Monét and Haley Elizabeth Anderson were given the opportunity to have their films (Ballet After Dark and If There Is Light, respectively) premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival on Friday, April 26. Their short documentaries are also available to stream on Hulu as of April 27. The collective supplies these young women with opportunities they made not have had initially.

Ballet After Dark “tells the story a young woman who found the strength to survive after an attack. She created an organization that is helping sexual abuse and domestic violence survivors find healing after trauma through dance therapy.” If There Is Light follows the story ofJaniyah Blackmon, who “wrestles with her new life in New York City as her mom tries to move her family out of the shelter system and into a stable home.”

Read the full article on Vibe.

The Guardian: At the Heart of Gold: how ‘predatory’ institutions protected Larry Nassar

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By Brian Armen Graham

3 May 2019

For more than two decades, Larry Nassar used his position as an osteopathic physician at Michigan State University and longtime doctor for the United States’ women’s gymnastics team to molest at least 250 women and girls under the guise of medical treatment. The manipulation ran so deep that his victims for years believed there was nothing to report. In many of the cases the abuse happened while a parent was in the room, a tragic detail that offers an alarming metaphor of how blind we can be. It was literally happening in front of our eyes.

Not until a former gymnast named Rachael Denhollander became the first woman to publicly accuse Nassar in September 2016 – more than a year before #MeToo and the tipping point of a society’s reckoning with sexual assault – were Nassar’s many victims emboldened to break their silence. Denhollander’s courage encouraged more survivors to come forward, including Olympic champions and household names like Simone Biles, Gabby Douglas, McKayla Maroney, Aly Raisman and Jordyn Wieber, until the trickle became a deluge, generating the momentum necessary to bring a pillar of the community to justice – and not without initially severe public backlash.

This, the biggest sexual abuse scandal in US sports history, is the subject of At the Heart of Gold, Erin Lee Carr’s documentary that airs on HBO after premiering at this year’s Tribeca film festival. On the surface, the blend of archival footage and talking head interviews with current and former female gymnasts doesn’t offer a whole lot that hasn’t previously come to light. Nassar’s grooming techniques had already been recounted in stomach-turning detail during his trial, while the many institutional failures that enabled the abuse were laid out exhaustively in the Ropes & Gray independent report commissioned by the US Olympic Committee in the aftermath. None of the big-name Olympians who spoke out against Nassar in court last year participated in the filming.

And yet the 88-minute film succeeds where mainstream media too often failed as the story unfolded, making full use of its feature-length canvas in pulling together the many complex threads of a story that was always bigger, and more sinister, than a single monster.

Read the full article in The Guardian.

The Guardian: The White Crow review – Ralph Fiennes brings poise to ballet biopic

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By Peter Bradshaw

20 March 2019

The White Crow is a watchable, serviceable movie telling the story of ballet legend Rudolf Nureyev and his sensational escape to the west in the early 60s at the age of 23, while on his first European tour. Dance is represented as a transcendental experience of success, of leaving behind the past and reinventing the future. Like Billy Elliot’s defection from his working-class childhood, Nureyev’s flight involves crises of loyalty with family and community. These struggles are, however, a little enigmatic and opaque with Rudolf, as portrayed by the Ukrainian ballet star and first-time actor Oleg Ivenko. Ralph Fiennes directs and gives a performance of spaniel-eyed sadness as Nureyev’s dance teacher and mentor Alexander Pushkin, with whose wife Xenia (Chulpan Khamatova), Nureyev is to have a sentimental education.

David Hare adapts Julie Kavanagh’s biography of Nureyev, skilfully sketching in his past life via flashbacks of childhood and early manhood as a tempestuous young student in Leningrad. The present-tense action takes place in Paris, as Nureyev and the west thrill each other to the bone. Nureyev finds a well-connected Parisian ally in Clara Saint (Adèle Exarchopoulos), whom the film promotes almost to quasi-girlfriend status, while representing Nureyev’s gay identity pretty obliquely compared with his straight experiences with Xenia. Finally at the airport, Nureyev realises it’s now or never. He has to defect.

Read the article in The Guardian.

UVA Class of 2019: Ballet Dancer Soars as a Leader in Public Policy, Volunteer Work

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More than once while Sarah Alexander was growing up, her ballet teachers thought she should limit school and focus on a professional dance career. But the young dancer, who began taking lessons at the age of 3, was determined to figure out how to pursue both school and dance.

Next month, the fourth-year New Orleans native will walk the Lawn in Final Exercises as a Phi Beta Kappa graduate with a degree from the University of Virginia’s Frank Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy. Through Batten projects and her volunteer work with Madison House’s Cavs in the Classroom, and even in ballet, she has learned a set of leadership skills that combine organization and attention to detail with a dancer’s confidence and grace.

Since stepping on Grounds, she has been a member of the Rhapsody Ballet Ensemble, the only student-run dance group that performs “en pointe” – on the tips of those square-toed shoes that lace up to the ankle.

Read the full article on the UVA website.

New York Times: Why Music Festivals Need More Beyoncés

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By Maya Salam

26 April 2019

Like many, I spent two hours last week watching Beyoncé burn past all logical boundaries of musical performance in her new Netflix documentary, “Homecoming,” about her elaborate 2018 Coachella set. It was an epic show — so much so that fans nicknamed the whole event Beychella — but a rare one. She was the first black woman to headline Coachella in its 20-year history.

Beyoncé is just one of several female artists — Ariana Grande, Cardi B, Kacey Musgraves, Halsey, Billie Eilish — dominating the music scene these days with No. 1 albums and songs, raking in awards and breaking records while they’re at it. But as we enter music festival season, you’d never know it.

Female artists are usually starkly absent from headlining spots and are often a fraction of overall lineups.

This month at Coachella, women made up 35 percent of acts, the same as last year, according to Book More Women, a group that manipulates posters of major festivals to show how few women were playing. Further, according to Nielsen, festivalgoers are majority female.

Read the full article in The New York Times.

Harvard Business Review: Make Peace with Your Inner Critic

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Discussion between Sarah Green Carmichael and Tara Sophia Morh

14 January 2016

SARAH GREEN CARMICHAEL: Welcome to the HBR IdeaCast from Harvard Business Review. I’m Sarah Green Carmichael. Today I’m talking with Tara Moore, author of Playing Big. Tara, thank you so much for talking with us today.

TARA MOORE: Thanks for having me.

SARAH GREEN CARMICHAEL: So you argue in the book that too many of us are playing small when we actually have the capacity to do bigger things. Is it just fear that holds us back? What’s the thing that’s really is getting in our way?

TARA MOORE: Absolutely at the core is fear. Fear of failure, fear of rejection, fear of doing something so innovative that maybe it’s controversial or makes you feel alone in what you’re doing. All of those are really big fears. But another huge block for people is simply self-doubt. Having that inner critic voice, and not having any tools to manage it.

SARAH GREEN CARMICHAEL: So before we get too far down the rabbit hole of the inner critic, I do want to just pause here and ask you something you wrote in the book about dealing with praise. In the book you mentioned that you have to unhook from both criticism and from praise. So why is it so important to re-evaluate your relationship with praise as well as how you feel about criticism?

TARA MOORE: Well, certainly none of this is a have to. But it is a question of is my relationship to praise really serving my biggest goals? And what I find is that for many people, they come to a juncture in their careers where to move forward they need to evolve their relationship to praise. And what I mean by that in practical terms is particularly if you’ve been a high achiever. And that could start early in your life or early in school.

Read the whole discussion (or listen to the recording) on Harvard Business Review.

Forbes: Act Now To Shrink The Confidence Gap

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By Nancy F. Clark

28 April 2014

There’s been distressed chatter about the gender confidence gap ever since journalists Katty Kay and Claire Shipman began promoting their new book, The Confidence Code: The Science and Art of Self-Assurance—What Women Should Know. I like to see studies that show how women are thinking and acting in comparison to men. Sometimes it’s easy for us to assume that others are holding us back and there’s nothing we can do. Sometimes they are, but instead of blaming others, I believe we can make more progress by arming ourselves with good information and using it to improve our aim for success.

A few years ago, when Hewlett-Packard wanted to see why more women weren’t in top management positions they made an interesting discovery:

Women working at HP applied for a promotion only when they believed they met 100 percent of the qualifications listed for the job. Men were happy to apply when they thought they could meet 60 percent of the job requirements.


Women, we aren’t taking action often enough and that’s crucial. We don’t have to be perfect. Men are confident about their ability at 60%, but women don’t feel confident until they’ve checked off each item on the list. Think about the difference between 60% and 100%. I say, “Let’s be confident and act when we’re 70% sure. If we’re shot down, take it like a guy on the football field and shrug it off. None of that 2 weeks worth of negative self-talk anymore.” Which brings up another gender difference.

Read the full article on Forbes.

New York Times: Commuting While Pregnant: A Long Ride Could Be a Risky One

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By Maya Salam

19 April 2019

It’s no secret that the United States lags the rest of the developed world when it comes to policies that support mothers and families. As former President Barack Obama put it in 2014: “Family leave. Child care. Flexibility. These aren’t frills. They’re basic needs. They shouldn’t be bonuses. They should be the bottom line.”

Five years and little progress later, we’re learning more and more about the toll inflexible work cultures have on new and expectant mothers.

Last fall, a New York Times investigation exposed the devastating cost of pregnancy discrimination on women in physically demanding jobs. Now, a new study has explored the dangers of a long commute on pregnant women and their unborn babies. The longer the commute, the study found, the worse the impact.

The study, recently published by researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Lehigh University, suggests that women who travel 50 or more miles each way to work by car may be at a “much greater risk” of having low-birth-weight babies (under 5.5 pounds) as well as fetuses with intrauterine growth restriction — a condition, in which the fetus doesn’t grow as fast as expected, that’s generally associated with mothers who have diabetes, high blood pressure, malnutrition or infections including syphilis.

Read the full article in The New York Times.

New John Wick Film Features Tiler Peck’s Choreography

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According to Dance Magazine, Keanu Reeves’ latest installment of John Wick, entitled John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum will feature Unity Phelan dancing to choreography by Tiler Peck; both women are New York City Ballet Principals. This is one of the first major motion pictures featuring ballet to use a woman’s choreography. Most recently, we recall Justin Peck working on Red Sparrow and Benjamin Millepied on Black Swan. It is about time work by non-dancer female artists is on the big screen, and with Tiler Peck, Keanu Reeves is making a good start.

The film opens in theaters May 17.

How is Ballet Like Hollywood? – New York Times: As Hollywood Embraces Diversity, Jobs for Female Directors Remain Sparse

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By Brooke Barnes and Cara Buckley

14 April 2019

Two weeks ago, the big movie studios showcased their 2019 lineups for multiplex executives in a series of elaborate marketing presentations in Las Vegas. It’s an annual ritual: Here are the potential hits we will deliver.

For the first time, the importance of onscreen diversity came across as more than lip service. Paramount presented a family adventure (“Dora the Lost City of Gold”) with a predominantly Latino cast, while Warner Bros. promoted a “Shaft” sequel starring Samuel L. Jackson and Regina Hall. Universal touted a comedy starring black women (“Little”), an animated movie about a Chinese girl’s quest (“Abominable”) and a summer musical (“Yesterday”) with an actor of Indian descent playing the lead.

But look a little closer at the movies on studio rosters — and who is directing them — and Hollywood’s inclusion narrative falls apart by one crucial measure. Even after years of being called to task for sidelining female filmmakers, studios as a whole continue to rely overwhelmingly on men to lead productions.

Why the disconnect?

Studios have multiple explanations (some would say excuses), but one big reason involves a lack of economic pressure. Moviegoers have been responding favorably to diverse casting and stories (“Us,” “Crazy Rich Asians,” “Black Panther”), prompting studios to serve up more. Fewer ticket-buying decisions are made based on the gender of the filmmaker, however.

“Does a consumer care about how something is made versus what they see onscreen?” Cathy Schulman, an Oscar-winning producer (“Crash”), said in an interview. “I think that is becoming increasingly more important, but I would say the business is slower to see the connectivity.”

Of 15 movies from Universal with release dates, four were directed by women.


Read the full article in The New York Times.