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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.

The Lily: We talked to an employment lawyer about ‘mom bias.’ Here’s what she wants you to know.

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Stephanie Murray

27 July 2020

In late May, a working mom named Dris Wallace filed a complaint to the human resources office at her company. Her manager had been insisting that she keep her toddlers quiet during work calls while working from home during the coronavirus, which she felt was an impossible and discriminatory standard.

A week later, she was fired.

That’s when employment attorney Daphne Delvaux stepped in and filed a lawsuit against Wallace’s company on her behalf.

For Delvaux, who specializes in defending mothers facing discrimination at work — or retaliation for reporting it — this is just another day on the job. According to her, “mom bias” has always been a problem in the corporate world, but the coronavirus has exacerbated it. Businesses are under pressure to cut costs, and workers are terrified of losing work, creating fertile ground for abuse. Since many businesses are reopening while so many day cares and schools remain closed, it will probably get worse before it gets better.

In addition to her work as a litigator, Delvaux runs The Mama Attorney, an organization devoted to educating mothers about their rights at work so that they can protect both their time with their kids and their careers as they transition to motherhood.

Here are a few things she wants working moms to know:

‘Mom bias’ is real and no industry is immune to it

Bias against parents — and specifically mothers — arises out of a workplace culture that favors unencumbered workers, Delvaux said. “Employers like people at work who are a hundred percent committed, so they don’t have any other obligations, no health concerns, they don’t have to take a leave of absence, they don’t have to take breaks, they don’t have to ask for accommodation — the employers favor those employees.” As a result, managers operating under pressure to hit quotas are often really hard on employees with obvious limitations or outside obligations.

With mothers in particular, Delvaux has observed a pervasive perception that they are “less available,” and “too distracted” to do their jobs properly. As a result, a lot of mothers face discrimination either before or after maternity leave, based on the assumption that they will be less committed to their jobs. Some of the mothers Delvaux has represented came back from maternity leave only to be immediately replaced, or let go while their employer continued to post new job openings. Others were muscled out, demoted or forced to cut their maternity leaves short.

Read the full article online here.

The Philadelphia Inquirer: Philly’s daring BalletX taps choreographers around the world for subscription-based film festival

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By Ellen Dunkel

21 July 2020

Nutcracker performances have been canceled, theaters sit empty, and dancers all over the world are wondering how to salvage their careers.

But BalletX artistic director Christine Cox has not let coronavirus prevent her company from leaping into the future.

“There was a panic moment,” Cox said. “At first you’re managing the crises by shutting down your performances, which is something we did early. And then slowly as the season was developing, in my mind, [there was] this idea of going big.”

The plan, which Cox announced Tuesday morning, is a new series launching Sept. 10 celebrating the company’s 15th anniversary with world premieres by 15 choreographers. She sees the season in terms of a subscription-based film festival with nine shorts and six features.

The shorts will be dance films presented on a new virtual platform hosted on the company’s website called BalletX Beyond. The features are intended to be performed live in the spring or summer, depending on public health concerns, but they, too, may be turned into films, if necessary.

Read the full story here.

New York Times: In Her Words: Ava DuVernay’s Fight for Change, Onstage and Off

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By Emma Goldberg

8 July 2020

They might depict scenes from decades past, but movie sets featured in films by the director Ava DuVernay are starting to look a lot like the United States today.

For “Selma,” her 2014 film about the 1965 marches for voting rights and the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s part in them, Ms. DuVernay directed hundreds of Black and white actors in a restaging of civil rights protests. “When They See Us,” her mini-series on the wrongful conviction of teenage boys known as the Central Park Five, released last year, had her grappling with the injustices Black men experience at the hands of the police. And her Netflix documentary “13th,” from 2016, traces the legacy of American slavery to the present day criminalization of Black communities.

As hundreds of thousands across the United States march for Black Lives Matter, Ms. DuVernay’s films about Black histories and experiences have come to feel more essential than ever.

But there aren’t enough Black directors telling those stories.

For decades, few Black women have had access to the resources and platforms to make major motion pictures. In 2018, Hollywood saw a record high number of top films from Black directors — and it was only 14 percent. Only one of them was a woman, and she was Ms. DuVernay.

The calls to break up Hollywood’s entrenched disparities are building. Five years ago, the hashtag #OscarsSoWhite put a spotlight on the industry’s lack of diversity, and its following has since continued to hold Hollywood to account for its lack of representation. Two years later, the #MeToo movement erupted and dozens of women exposed the film titan Harvey Weinstein’s sexual abuses.

Today, industry leaders are listening to people of color protesting films that romanticize the slavery era. For a brief moment, “Gone With the Wind,” the highest-grossing film of all time when adjusted for inflation, was removed from HBO Max. (It was later restored with additional videos offering historical context.) Filmmakers, like Ms. DuVernay, are working to ensure the momentum does not subside.

Last month, Ms. DuVernay’s media company ARRAY introduced the Law Enforcement Accountability Project in the wake of George Floyd’s killing while in police custody in Minneapolis, with the goal of commissioning, funding and amplifying works from Black and female artists that focus on police violence. One of the goals, she said, is to consider who is writing the history of this moment.

Ms. DuVernay spoke with In Her Words about the role she sees for artists in a time of widespread unrest, and whether problematic films — like problematic statues — should be removed to make space for new voices.

Read the full article here.

San Francisco Chronicle: SF Ballet announces details of 2021 season with hope and a bit of uncertainty

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By Joshua Kosman

18 June 2020

World premieres by choreographers Cathy Marston, Mark Morris, Danielle Rowe and Myles Thatcher — as well as a return engagement for George Balanchine’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” which was cut short by the COVID-19 pandemic after a single performance in March — are among the highlights of the San Francisco Ballet’s 2021 season.

Artistic Director Helgi Tomasson announced details of the season on Thursday, June 18, under the title “Leap of Faith,” an aptly balletic rubric acknowledging the elements of uncertainty and hope that surround any planning by a performing arts organization in the current climate.

“The situation is totally un-normal right now, and we will have to be able to adjust to different situations,” Tomasson told The Chronicle in a phone interview. “The season is assuming that the city will allow us to perform and that people are willing to come. That would be the ideal.”

If that doesn’t happen by the time the season is scheduled to open on Jan. 19, Tomasson said, the company has backup plans, including the possibility of live-streaming performances from the studio.

The season’s seven programs, which run through June 27, 2021, have been arranged with the goal of keeping the two biggest and most elaborate programs at the end, in order to maximize the chances that performances will be fully possible by then. Those are the full-length story ballets “Swan Lake” (May 28-June 6) and “Romeo and Juliet” (June 18-27), both choreographed by Tomasson.

Read the full article here. 

Global Conversations with Annabelle Lopez Ochoa | The Creative Process Ep. 6

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Global Conversations with Lia Cirio | The Creative Process Ep. 5

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Modern Healthcare: Women health workers are at risk for mental health issues during COVID-19

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Inside Philanthropy: Billionaire Donors May Prevent a Museum Meltdown, but Which Institutions Will Be Saved?

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18 May 2020

By Mike Scutari

In late April, facing a potential shortfall of as much as $150 million, the Metropolitan Museum of Art announced layoffs and executive pay cuts. “While we are not immune from the impact of this pandemic, the Met is a strong and enduring institution and will remain one,” said Daniel Weiss, president and chief executive officer.

Painful cuts aside, Weiss has reason to be optimistic about the museum’s fate. The Met can access a $50 million emergency fund, a $3.6 billion endowment, a board-designated fund of $935 million that does not have donor restrictions, and a Rolodex of patrons who contributed $211.5 million in support in 2019. Many have already risen to the occasion. “Our trustees are clearly stepping up and wanting to make sure that they’re helping the institution. That support is coming immediately, and strongly,” said Met Director Max Hollein.

Add it all up, and Artnet News’ Sarah Cascone’s prediction still holds: “Despite its dire circumstances,” she wrote, the Met “is well positioned to get through the current storm.”

The same can’t be said for smaller museums. The American Alliance of Museums estimates that 30% of museums, mostly in small and rural communities, will not be able to reopen without immediate financial support from the government.

In mid-May, these museums received some good news when Alice Walton’s Art Bridges announced its $5 million Bridge Ahead Initiative to support current and former partner museums, many of which are located in small and mid-sized communities affected by COVID-19.

And so the stage is set. Can billionaires stave off a museum meltdown? Most certainly. But the more salient question is which kinds of museums will billionaires rescue? Wealthy institutions like the Met, or smaller organizations that had to scrounge for funding long before COVID-19 turned the world upside down?

Read the full article, and see DDP Founder Liza Yntema’s take on the PPP loan here. 

The Washington Post: Chris Evert played tennis with a patience that’s in current demand

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By Sally Jenkins

Do yourself a favor during the shutdown and, instead of diving any further into the butter or the bourbon or the presidential bombast, take a lesson in patience from Chris Evert. You’ve filled this strange season with all kinds of sports classics, so while you’re at it, call up a French Open and just watch her. Watch the narrow squint and the firming of the chin as she refuses to be hurried. Watch her move the ball, use her racket strings to drag her opponents around until she has them where she wants them, and then crack a clean one. Forty years later, in the midst of this trial, her tennis doesn’t just hold up. It’s riveting.

Lord knows, you need patience right now. Patience with the dime-store elastic biting into your ears from the homemade bandanna mask. Patience with the detergent tang of cleansers in your membranes. What you need to handle all of that is not just patience, but Evert’s particular, stalking brand of it and what it teaches: Patience isn’t complacent. It’s commanding.

Read the full article in the Washington Post.