Upcoming Deadlines | click here to see if you are eligible for any of these opportunities

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

×

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

The Annenberg Center: Martha Graham Dance Company The EVE Project

/in /by

By Isabelle Vail

24 January 2019

From the Annenberg Center’s description:

“One of the great companies of the world” (The New York Times), the Martha Graham Dance Company is one of the oldest and most celebrated contemporary dance companies on the planet. In the EVE Project, this iconic troupe stays true to Graham’s tradition of social activism with a program by all female choreographers commemorating the upcoming centennial of the 19th Amendment. Featuring the powerful Philadelphia premiere of Chronicle by Graham, as well as the first preview performance of a new work by contemporary superstars Maxine Doyle and Bobbi Jene Smith, this amazing company continues to inspire and impress the generations worldwide.

Program includes:Diversion of Angels by Martha Graham
Ekstasis by Martha Graham, Reimagined by Virginie MeceneDeo (first preview) by Maxine Doyle and Bobbi Jene SmithChronicle by Martha Graham

Read about the program on the Annenberg Center’s website.

Pointe: Female Choreographers Shine at Victoria Morgan’s Cincinnati Ballet

/in /by

By Isabelle Vail

23 January 2019

Pointe has posted a recent article about Cincinnati Ballet and its fearless woman leader, Victoria Morgan. The article directly praises Morgan’s use of female talent behind-the-scenes at the company. Read below an excerpt of the beginning:


Victoria Morgan‘s normally bright smile is even brighter entering her 22nd season as Cincinnati Ballet’s artistic director. That’s because the 55-year-old company is in the best shape it has ever been: Attendance, ticket sales and the company’s annual operating budget are at all-time highs. But the road to Cincinnati Ballet’s current successes required an early revamp in Morgan’s thinking about programming. When she took over leadership in 1997, the former San Francisco Ballet dancer had trouble accepting that the company simply didn’t have the budget for her ideas about duplicating the repertoire she was used to.

“I finally realized that part of my reason for being was to find and grow young choreographic talent and to be in the conversation around today’s ideas,” says Morgan. That focus on rising choreographers and work from in-demand dancemakers, including Justin Peck, Annabelle Lopez Ochoa and Adam Hougland, has come to define Cincinnati Ballet. So has Morgan’s commitment to highlighting female choreographers. Ballets by Heather Britt, Jessica Lang and Amy Seiwert and several all-female-choreographer programs have solidified that reputation.

Read the full article in Pointe Magazine.

Forbes on Choreographer Camille A. Brown: A Queens Girl Who Now Creates Dance Everywhere

/in /by

By Rise Sarachan

18 January 2019

Camille A. Brown has made a name for herself as a star choreographer in the dance world, receiving accolades notably but not limited to the Princess Grace Award, TED Fellowship, Guggenheim Fellowship, Doris Duke Performing Artist Award, USA Jay Franke & David Herro Fellowship and a Bessie Award. She’s graced the covers of dance magazines and performed at multiple TED conferences, choreographed for Broadway and television with John Legend’s Jesus Christ Superstar on NBC. But to speak to Brown, you’d never know it. It’s clear that the work itself is the prize she values most, as the soft-spoken Brown lights up with delight when discussing past and future projects.

Her journey was not one of overnight success but one of perseverance and learning that channeling her most personal anxieties and the stories that she found fascinating would open the most doors. Thinking outside of the box of only being a dancer allowed her to embrace all of who she is and Brown continues to expand her talents, pressing up against the confines of the male-dominated world of choreography as a black woman. Currently, Brown’s dance company Camille A. Brown & Dancers is touring the country, stopping at The Joyce Theatre in New York City in early February. Her choreographic work on the acclaimed show Choir Boy written by the Oscar-winning Moonlight writer Tarell Alvin is playing on Broadway. I spoke with Brown about her journey, her training and what advice she’d give to young women who want to succeed in this field.

Read the full article in Forbes.

San Francisco Ballet: Cathy Marston’s Snowblind

/in /by

By Cheryl A. Ossola 

In her first work for San Francisco Ballet, British choreographer Cathy Marston zeroes in on the heart of Edith Wharton’s 1911 novella Ethan Frome. Her ballet, Snowblind,tells a story of repression, love, desperation, and dependence—the forces underlying Wharton’s tale, a classic love triangle. After watching rehearsals, Artistic Director and Principal Choreographer Helgi Tomasson commented that Marston, a storyteller at her core, “was approaching it from the drama, as you would with an actor, and that is the driving force to make this work come to life.”

Read the full article on SFB’s website.

BBC News: Carlos Acosta named director of Birmingham Royal Ballet

/in /by

15 January 2019

World-renowned ballet dancer Carlos Acosta has been appointed as the new director of Birmingham Royal Ballet.

The former principal dancer with The Royal Ballet said taking the role was a “tremendous honour and privilege”.

It comes after it was announced current director David Bintley would be standing down in July 2019.

The Cuban-born dancer and choreographer will take up his appointment in January 2020 and said he wanted to “reach out to new and more diverse audiences”.

Mr Acosta also said his ambition was to expand the repertoire of the Birmingham Royal Ballet.

Read the full article in BBC News.

The Washington Post: Washington Ballet is struggling with empty seats and a $3 million debt. What will turn it around?

/in /by

By Peggy McGlone

Two years after replacing its successful, longtime artistic director with a celebrated ballerina who had never run a company, the Washington Ballet is struggling to close a $3 million debt and attract audiences to its dramatic change in programming.

The company has a different look under former American Ballet Theatre star Julie Kent, who this fall began her third season as artistic director. Four popular dancers left recently, including Brooklyn Mack, an internationally known artist and audience favorite. The company’s repertoire has shifted from the playful, quirky sensibility of past director-choreographer Septime Webre to the high-end standards that fueled Kent’s ABT career.

[Ballet star Julie Kent has big plans for Washington Ballet]

Hiring Kent was part of the board of directors’ overall plan to reinvent the Washington Ballet as a bigger, better company — a national treasure, guided by a star, with the elite repertoire and dancers to rival the world’s great ballet institutions.

“We do believe in the star power of Julie,” says Washington Ballet board chairman Jean-Marie Fernandez. “She is taking what she has learned for 30 years to develop her dancers and bring that to the stage.”

So far, though, it appears that Kent’s fame has not attracted enough ticket buyers and donors to fund the new vision of the Washington Ballet, with more and better dancers performing the “Great Books” of ballet. It’s a big risk, because the transformation will be costly and take years. And then there are the questions no one seems to have asked in the planning stages: Does the public want this kind of company, and will enough donors fund it?

Read the full article in The Washington Post.

New York Times: Macaulay Farewell

/in /by

By Alastair Macaulay

28 December 2018

Dance is about change. The body keeps altering its shape while we watch it move. Many of the dances that were current yesterday will not do tomorrow.

“Today people don’t dance, they jump; in my day, we danced,” an old man tells his granddaughter in an 18th-century French gazette. She replies, “In your day, they didn’t dance, they walked; today is the true age of the dance.”

Dance is dead; long live dance. How has it changed since 2007 — let alone since 1978? I cite those two dates because, with this piece, I end my time as chief dance critic of The New York Times, a job I began in 2007. But I’ve been a dance critic for 40 years now. It’s also 40 years since I first visited New York from Britain, where I’d discovered dance and other performing arts, not as a practitioner but as a wallflower: a fan who wrote letters. The letters led to criticism; criticism led me to New York.

Read Alastair Macaulay’s full article (his last as chief dance critic) in the New York Times.

New York Times: Best Dance of 2018 Makes Nods to Women

/in /by

By Isabelle Vail

17 December 2018

In a collective review for the New York Times, the paper’s critics selected their favorite moments from dance in 2018. Mentioned first and to great esteem, Pam Tanowitz’s “Four Quartets,” which is set to the poetry of T.S. Eloit, was described as not just illustrating the poems, but letting “their words, spoken with a wide range of expression by Kathleen Chalfant, sound like emanations from the complex stage world created here.”

Tanowitz was a fellow at the NYU Center for Ballet and the Arts, has her own company, Pam Tanowitz Dance, and her work will soon take the stage at New York City Center, where she joins pianist Simone Dinnerstein to showcase their “New Work for Goldberg Variations.” Tanowtiz has upcoming commissions from The Royal Ballet, Paul Taylor American Dance, and the Graham Company.

The review also mentions the New York City Ballet gala, praising the company and writing, “The solos danced by Taylor Stanley in Kyle Abraham’s “The Runaway” exemplified many American diversities, not least stylistic ones. And earlier in the evening, Teresa Reichlen’s moving “We, the dancers” speech, on behalf of City Ballet’s performers — who flanked her onstage — established fresh moral criteria for the company: “We will not put art before common decency or allow talent to sway our moral compass.” DDP is not the only entity apparently noticing NYCB’s apt reactions to scandal within the company. Tiler Peck, a famed principal dancer with the company and strong advocate for female leadership in her field, was mentioned with corps dancer Roman Mejia, who partnered Ms. Peck in “Allegro Brillante” and “Tschaikovsky Pas de Deux” this summer.

Further mention of women artists outside of the ballet circle was made, as Indian dancer Arushi Mudgal’s solo, ‘Murta-Amurta’ was described as “a thrilling range of religious thought and movement texture.” The team of critics for NYT has clearly considered dance in all of its forms and by its makers of both genders this December. Their voice carries far, and we hope the New York Times highlights will lead more companies to take note of the women earning praise and attention by this major entity.

Read the full article in the New York Times.

New York Times: A Lucinda Childs Dance for Wendy Whelan

/in /by

By Joshua Barone

12 December 2018

“THE DAY,” a new work with major collaborators from the worlds of music and dance, will have its premiere next summer at the Jacob’s Pillow dance festival in Becket, Mass.

The idyllic festival in the Berkshires, whose lineup was announced on Wednesday, will run from June 19 through Aug. 25, with five world premieres and return engagements from several Jacob’s Pillow fixtures.

“THE DAY,” which was conceived by the cellist Maya Beiser, will have its premiere on July 31 and run through Aug. 4, and will be performed by her and Wendy Whelan, the former New York City Ballet star who in her retirement has become an ever-busy champion of new dance. The work features choreography by the dance luminary Lucinda Childs and music by the Pulitzer Prize-winning composer David Lang (his piece of the same name but styled differently, “the day”).

Read the full article in the New York Times.

‘Tis the Season: Nutcrackers by Women

/in /by
Samantha Riester as Snowflake in Victoria Morgan’s The Nutcracker. Courtesy of Cincinnati Ballet Photo by Peter Mueller.

Samantha Riester as Snowflake in Victoria Morgan’s The Nutcracker. Courtesy of Cincinnati Ballet Photo by Peter Mueller.

By Isabelle Vail

3 December 2018

What does it take for a woman to create a production of The Nutcracker?

The answer is simple: they require the same resources and support that male choreographers receive. Unfortunately, woman-choreographed versions are often regionally-staged, gaining less attention than their male-choreographed counterparts on the NYC/San Francisco stages.

That does not, however, mean these smaller productions are less masterful or noteworthy.

In 2010, Richmond Ballet was host to chief dance critic for the New York Times, Alastair Macaulay. To the delight of the company’s local audience and media, Macaulay praised choreographer and artistic director Stoner Winslett’s production, writing, “This is the 25th “Nutcracker” production I’ve seen this season, and of the 23 I’ve seen for the first time it strikes me as the most perfect. ”

Lauren Archer in Stoner Winslett’s The Nutcracker . Courtesy of Richmond Ballet . All Rights Reserved. Photo by Sarah Ferguson.

Lauren Archer in Stoner Winslett’s The Nutcracker . Courtesy of Richmond Ballet . All Rights Reserved. Photo by Sarah Ferguson.

More recently, we see very few regional companies mentioned in the New York Times arts section. A quick glance today, and all of the “Nutcrackers” mentioned are Balanchine’s renowned production for the New York City Ballet.

Ava Chatterson and Dylan Keane Desilva rehearsing Amy Seiwart’s The Nutcracker . Courtesy of Sacramento Ballet . Photo by David Desilva.

Ava Chatterson and Dylan Keane Desilva rehearsing Amy Seiwart’s The Nutcracker . Courtesy of Sacramento Ballet . Photo by David Desilva.

Another smaller-budget company, Cincinnati Ballet, was also praised for its woman-choreographed production. During its tour to the Kennedy Center, Victoria Morgan’s production received rave reviews. “The ballet teems with a sense of humor, love, and wonder that pulls the affair together in a harmonious, meaningful way,” writes Sarah Kaufman in a 2016 review for The Washington Post. It is “optimistic” and musical, with “one of the prettiest snow scenes in memory.” Clearly a regional production holds its weight on the big-city stages before big-city audiences.

Other regional productions conceived by woman choreographers include those of Dayton Ballet, choreographed by Karen Russo Burke; Ballet Memphis, choreographed in by Janet Parke, in conjunction with Steven McMahon and Joseph Jefferies; and Los Angeles Ballet, choreographed by Colleen Neary and her partner Thordal Christensen.

2018 welcomes a new production by a woman to the mix: Amy Seiwart’s The Nutcracker. Seiwart’s choreography took inspiration from Marius Petipa’s grand pas de deux and Frederic Franklin, who created the version that Seiwart danced as a young girl. Her twist? Marie (called Clara in many productions), is an independently-thinking girl who makes her own decisions.

As Seiwart and her fellow woman choreographers present their versions this season, DDP hopes to see praise like that of Macaulay and Kaufman’s in major publications, reminding our community that women can create full-length masterpieces, too.

You can purchase tickets to the above productions with the following links:

Sacramento Ballet

Los Angeles Ballet

Ballet Memphis

Dayton Ballet

Cincinnati Ballet

Richmond Ballet