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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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"The Devil Ties My Tongue" by Amy Seiwert performed for the SKETCH Series, 2013. Photo by David DeSilva. Courtesy of Amy Seiwert's Imagery

NY Times: Of women, men and ballet in the 21st Century

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Author: Alastair Macaulay

“Can ballet express a modern view of the sexes? In the Western contemporary world, women and men often hold equal status at work, as leaders, as voters, as breadwinners. This kind of equality, however, is precisely what ballet cannot show.

Instead, it creates an either-or dualism from the difference between man and woman. He does most of the partnering (traditionally, all of it). She rises onto point. When he does the same (seldom), the effect is comic. The foot is a relatively tiny part of the body; yet its significance becomes colossal.

The meanings that flow from ballet are not only about gender. Yet the use of pointwork places the woman on a different level of being.”

Read the complete article here

NY Times: The woman who has transformed English National Ballet

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Author: Roslyn Sulcas

“Artistic director, star ballerina, lobbyist, wrangler, psychologist, spokeswoman. Tamara Rojo, the artistic director of English National Ballet, is one busy woman.

Ms. Rojo, 42, a Spanish-born former Royal Ballet principal dancer, has been in her current job for four years, and she has made a startling difference to English National Ballet — a London touring company of 67 dancers that has no home theater and has struggled for a long time to establish its identity in the shadow of the Royal. On Tuesday, her company began a sold-out run of Akram Khan’s critically praised ‘Giselle’ at Sadler’s Wells. Ms. Rojo commissioned the piece last year, part of her risk-taking approach.

She is also the company’s marquee ballerina (along with a fellow Royal Ballet alum, Alina Cojocaru), somehow managing to keep up her technical form and artistry while acting as a one-woman visionary, manager, cheerleader and glamorous high-profile ad for her organization.

Does she sleep?”

NY Times: Breaking the glass slipper: Where are the female choreographers?

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Author: Michael Cooper

It has become a rarity for ballet companies to present works by women, despite the large number of women in the field and the pioneers of the 20th century.

“’Ballet,’ as the choreographer George Balanchine once said, ‘is Woman.’

But if women are still the symbols of ballet in the popular imagination, chances are it is as ballerinas performing dazzling, demanding steps that were devised for them by men. When it comes to choreography, at least at most major companies, ballet remains overwhelmingly a man’s world.”

Read the complete article here

NY Times: Dance Luminaries weigh in on the conspicuous absence of female choreographers

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Author: Gia Kourlas

“’Listen, I’ve lived in a women’s world my whole life,’ said Peter Martins, the ballet master in chief of New York City Ballet. ‘The last thing we are is sexist here.’

At the same time, the lack of female choreographers is glaringly obvious at City Ballet and other major ballet companies.

There is Twyla Tharp, the rare woman to succeed as an important choreographer in the ballet world, but few others. (Ms. Tharp, who prefers to be recognized as a choreographer, not a female one, declined to comment for this article.)

[ More on the underrepresentation of women in ballet choreography ]

People in the dance world have different ideas about the reasons behind the dearth of women in a field where, as Mr. Martins points out, women predominate in number. Certain issues, though, come up again and again.”

Read the complete article here

Huffington Post: Gender inequality in contemporary dance

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Author: Harpreet Kaur

“Gender inequality has long affected artists and the cultural sector, but at a first glance this may not seem so apparent. More women than men study fine art. There are large numbers of female actors, dancers, musicians, arts managers, producers and creatives on the whole. But, in big decision making roles, prize winning works, names hitting the largest stages and recognition, more often than not the winners are men.”

Read the complete article here

Financial Times: Sexism in the dance world

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Producer: Griselda Murray Brown

“Women have long been pioneers in dance, establishing companies and breaking new ground. But the leading choreographers today are men. Where have all the women gone? The FT’s Griselda Murray Brown reports.”

Watch the complete segment here

WendyPerron.com: Are women dancers still discriminated against?

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Author: Wendy Perron

“I co-wrote the article below forty years ago. Since the issue has come up again (actually it never went away) I decided to post it. This diatribe was useful back in 2000 when a group of choreographers called the Gender Project got together to address discrimination against women in dance. Reading this article from 1976, they were appalled at how familiar it sounded.”

Read the complete article here

The Guardian: You’re wrong, Akram. We do need more female choreographers

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Author: Luke Jennings

“The choreographer Akram Khan has said that the number of female choreographers should not be increased ‘for the sake of it’, despite industry concerns that women in dance face much greater obstacles than men. Luke Jennings, the Observer’s dance critic, disagrees with Khan’s analysis.”

Read the complete article here

Chicago Tribune: Dance Top 10 for 2015: Women had an outsized role on this year’s list

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Author: Laura Molzahn

“With shows by Wendy Whelan in January, Carrie Hanson in March, Onye Ozuzu in August, Twyla Tharp in November, and the female choreographers of Hubbard Street’s winter program this weekend — well, 2015 has proved the year of the woman. That shouldn’t be remarkable, because women predominate in dance, but it is. You’ll find an unusually high number of additional picks by women in my chronological list below of the top 10 dance works of the last year — along with some fine representatives of the other sex.”

Read the complete article here

NY Times: A surprising year for female choreographers

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Author: Gia Kourlas

“In the ballet world, there is Twyla Tharp and then there are none — meaning female choreographers of note. At least that’s what it seems like. (Thank heavens for her “Bach Partita” at American Ballet Theater.) Fortunately, this says less about those who create dances than those who commission them. Ballet Theater and New York City Ballet can keep Liam Scarlett all to themselves: In 2014, female dance makers thrived, from the American premiere of the Canadian choreographer Dana Michel’s “Yellow Towel” to a revival by Pina Bausch, who died in 2009 but was kind enough to leave some gems behind.”

Read the complete article here