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
Broadway World: New England Ballet Theatre of Connecticut Presents BALLET SPEAKS: AGAINST DOMESTIC VIOLENCE
11 March 2021
By BWW News Desk
New England Ballet Theatre of Connecticut will present Ballet Speaks: Against Domestic Violence, a ballet performance honoring domestic violence victims and survivors through the art of dance.
NEBT believes that it is important to tell the stories that are kept quiet, the stories that have been forgotten or overlooked.
Several advocates for victims of domestic violence will be at the event to speak about the cause and how the community can work to break the cycle of domestic violence.
In honor of International Women’s Month, the evening will feature two female choreographers: NEBT Co-Founder & Artistic Director Emily Orzada and Guest Choreographer Keerati Jinakunwiphat.
The event takes place on March 13, 2021 at 7:00pm at the Hartford Dance Collective. Viewing-In-Person and Virtual Viewer ticket options available.
Learn more at https://www.neballettheatre.com/balletspeaks.
25% of ticket sales for this event will be donated to Interval House, a local non-profit organization working to end domestic violence. 25% of sales of NEBT Merchandise including, t-shirts, stickers and tote bags, will be donated to Interval House. 100% of sales of Pointe Shoe signed by NEBT Company Artists will be donated to Interval House.
Read more about Ballet Speaks and the full feature on Broadway World here.
The New York Times: For Women in Music, Equality Remains Out of Reach
8 March 2021
By Ben Sisario
The latest study by the Annenberg Inclusion Initiative at the University of Southern California found that women’s representation in music has not improved in the last decade.
Three years ago, an academic tallied up the performers, producers and songwriters behind hit songs, and found that women’s representation fell on a scale between, roughly, poor and abysmal.
The starkness of those findings shook the music industry and led to promises of change, like a pledge by record companies and artists to consider hiring more women in the studio.
But the latest edition of that study, released on Monday by Stacy L. Smith of the University of Southern California’s Annenberg Inclusion Initiative, has found that the numbers for women in music have mostly not improved, and in some ways even gotten worse.
Among the findings of the study, based on the credit information for songs on Billboard’s year-end Hot 100 chart for each year since 2012, is that last year women represented 20.2 percent of the performing artists of the year’s top songs — down from 22.5 percent in 2019, and slightly below the nine-year average of 21.6 percent.
Of the 1,797 artists behind the 900 songs on those charts — representing solo performers as well as members of duos and groups — there were 3.6 men to every woman, according to the study, which received funding from Spotify.
To read the full article, click here.
Datebook: Review: S.F. Ballet digitally delivers Art Deco glamour in a modern masterpiece
4 March 2021
By Rachel Howard
If a choreographer wants to make the most of this pandemic era, Sarah Van Patten is the woman to put on the screen. Van Patten, who joined the San Francisco Ballet in 2002, is the finest actress-dancer in the company, so it is good to have a beautifully directed record of her theatrical genius in Danielle Rowe’s new dance film, “Wooden Dimes,” the clever Art Deco centerpiece of the Ballet’s digital Program 3, which begins streaming Thursday, March 4.
Rowe, increasingly in demand to choreograph for regional companies and here making her first ensemble work for the Ballet, has carried out “Wooden Dimes” with a shrewd eye for spectacle and a mature choreographer’s skill. There are shiny prop-driven delights throughout the production, particularly a Ziegfield Follies-like sequence with fluffy feather fans shot from above and a clever group rendezvous with a massive table. But the real beauty of the film comes in two long pas de deux, simultaneously swirling and nuanced, for Van Patten and Luke Ingham. Between these little love poems our story, spare as it is, unfolds.
Read the full review of “Wooden Dimes” here.
The New York Times: What Is a Ballet Body?
3 March 2021
By Gia Kourlas
With performances on pause, many dancers are rethinking their relationship to weight.
Lovette also understands that she can help make ballet better. In the past few years, she has started making a name for herself as a choreographer. That puts her in a rare position to affect change.
“This is so why I wanted to be a choreographer,” she said. “The choreographer has even more power than anybody else because we get to choose who’s in the ballet. Most places I go, I can take anyone in the company. Maybe they’ll nudge and say: ‘Oh, no, no, no, you shouldn’t choose her. You should choose her. She’s better.’ But I can go, ‘No. I want her.’ Every time! And it’s so empowering.”
Read the full article here.
Resident Choreographer 2021
Dance Data Project® (DDP) today announces the Data Byte: Global Resident Choreographer Survey 2021, a mini-report focusing on the gender distribution of 64 resident choreographer (RC) positions at 75 United States and 68 international ballet companies for a total of 143 companies.
