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

New York Times: A ‘Great Cultural Depression’ Looms for Legions of Unemployed Performers

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The 19th News: Stimulus provides some relief for women — but experts say it’s far from enough

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Washington Post: Opinion: Innovation made ‘The Nutcracker’ a Christmas classic. A pandemic won’t stop it

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By Melissa R. Klapper

21 December 2020

Melissa R. Klapper is a professor at Rowan University and author of “Ballet Class: An American History.”

Covid-19 has cost us cherished holiday traditions. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warns against traveling for family visits, Santas and menorahs sit behind plastic partitions, religious services have moved outside, and the National Christmas Tree Lighting went online. And for many Americans, particularly painful is the absence of live performances of “The Nutcracker.”

But the story of “The Nutcracker” in America is a story of innovation. And the same creative spirit that will help Americans re-create at least a little of this treasured ritual can help revitalize the ballet for generations to come. “The Nutcracker” was not always beloved, nor was it always associated with the holiday season. When it premiered in Russia in 1892, hopes were high for a ballet created by the same team — composer Peter Tchaikovsky and choreographer Marius Petipa, this time with the aid of his assistant Lev Ivanov — that had so successfully ushered “Sleeping Beauty” to the stage two years earlier. But Tchaikovsky himself thought the new ballet was “infinitely worse” than “Sleeping Beauty,” and the critical and audience reception was lukewarm. “The Nutcracker” was only sporadically revived over the next few decades. Some Americans had a chance to see a condensed version staged by the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo in the 1940s on the company’s many cross-country tours, and Disney’s “Fantasia” helped popularize the music. But it wasn’t until 1944 that the San Francisco Ballet performed the first full-length “Nutcracker” in the United States.

Read the full article here.

NYU: The Center for Ballet and the Arts and National Sawdust Collaborate to Support Women Composers and Choreographers

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3 December 2020

The Virginia B. Toulmin Foundation has created a new program between the Center for Ballet and the Arts at NYU and National Sawdust to foster collaboration between women composers and choreographers with the aim of creating new works in the virtual medium.

The Virginia B. Toulmin Foundation today announced the creation of a new program to foster collaboration between women composers and choreographers with the aim of creating new works in the virtual medium. The $300,000 gift supports a one-year partnership between National Sawdust and The Center for Ballet and the Arts at NYU (CBA). Beginning in November 2020, the program supports 45 appointed women choreographers and composers to help develop their skills, create and present new work, and build a community of like-minded artists that will enhance their careers. At least half of the participating women represent BIWOC (Black, Indigenous, and Women of Color) communities.

Alexander Sanger, a Trustee of the Toulmin Foundation, on behalf of his fellow trustees, William Villafranco and Walter Montaign, said: “In this time when live stage performance is not possible, composers and choreographers need to explore new ways to create, collaborate and present their work. Creating for the virtual world is fundamentally different than creating for the stage and involves skills and partnering in the fields of film, sound, set design, lighting and computer technology that are in many cases new for the choreographer or composer. This program aims to fill that need. Further, the program will continue the Foundation’s efforts to bring increased diversity and support a wide range of talents in the performing arts. Mrs. Toulmin, a passionate supporter of the performing arts, believed in fairness and equity for all women, and we are proud to carry on her legacy.”

This appointed program will feature five “Toulmin Fellows” and forty “Toulmin Creators”. Each will receive a package of financial, intellectual, and creative resources to support development of new work.

The five Toulmin Fellows will spend the winter in residence at The Center for Ballet and the Arts and the spring at National Sawdust, building toward participation in National Sawdust’s Digital Discovery Festival (DDF). They will receive financial support, office and studio space, and access to videographers, sound engineers, AV equipment and marketing support. Each fellow will be paired with a carefully selected mentor who will support their creative processes throughout the year.

Read the full announcement here.

Harper’s Bazaar: How Three Women Produced a Ballet Gala in a Pandemic

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By Erica Gonzalez

17 December 2020

Ballerina Melanie Hamrick wanted to do something to help the dance community months into a pandemic that put many of them out of work. “I hate seeing my friends and colleagues not getting to dance,” she tells BAZAAR.com. After lockdowns and social distancing measures were introduced this year, live performances went on hiatus. Prestigious companies like the New York City Ballet and the American Ballet Theatre had to close for the season. But Hamrick also thought about the audience members who wouldn’t be able to watch their favorite performances in person, especially during the holidays. “How can we also help them?” she thought.

The former ABT ballerina teamed up with ABT principal dancer Christine Shevchenko and choreographer Joanna DeFelice to produce a unique performance during the COVID-19 pandemic that gave dancers a chance to work while adhering to health and safety guidelines. Through their new production company, Live Arts Global, they created A Night at the Ballet, which features dancers from a variety of troupes: ABT, New York City Ballet, San Francisco Ballet, Alvin Ailey, Dance Theater of Harlem, and even Mariinsky Theatre of St. Petersburg, Russia.

The one-hour streaming event goes live on YouTube on Live Arts Global’s channel starting at 7 p.m. ET on December 17, and lasts through December 20. The set will include pieces from The Nutcracker, Romeo & Juliet, Don Quixote, and more. And it’s completely free to watch; though, they’re asking for donations to benefit the performers and crew of the production.

While many dance companies are already showing virtual online performances to make up for their closed seasons, A Night at the Ballet was produced entirely during the coronavirus era rather than using footage from older performances. But that’s where the challenge came in: How does one do that safely?

Read the full article here.

Forbes: World-Class Ballerina Misty Copeland And TIME’S UP CEO Tina Tchen Discuss Equity And Breaking Barriers

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By Monica Haider

17 December 2020

Two remarkably powerful women, Tina Tchen, President and CEO of TIME’S UP Now and TIME’S UP Foundation, and Misty Copeland, Principal Dancer at American Ballet Theater, have shattered glass ceilings and helped amplify the discourse on racial and gender equality. On a panel for the 2020 Forbes Power Women’s Summit moderated by ForbesWomen Editor Maggie McGrath, the changemakers shared their thoughts on dismantling barriers, and underscored the importance of empowering one another and building a new normal in a world that has much progress to make.

Copeland, who was the first African-American woman to become Principal Dancer in the American Ballet Theatre, didn’t let the pandemic hinder her work. In fact, she leveraged her experience and position to help the dance community in a time of need. She cofounded Swans for Relief, a fundraiser to support dancers who have been financially impacted by the Covid-19 pandemic. Together with 31 other female ballet dancers from 14 countries, Copeland performed “The Dying Swan,” which was released on YouTube in May 2020 and generated money for the Covid-19 relief funds of various dance companies.

Tina Tchen’s monumental work advocating for gender equity and workplace diversity, namely through TIME’S UP—which she cofounded in response to the Harvey Weinstein scandal—has remained strong in 2020. They documented stories of women working on the front lines of the pandemic, created a guide to equity and inclusion to advise companies on how to maintain anti-racist practices during a crisis, commissioned a survey showing Covid-19’s impact on the pay gap and launched a five-year initiative with Melinda Gates’ Pivotal Ventures to examine the impact of gender and racial inequalities exacerbated by the pandemic. TIME’S UP also started the “We Have Her Back” campaign this year, calling on the media to refrain from unfair coverage of women. Eliminating racist and sexist attacks is a focal point of the mission, which was widely highlighted when Biden announced that Kamala Harris would be his running mate.

Read the full article here.

Mass Review: The Offending Classic

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By Nicole Duffy Robertson

10 December 2020

What makes a ballet a classic? Is it earning a permanent place in the history books, or is it being worthy of the Herculean investment of hours in the studio, the tireless work of the dancers and coaches, the resources, media and marketing machine required to bring it to life, or both? Who decides, and more importantly, what goes into that calculus? Today the re-evaluation of the Western theatrical dance canon continues as ballet and modern dance are challenged in the academy.[1] In concert dance, these questions are a matter of survival: the performed repertory consists mostly of “classics” and “new work,” and everything else tends to disappear. So, the question of what makes a dance a classic, i.e., a dance worth remembering, either by restaging or through written discourse, takes on a bigger significance.[2]

Two works by the founders of the Joffrey Ballet, Robert Joffrey’s Astarte (1967) and Gerald Arpino’s Light Rain (1981), provide a lens for exploring the question of what qualifies as a “classic,” while also addressing ideas about shifting cultural definitions of violence, taste, and timelessness. A closer look at these works may complicate our ideas of what dances should survive, be studied, and/or be performed. These ballets exist outside of conventional ballet’s classic/canonic paradigm, in part because of their sexually explicit, “anti-balletic” underpinnings.[3] First as a dancer, and now in my work as a répétiteur for the Gerald Arpino Foundation, and as a co-founder and director of New York Dance Project, I continually wrestle with these questions. Which dances to teach, pass on, and present to the public is not a trivial matter for our art form.

Each of these ballets has a different sort of existence today: Astarte is in the dance history books, and Light Rain lives onstage. One is for the most part critically respected, while the other tends to be dismissed. But there is another reason I propose that these ballets have significance beyond their roles in ballet history and performance: they provide an essential bridge from foundational “classical ballet” training (the particular methodology or school is irrelevant) to understanding and mastering key elements of the current, multi-genre contemporary dance world. In other words, these ballets persist, whether as classics or “in the canon” or not, based on their unique pedagogical value, for both dancers and audiences.

Ballet canonicity has been largely determined by success in institutional promotion and financing, coupled with plentiful support from the critical establishment. For example, Royal Ballet founder Ninette de Valois’s astute creation of a “ballet tradition” in the 1930s (with the help of Arnold Haskell’s writing)[4] and George Balanchine’s unassailable status (protected by Lincoln Kirstein, the Balanchine Trust, and the New York City Ballet) continue to survive and thrive through uninterrupted institutional support and critical writing. These two main drivers of ballet survival (the institution and critical attention) create a somewhat narrow discourse that keeps a firm grip on what gets performed, and therefore have an outsized influence on the creative direction of ballet today.

Read the full article here.

Hacks for Virtual Holiday Rituals: Nutcracker Goes Digital

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From Hacks the Newsletter

By Alyssa Rapp

I have the fondest of lifelong memories of a ritual of going to see the Joffrey’s Nutcracker ballet or The Goodman Theater’s A Christmas Carol (streaming on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day here!)as a child growing up in Chicago, and later, as a parent with children of her own.

It was shared love of dance, shared battle wounds as MBA women and moms managing organizations, and more, my deep admiration for her charisma and capacity as a leader that sparked my friendship with Kara Medoff Barnett, the indomitable executive director of American Ballet Theatre. It is because of Kara that I agreed to join ABT’s Global Council. While the memories of taking Audrey and Henriette to see ABT kids performances at the Harris Theater or Whipped Cream ballet’s premiere cannot be relived in person in 2020, the nostalgia, beauty, and flawlessness that characterize ABT’s virtual Nutcracker performance is a close second. (Find an excerpt here on YouTube!)

For this week’s Hacks Newsletter, we gain ABT Executive Superstar Kara Medoff Barnett’s leadership hacks, about what’s it’s been like to lead America’s national ballet company through this pandemic – and to what she looks forward to in 2021.

AJR: Our family tradition has included going to the Nutcracker, and in more recent years, also traveling to see ABT’s “Whipped Cream” full-length fairytale. How are you bringing these seasonal greats to audiences virtually amidst Covid-19?

KMB: ABT’s Nutcracker production includes over 100 performers on the stage and close to 100 people behind the scenes, even before you add thousands of children and families in the audience. Clearly, live performances at epic scale are not happening this holiday season.

Instead, we are exploring the most powerful ways to share the magic of ballet on digital platforms. For The Nutcracker, we created a short film of the pas de deux between Clara and the Prince. With the help of our partners at Matador Content and LG Signature, we shot ABT principal dancers Isabella Boylston and James Whiteside in 8K, and we premiered the film on a billboard in Times Square as a gift to New Yorkers this holiday season.

In more normal years, ABT performs The Nutcracker—created by MacArthur Genius and ABT Artist in Residence Alexei Ratmanksy, with costumes and sets by Lion King designer Richard Hudson—for audiences in Orange County, California. This year, we’ve shared a climactic highlight of the production – for free—with millions of fans on a variety of digital platforms (billboards, YouTube, etc.). I think that screen fatigue is real, and ten minutes of extraordinary artistry is the perfect dose of holiday joy.

During the pandemic, we’ve focused on commissioning and creating new work in Covid-safe, NBA-style “ballet bubbles” for dancers and choreographers. In 2021, we’ll continue to build on this experience with additional bubbles and collaborations for digital capture and distribution. We’ll also rehearse and film excerpts from several of our beloved classics, deploying cutting edge technology to vivify these performances in ways that will dazzle audiences. We’ll explore and share the behind-the-scenes narratives and human stories of ABT’s extraordinary artist-athletes in docuseries and podcasts. And we’ll present live performances to safely distanced outdoor audiences in communities nationwide, sharing ballet with families who might not have access to digital devices and high-speed internet, as well as individuals across America who have been staring at screens for far too long.

AJR: What has been the biggest “silver lining” and learning opportunity for you personally as the Executive Director of American’s National Ballet company throughout the pandemic?

KMB: The biggest silver lining in my family life has been daily dinner with my parents, husband, and children (and sometimes my siblings). As the leader of an arts organization, I’m usually out in the evenings attending performances and events. It’s nice to spend more time barefoot and less time in high heels, more time reading bedtime stories and less time sitting in traffic on my way to Times Square or Lincoln Center.

Subscribe to the newsletter here.

Learn more about ABT here.

Prestige: Misty Copeland on Finding a Higher Purpose in Ballet

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By Charlene Co

15 December 2020

Under the unforgiving, highly competitive and elitist spotlight of classical ballet, Misty Copeland shines. Copeland, who in 2015 became the first African-American promoted to principal dancer at the prestigious American Ballet Theatre (ABT), moves with youthful exuberance, stunning artistry and sheer veracity.

She’s come a long way from her days of attending ballet classes on the basketball court of a local youth community centre. There, at the late age of 13, she learned her pliés and elevés while living in a motel room, struggling for a space to sleep on the floor with her five other siblings. But as most awe-inspiring stories go, this rough journey propelled her to successes she never thought was even remotely possible.

Over her 25-year career, Copeland has taken on a range of both classical and contemporary roles – among her most notable ones was in 2012, when she performed the title role in The Firebird, choreographed by Alexei Ratmansky, and the lead role of Odette/Odile in ABT’s Swan Lake in 2014, making history as the first black woman to assume the role. In 2015, she was promoted to principal dancer at ABT, and in the same year named by Time magazine as one of the world’s 100 most influential people. Copeland’s professional success provided her with a platform from which she continues to rally passionately behind racial and gender equality, and inspires aspiring young ballerinas, especially those of colour and from less privileged circumstances.

 

Read the full article here.