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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

ABC4: Legendary Hispanic Ballerina announced as new Director at Ballet West Academy

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By Tracy Smith

18 September 2020

SALT LAKE CITY, Utah (ABC4 News) – World-renowned and legendary ballerina Evelyn Cisneros-Legate has been announced as the new Director of all four campuses of Utah’s Frederic Quinney Lawson Ballet West Academy.

Originally from Huntington Beach, California, Evelyn trained at the San Francisco Ballet School, and the School of American Ballet. She joined the San Francisco Ballet when it was under the direction of Lew Christensen, brother of Ballet West’s Found, William Christensen.

According to a press release sent to ABC4 News, “when she was performing she became the San Franciso Ballet’s “prima-ballerina” and then became an international star under Christensen, Michael Smuin, and Helgi Tómasson.”

While at San Francisco Ballet, Cisneros-Legate was the first Mexican American to be elevated to a Principal Dancer in the United States. She was named “100 Influentials” by Hispanic Business and the Huffington Post called her one of the “17 ballet icons who are changing the face of dance today.” Cisneros-Legate has been featured on the covers of Dance Magazine, Ballet News, and Hispanic Magazine.

Read the full article here.

Broadway World: American Ballet Theatre Presents MOVING STORIES: An ABT Film Festival

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By BWW News Desk

18 September 2020

Celebrating the creativity of ABT dancers, American Ballet Theatre presents Moving Stories: An ABT Film Festival. Presented over two nights, Wednesday, September 30 and Thursday, October 1 at 7:00pm ET, Moving Stories features eight short films created by ABT artists. The films, varying from three to 11 minutes in length, will be available for viewing on ABT’s YouTube Channel. Four films will premiere each evening, followed by roundtable conversations with the filmmakers. The hour-long programs are hosted by ABT Principal Dancer Misty Copeland and Emmy Award-winning producer Leyla Fayyaz (Life in Motion Productions).

Filmmakers contributing to the Company’s first-ever film festival include current ABT dancers Claire Davison (Dans Tes Rêve), Zhong-Jing Fang (Perception), Erica Lall (The Thread of Navigation), Duncan Lyle (Alone Together), Jose Sebastian (Sillage), Eric Tamm (Le Tré Cortegé), Isabella Boylston and James Whiteside (Swan Lake), and former ABT dancer Alexandre Hammoudi (Transonata). All films were created in May and June 2020, as dancers sheltered in place and maintained strict COVID-19 health and safety precautions.

Read the full article here.

Dance Magazine: The Doris Duke Charitable Foundation Just Awarded Four Dance Artists $275,000 Each

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By Jennifer Stahl

17 September 2020

At a time when many artists are feeling more financially strained than ever before, one of the most coveted grants in the arts is expanding. The Doris Duke Charitable Foundation has responded to the economic crisis by handing out eight Doris Duke Artist Awards, up from six in 2019.

What’s more, half of those have gone to dance artists: Ana María Alvarez of CONTRA-TIEMPO in Los Angeles, Sean Dorsey of San Francisco’s Sean Dorsey Dance and Fresh Meat Festival, Rennie Harris of Philadelphia’s Rennie Harris Puremovement and New York City contemporary choreographer Pam Tanowitz.

The 2020 Doris Duke Artist Awards come with a $275,000 grant—$250,000 of which is completely unrestricted, plus $25,000 meant to encourage savings for retirement.

This year’s other awardees include jazz musicians Andrew Cyrille and Cécile McLorin Salvant and playwrights Michael John Garcés and Dael Orlandersmith.

Read the full article here.

TRG Arts: Arts and Culture Comeback Planning: September 2020

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By TRG Arts

17 September 2020

Sharp Fall in Optimism Among U.S. Arts and Culture Organizations for Return to In-Person Performances in 2020

September Study Reveals Increase in U.K. and Decline in Canadian Organizations’ Optimism

TRG Arts published its findings to an initial study of 74 clients’ performance return plans in June 2020. The findings from that report can be found here. An update to that study, expanded to 133 arts and culture organizations across three countries and published in July, reflected waning optimism for an autumn return to in-person live performances and a formal turn to paid digital programming after shutdowns caused by the global COVID-19 pandemic.

The study was refreshed and expanded on September 2, 2020, and represents 219 organizations’ current scenario plans for returning to in-person paid performance, as well as those same organizations’ plans for offering paid digital programming. Responses reflect arts and culture organizations across all disciplines of arts and culture in the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom.

The study does not contemplate howclient organizations will operationalize live in-person performances. TRG has learned the delivery method and specifics for returning to in-person performances are highly variable, and rely on national and local guidance.

Regional Outlooks Reflect Level of Viral Containment

As the number of Americans testing positive for COVID-19 continues to grow, optimism for a 2020 in-person return to performances sharply fell for U.S. arts and culture leaders. The September study reveals 23% of U.S. organizations expect to perform to in-person audiences in 2020, compared to 61% in the initial June study.

Positive containment and infection reduction in the U.K. reveal more optimism for a 2020 in-person return to performances, while flaring cases in some provinces of Canada decreased optimism as described in Table 1.

Read the full study here.

San Francisco Classical Voice: Ballet’s New Mandate: Change or Die

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By Lou Fancher

14 September 2020

Six months after the coronavirus pandemic shuttered performing-arts venues in mid-March, there are more unsettling questions than there are comforting answers about the future of dance — and classical and contemporary ballet in particular.

Adding tilt to the unsteady imbalance are the art form’s longstanding gender inequities and worldwide social-justice protests related to racism after the most recent killing of Black Americans at the hands of law enforcement. The open wounds of gender and racial inequities that lay across American history and current affairs have left deep imprints on the entire dance world.

In this environment float the presumptions and principles that have led to ballet companies directed generally by men; with more white dancers than people of color in ballet company ranks; with more funding for white-led dance company boards and management, and more commissions and grants awarded to white applicants or for projects with Western, Eurocentric origins and focus. White is not just found in the classical tutus found of Swan Lake or Giselle, but across the entire ballet landscape.

During the unwelcome furlough of COVID-19, companies large and small cancelled annual Nutcrackers, the ballet world’s major money-making machine, and often enough, the bedrock funding for entire seasons. This raises existential questions, but also opportunities to reflect on how companies can more broadly represent their communities. What are dance artists and organizations willing to change, and will it be enough to sustain the art form?

Searching for artists who might be pushing the parameters with results lasting beyond quick, flashy trends, I talked to Trey McIntyre, Amy Seiwert, and Gregory Dawson, three choreographers/artistic directors whose work has risen to prominence and receives considerable local, national and international attention. I asked them what they are doing to keep their companies afloat and invited them to speak about their perspectives on dance, ballet, digital dance offerings, and the state of the art.

Read the full article here.

Dance Magazine: What Intimacy Coordinators Could Bring to How Love and Sex Are Portrayed in Dance

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By Zachary Whittenburg

16 September 2020

In October 2018, HBO made news with an announcement that it would engage specialists to ensure sex scenes in every movie and series it produced were handled safely and professionally. Some characterized the network’s new policy as a move to stem the tide of #MeToo allegations in entertainment, proof themselves that the industry had failed to self-regulate.

In the two years since, intimacy coordinators have become increasingly present behind the camera; performers have grown more comfortable stipulating they be hired proactively, too.

The circumstances that require intimacy coordination on set—called “intimacy direction” in live theater—tend to be self-evident. “We’re talking about any instance of nudity, simulated sex or deep physical intimacy,” says Claire Warden, creative team member at leading industry group Intimacy Directors and Coordinators.

Dance, however, is an art form that frequently involves the kind of bodily contact that, in a nondance context, would be watched extremely closely, perhaps nervously. “Deep physical intimacy” is simply the dancer’s stock-in-trade.

Despite—or perhaps because of—the fact that dancers are often nearly as comfortable with other bodies as they are with their own, it’s important to make and maintain space for honesty about personal limits and power dynamics.

“Because so much of dance is touch-based, our boundaries are really muddy,” says Sarah Lozoff, certified by IDC and resident intimacy director at both the Oregon Shakespeare Festival and RudduR Dance (to Lozoff’s knowledge the first dance-centered organization to create and fill such a role). “We explore and experiment with each other in the studio, and then maybe we change in front of each other in the dressing room, and then we hug each other goodbye.”

“In dance, there’s this implicit devotion to give your body to this form and to the teachers and mentors and choreographers who are then going to direct it and mold it and shape it,” says choreographer Faye Driscoll, who acknowledges how attractive that sense of surrender can be. “There’s an underpinning of, ‘My body isn’t just for me. My body is for this vision, this work, this thing,’ and that’s something I was very much drawn to as a dancer.”

Read the full Dance Magazine article here.

New York Times: Watching a Choreographer Build: Trisha Brown’s Unusual Archive

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By Siobhan Burke

16 September 2020

In a video recorded in 1989, the choreographer Trisha Brown demonstrates a few restless seconds of movement, as dancers in her studio try to follow along. An arm darts across the torso; the legs appear to slip and catch themselves. It happens fast. As the dancers attempt to do as she does, a viewer can imagine how useful the video would be for anyone learning this material. There’s no easy way to explain what she’s doing; you just have to keep watching.

In her decades of dazzling experiments with the body, gravity and momentum, Brown invented movement so complex — so capricious yet precise — it could be hard to remember from one day to the next, let alone years later if the work were to live on. As if to keep tabs on her discoveries, the camera became a regular presence in her studio, a tool as pragmatic as her choreography was wild. By recording the building of a dance, she could revisit what had rushed forth in a solo improvisation, or retrace how a group of dancers had achieved an improbable lift.

“Her movement is so sequential, and there’s a whole logic for how it spills through the body,” said Cori Olinghouse, a former dancer with Brown’s company, who served as its archive director from 2009 to 2018. “I think recording it was a way to try to recover something of that logic when nobody could remember.”

Read the full article here.

Broadway World: Hubbard Street Dance Chicago Announces 43rd Season Plans

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By BWW News Desk

14 September 2020

Hubbard Street Dance Chicago today announced its 2020/21 43rd season, to include virtual presentations of new work by five acclaimed choreographers, all with ties to the company: Rena Butler, Jonathan Fredrickson, Penny Saunders, Robyn Mineko Williams and Connie Shiau.

Launching the season will be a world premiere created by Butler, former Hubbard Street dancer and choreographic fellow, on Thursday, Oct. 22. The full-company piece is an examination of Butler’s perception of her home city of Chicago. Filmed in parks throughout the city, the work was inspired by GoodKids MadCity, an organization led by Black and Brown young people in Chicago advocating for the tools and resources needed to put an end to violence in their communities.

Butler’s 25-minute work, currently untitled, was filmed by Talia Koylass. It features music by composer Darryl Hoffman, as well as songs by vocalists Shawnee Dez and Alencia Norris. The work is performed by the full HDSC company. Performing with the company are the choreographer, Jessica Tong, recently named HSDC’s Associate Artistic Director, and Jonathan Emanuell Alsberry, Artistic Liaison. In addition to the presentation of the filmed piece, there will be a live, interactive conversation with Butler and other members of the creative team. The choreography, casting, rehearsals, and shooting amidst the coronavirus required the dancers to perform at a distance from one another, or in groups of dancers who reside together, while wearing personal protective equipment such as masks.

Read the full article here.

The Patriot Ledger: Boston Ballet’s ‘The Nutcracker’ leaps onto TV this holiday season

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By Iris Fanger

14 September 2020

NBC Boston to air Boston’s beloved holiday ballet. The company also plans six virtual programs beginning Nov. 21; in-person events at the Opera House won’t happen until next May.

Editor’s Note: This article has been updated to add the date of a televised performance of “The Nutcracker.”

On March 11th, the Boston Ballet dancers were on stage at Citizens Bank Opera House in full costume and makeup for the dress rehearsal of Jorma Elo’s “Carmen,” with the musicians of the Boston Ballet orchestra seated in the pit. The following afternoon, just hours before opening night, Artistic Director Mikko Nissinen walked onto the stage to announce that the show — and the two weekend run — were canceled due to the threat of the deadly novel coronavirus.

That same day, Margaret Tracey, director of the Boston Ballet School, sent her young students home because she feared a possible exposure to the virus. Within 24 hours, the school was officially closed. Tracey thought classes would start up again “in a few weeks,” she recalled. Nissinen commented that “everything fell apart in March.” No one knew that the dancers of the Boston Ballet would remain off stage for the rest of the 2019-2020 season and far into the next.

Read the full article here.

Continuing the Conversation: DEFYING TRADITION WITH PRIDE

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By Adriana Pierce

27 June 2019

One sunny morning, several years ago, I was walking down Ocean Drive holding hands with a woman. I was dancing with Miami City Ballet at the time, and it was a much-needed day off. We strolled down the iconic South Beach strip, and a man sitting on the porch of a hotel began yelling obscenities at us. This is not an unusual experience for two young women walking down a city street, so it took me a few moments to realize that he was actually spewing homophobic slurs at us. We are taught to keep our heads down and walk faster in these situations, but this man took our lack of response personally and turned his slurs into hostile threats and insults while we quickened our pace. He advanced towards us as we passed, and his shouts culminated in one last biting put-down: “Oh, I bet your mother is really proud of you.”

Not all of my experiences as a queer woman have been as blatantly hostile, but working as one of the only openly queer women in professional ballet has certainly been far from easy. Ballet has always been entrenched in tradition. While this may serve to uphold a technical standard, rigid conformity makes it difficult for the artform to evolve, especially when it comes to expressing sexual identity and presenting gender equality. Just over a year ago, choreographer Alexei Ratmansky stated, “there is no such thing as equality in ballet… and I am very comfortable with that.” Along with this comment, he included a photoshopped picture of a classical ballerina supporting a male dancer high above her head with one arm, and some remarks about how men should do the lifting and escorting and women should dance on pointe, “not the other way around.”

Understandably, these statements made by such a high-profile choreographer sent ripples throughout the ballet community. It is his prerogative to perpetuate outdated and arguably harmful gender stereotypes in his own work, and he will be responsible for the fallout of those choices. The problem comes when we allow this narrow-minded thinking to shape the conversation that we all need to be having about ballet’s future. When did art become something that should be comfortable? Adhering to tradition is not so important that it is worth alienating the people and stories that might encourage ballet to grow and remain culturally relevant. I believe in ballet’s ability to preserve its integrity while also serving as an essential cultural voice, but in order to do that we must embrace diversity and explore the boundless potential of the art form instead of its limits. Ballet will survive without the sexism, homophobia, and stifling reliance on normative gender presentation – and I can say that with confidence because, as a queer woman who has experienced all of those things, my very existence in this professional space directly challenges established thinking.

Read the full piece here.