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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

The Guardian: Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater: Shelter review – moves with our times

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By Sanjoy Roy

21 August 2020

Some dances seem timeless; Jawole Willa Jo Zollar’s Shelter seems perennially timely. Created in 1988 in response to homelessness on the streets of New York, the piece was taken into the repertory of Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater in 1992. Zollar adapted it for her company performances in New Orleans, post-Katrina, and the Ailey company revived it again in 2017. Now showing in the online Ailey All Access season, it has become newly urgent during the coronavirus crisis.

Just 20 minutes long, it draws its power not from where it starts, but what it points to. Performed by six women (the company also perform an all-male version), it’s a ragged, scrabbling work, driven by Junior Wedderburn’s stuttering percussion and layered with spoken and sung texts that – like the bodies on stage – bring their own irregular rhythms. The opening scene, narrating the all-too-easy fall into homelessness, ends with a pivotal line: “It can happen to you, too.”

Read the full review online here.

The Herald: Scandal-hit Ballet West Scotland to close

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24 August 2020

The sheriff at Oban Sheriff Court has approved the appointment of a provisional liquidator to Ballet West Ltd as the business was “no longer financially viable”,  a statement from the board of trustees has revealed.

The move formally starts the process of winding up Ballet West Ltd, which will mean the closure of the school at Taynuilt, Argyll, the trustees said

The announcement came five days after formal Police Scotland probe was announced after they received “a number of reports” in connection with claims of sexual impropriety at Ballet West Scotland in Argyll.

On Tuesday, Police Scotland had said there was no police investigation because there no complaints or reports had been made, six days after allegations of sexual impropriety surfaced which led to the resignation of the Ballet West Scotland’s vice principal Jonathan Barton and the suspension of its principal, his mother Gillian Barton.

An ITV investigation heard last week from more than 60 women – former students, staff and parents – who have made allegations of Mr Barton’s inappropriate behaviour going back as far as 2004 and as recently as 2018. The allegations include sexual contact with his students.

It is alleged that as further 30 have spoken out about alleged misconduct.

Mr Barton, a 38-year-old award winning dancer and teacher quit after being accused of abusing his position to sleep with teenage pupils at the £9,000 a year boarding school his family runs.

The latest governors’ statement said: “Due to events over the last two weeks, Ballet West Ltd,  a registered Scottish charity, has been driven to the point of insolvency and the trustees had a legal duty to inform the charity regulator and take appropriate action in these circumstances.

Read the full article here.

The Guardian: Social DistDancing: street ballet surprises make hearts leap

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By Lyndsey Winship

17 August 2020

The squeak of a jogger’s trainers and the ting of a bicycle bell are not the usual soundtrack to ballet, but then a stretch of the Regent’s Canal in Hackney is not where you’d expect to see dancers from the Royal Ballet perform.

On a warm Saturday afternoon, the threat of rain in the air, bare-torsoed Harry Churches swoops across a pontoon jutting out over the canal, the audience on the opposite side of the water. Partner Annette Buvoli enters the stage and their bodies etch out classical lines and when the dance ends with an embrace, a swooning sigh comes from a group of young women watching through the railings, canned cocktails in hand.

This free, Instagram-advertised event is DistDancing, one of the few opportunities to see live dance at the moment and its founder Chisato Katsura is a member of the Royal Ballet. Katsura, 23, moved to a new flat during lockdown and her landlord, Russell Gray, also owns Hoxton Docks, a former coal store turned performance venue. When he found out she was a dancer, Gray asked if she could come up with a performance for the canalside. Katsura and Royal Ballet colleague Valentino Zucchetti put together a programme of performers across various dance and circus styles, including Royal Ballet principal Matthew Ball and partner Mayara Magri, and contemporary dancer Maëva Berthelot, formerly of Hofesh Shechter Company.

Read the entire article here.

Democrat & Chronicle: Trailblazer Aesha Ash chosen as first Black female full-time faculty at School of American Ballet

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By Gary Craig

21 August 2020

Once a teenager at the renowned School of American Ballet, Aesha Ash knows how moving and significant it would have been to have a teacher who looked like herself.

Now she will be that teacher.

“For Black women and people of color, to feel they belong in these institutions we have to see ourselves,” Ash said this week.

Ash, a 42-year-old Rochester native, has long been a trailblazer, knocking down racial walls in the largely white world of professional ballet.

She once was the sole Black female ballerina with the New York City Ballet, and, now, she has been chosen as the first Black female full-time instructor at the School of American Ballet, or SAB, in New York City. Teenagers and younger dancers study and train at SAB, an associate school of the New York City Ballet.

In a recent article, The New York Times highlighted Ash’s appointment with a headline that in part stated: “This former City Ballet dancer becomes the first Black female member of the School of American Ballet’s permanent faculty. Yes, it’s a big deal.”

Such a big deal that Ash, her husband, and their two young children — a 10-year-old daughter and 7-year-old son — decided to move from the California neighborhood they love to Manhattan for her to take on the faculty job.

“The reason why we made the decision is because this position goes so much bigger than just a ballet teacher at a prestigious school,” Ash said in a telephone interview this week from her new Manhattan home. “The historic meaning of this position was just something we could not look away from. It was my husband who was telling me, ‘Aesha, this is something you stand for. This has been your work from the very beginning.’ ”

Read the full article here.

Palm Beach Daily News: Miami City Ballet revamps season as pandemic persists

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18 August 2020

Miami City Ballet revamps season as COVID-19 pandemic lingers, replacing in-person shows with planned digital and outdoor alternatives

After spending the five months since the COVID-19 pandemic hit South Florida revising scenarios for the 2020-21 season, Miami City Ballet’s leaders have made a decision.

There will be no in-person performances as announced when the company unveiled its 35th season in March.

At least for now.

Instead, the company plans to roll out a mix of online recordings of performances of new commissions and older works, livestreams from its black-box theater, and outdoor performances.

“I call it an interim season,” Artistic Director Lourdes Lopez said. “This is what we can do during this period until we can get back on stage.”

The schedule hasn’t been solidified.

Buyers of the $1.9 million worth of subscriptions the company has sold will have several options: a refund; a credit for the 2021-22 season, when the company hopes to perform the works originally announced for 2020-21; donating the cost to a newly established Dancer Support Fund; or a combination of choices.

Company leaders never expected the pandemic to drag on this long when they canceled “Don Quixote,” the final program of the 2019-20 season; scrapped the gala; and sent the dancers home on March 13, Executive Director Tania Castroverde Moskalenko said.

Read the full article here.

Seattle Times: How Pacific Northwest Ballet plans to pull off an all-digital season

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By Moira Macdonald

18 August 2020

“All creative people love a good challenge,” said Pacific Northwest Ballet artistic director Peter Boal in a recent interview. His challenge was one that might seem unthinkable even months ago: to create an entirely digital season.

On Tuesday, PNB announced a 2020/21 season that in some ways looked like a typical one: six repertory programs from October through June; two of them full-length story ballets (“Roméo et Juliette” and “Coppélia”), the other four mixed-works programs. The choreographers represented are a blend of long-familiar names (Balanchine, Robbins, Tharp) and contemporary dancemakers presenting new work: Donald Byrd, Alejandro Cerrudo, Jessica Lang, Edwaard Liang, Penny Saunders.

But, like so many other things during this very strange year, this upcoming ballet season is entirely different: Due to restrictions necessitated by the coronavirus pandemic, this season will take place online. Most of the works presented will be newly filmed, under appropriate social-distance guidelines; ballets too large to be newly performed safely, such as the story ballets, will be presented in archival footage of previous performances or dress rehearsals.

Once it became clear that the new season would need to be presented this way, Boal said he “combed through the repertory” looking for works that would be appropriate. His challenges were multiple. First, he needed to choose work that could be rehearsed and performed allowing for distance: solos, pas de deux danced by performers already living together, small-scale works in which dancers are well spread out (such as the four-dancer final movement of Ulysses Dove’s “Red Angels,” included in the season’s Rep I). He needed to be conscious of using as many of the company dancers — newly returned to work after furlough — as possible.

Read the full article here.

CBS News: Aesha Ash is making history at New York City’s School of American Ballet

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By Elaine Quijano

17 August 2020

New York — After 86 years, New York City’s famed School of American Ballet is making history not on the stage, but in the classroom, when Aesha Ash becomes the school’s first Black female permanent faculty member.

Ash hopes to make a difference for her students.

“I feel that I have this hyper-awareness now of that dancer who’s struggling … and sort of see that sort of self-doubt creeping in,” she explained.

As a teenager, she had those self-doubts in a school with a mostly-White student population.

“When you look at performances, when you look at footage, when you see images on the wall … are everything but your own, that is saying something to the dancers around,” Ash said.

But she persevered, earning a spot with the New York City Ballet — one of only a few dancers of color.

Read the full article here.

 

 

100th Anniversary of the Ratification of the 19th Amendment

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On August 18th, 1920, the 19th Amendment was ratified— that’s 100 years ago, today.

The passage of the Amendment was one of the first tangible steps on the long road to equity, a road which continues to extend before us, even today in 2020, and which sees women of color and other minorities marginalized to an even greater degree. As we arrive at this milestone of 100 years since women suffragists secured the right to vote, let us celebrate how far women have come but take note of the countless areas in which inequity prevails (and worsens due to the pandemic).

Read more

Wall Street Journal: Working Parents Are Hitting Their Coronavirus Breaking Point—and Paying for It

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By Christina Rexrode and Lauren Weber

15 August 2020

Working parents going on six months without school or camp are about to take another hit: rising child-care costs.

Parents with school-age children are hiring sitters or paying for online classes they wouldn’t need if their children were in school. Some are lining up tutors or switching to private schools that plan to open for in-person learning. Parents with younger children are bracing for potentially higher charges at their day cares, which are straining to pay for protective gear and additional cleaning.

Child care and its costs might seem incidental in a global pandemic, but they are integral to the economy. For individual families, higher child-care expenses can range from troublesome to financially debilitating. Rising costs divert money from other purchases or investments, and many working parents said child-care costs prevent them from saving for a home. Yet without child care, parents are less productive at work—not to mention more stressed and tired.

“Here’s the deal,” said Misty Heggeness, an economist who wrote about the pandemic’s effect on working mothers for the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis. “If you care about U.S. economic growth…this should be one of the first areas of concern for you.”

Read the full article here.

Pointe: What’s Ahead for Ballet Companies in the Age of COVID-19?

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By Avichai Scher

12 August 2020

Let’s be frank: No one knows what’s ahead for the performing arts in the U.S. With COVID-19 forcing the cancellation of nearly a year of performances so far, including many Nutcrackers, ballet companies face a daunting path ahead with no roadmap for how to survive. While schools can offer classes online or in small groups, what does the future hold for companies when it’s not safe to gather large audiences or corps de ballet?

“We are in for a very hard set of months,” says Michael M. Kaiser, chairman of the DeVos Institute of Arts Management at the University of Maryland. “Nothing will change until there’s a vaccine.”

Pointe set out to find out what the new normal looks like while the virus is with us.

Online Content and Digital Seasons

When COVID-19 hit, it seemed everything moved online that could, from galas to company class. In a recent online panel, American Ballet Theatre artistic director Kevin McKenzie said the company’s May online gala, which did not include much dancing, was well-received but not a financial success. The Washington Ballet’s gala centered on livestreamed performances and was financially successful. But afterwards, artistic director Julie Kent, a company dancer and a gala chairwoman became ill with COVID-19, despite social distancing and other safety precautions.

Can online platforms be a safe, longer-term source of income and artistic outlet for ballet companies?

Marc Kirschner, a founder of the paid performing arts streaming service Marquee TV, says this moment is a line in the sand for companies’ survival.

Read the full article here.