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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

Broadway World: Virtual Pathways Dance Festival 2020 to Feature Works by Helen Pickett, Yu Dance Theatre, Complexions Contemporary Ballet, and More

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8 September 2020

Virtual Pathways Dance Festival 2020 (VPDF) is a virtual dance festival featuring cutting-edge archived dances, including works by Doug Varone & Dancers, Helen Pickett, Yu Dance Theatre, and Complexions Contemporary Ballet. VPDF 2020 is produced by Alyssandra Katherine Dance (AKD), Co-Presented by ODC Theater online.

The roster features works spanning genres, highlighting the breadth and diversity of dance styles in a new digital format. AKD’s mission is to bring visibility to dance companies nationally, giving chosen companies an opportunity to showcase work to new audiences and widen their reach at no cost. We seek to use this festival as a platform to provide financial support to contributing artists and support innovative works through ticket sales. There will be 4 evenings, each with a theme: Identity, Healing, Home/Sanctuary, and Time/Scope.

Virtual Pathways Dance Festival is produced by 3 formidable female choreographers Marika Brussel, Carly Lave, and Alyssandra Wu. Brussel is a ballet choreographer who reshapes contemporary narratives, bringing ballet into the 21st Century. Lave is a contemporary choreographer whose work seeks to question the self through visceral immersive performance. Wu is a freelance choreographer whose work explores issues dealing with East Asian identity and mental illness.

Read the full article here.

Pointe: For Queer Women in Ballet, There’s a Profound Gap in Representation. These Dancers Hope to Change That.

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By Lauren Warnecke

9 September 2020

In her teens, Lauren Flower realized she was different. Originally from Fresno, California, Flowers moved to Arizona and trained with Tucson Regional Ballet and the school at Ballet Arts Tucson before accepting a scholarship with Houston Ballet II. It was in Houston that Flower started to think she might be gay, but didn’t feel she had anyone to talk to about it.

“I quickly shot all those feelings down,” says Flower. “I was petrified. I thought no one would get it or understand what I was realizing about myself.” When she returned to her home state to join Ballet Arizona in 2013, Flower remained closeted in her professional life. But she began to meet other queer women outside of ballet who helped her to embrace her identity. At age 22, Flower came out and joined Boston Ballet shortly afterward, committed to being fully out of the closet in her life there.

 

Flower says getting involved in the LGBTQ community made the absence of queer women in ballet more apparent to her. While there are plenty of examples of queer people in the dance world, Flower says ballet in particular is lacking role models for gay women. (Katy Pyle’s company, Ballez, is a notable exception.)

Traditional ballet companies do not typically shy away from celebrating the gay community, but for women there is a profound gap in representation. Earlier this year, a friend pointed out to Flower that Boston Ballet was featuring its gay male dancers in a series of Instagram posts celebrating Pride Month. No one approached Flower, one of two openly gay women in the company, about contributing to the social media campaign. It was only after bringing it up to the PR team that she was included.

Read the full article here.

The Guardian: Side hustle essential: how Covid brought dancers to their knees

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By Lyndsey Winship

7 September 2020

When lockdown hit in March, it didn’t stop dancers dancing. The flood of online classes, short films and Instagram clips are testimony to that. But it did stop many of them earning. Outside the big ballet companies, most dancers and choreographers are freelance (81% according to One Dance UK). Some were eligible for financial support, others fell through the cracks. Ever creative, some have found new ways to make money, like Sam Coren, formerly of the Hofesh Shechter Company, who started fixing and building bikes. Or Daisy West, a dancer with Mark Bruce Company, who designs greetings cards on the side. But it turns out having a second job is nothing new to most dancers, in a competitive industry where contracts are often short and pay is poor. A 2015 survey by Dancers Pro found that more than 50% of dancers earned less than £5,000 a year from performing. The current ITC/Equity minimum fee for an independent production is £494 a week. “There’s always been a need for a side hustle,” says West.

The precariousness of the dancer’s life has come into sharp focus during lockdown, and many artists now want to see a change when we come out the other side. “The systemic injustices of the industry have been unveiled more than ever,” says dancer and Rolfing practitioner Hayley Matthews. “For too long there’s been a prescribed necessity for dancers to live precarious financial lives.” Lockdown has “exposed a lot that was really fragile and difficult about this industry”, says Rachel Elderkin, a dancer, writer and podcaster who also works front of house in the West End and has a sideline dressing as a Disney princess for kids’ parties. “Even though [as a dance artist] you’re the people who create work, the money goes to organisations and as a freelancer you have to apply for opportunities.” The funds don’t always trickle down.

Dancer, choreographer, writer and model Valerie Ebuwa was due to have her first solo project, Body Data, screened at the V&A in April, but coronavirus put paid to that. She released the film and accompanying talk online. Dancers are “always at the bottom of the pile”, she says in her talk on Instagram. “Why don’t dancers get paid as much as musicians, or any other [artists]?”

Read the full article online here.

 

New York Times: Dance Companies Take Baby Steps Back to Rehearsal

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By Alex Marshall

28 May 2020

Eight dancers from the Ballet du Rhin were partway through a class at their studio in Mulhouse, eastern France, recently, when the company’s artistic director decided to step things up.

The dancers had been doing gentle exercises at the barre. Then, the director, Bruno Bouché, asked them to perform a short routine, heavy on pirouettes, in socially distanced pairs.

Alice Pernão, 22, one of the first dancers to try, performed the spins with the relish of a dancer moving her limbs fully for the first time in months.

But as soon as she finished, Ms. Pernão performed a little extra routine that dancers worldwide might soon have to get used to: She flipped her face mask off an ear, and, breathing heavily, rushed back to her place at the barre to gulp down some water.

She then disinfected her hands with gel, put the mask back on, and tried to catch her breath for the next exercise.

Read the full New York Times article here.

Wall Street Journal: Remote Schools’ Hidden Cost: Parents Quit Work to Teach, Prompting New Recession Woes

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By Gwynn Guilford

7 September 2020

Clara Vazquez’s 7-year-old son, Kevin, asks her a troubling question before he goes to sleep each night. “‘Mom, who’s going to take care of me tomorrow?’ he asks me,” said the 27-year-old resident of Sunnyside, Wash. “I feel so bad because I have to say, ‘I don’t know.’”

She’ll have to come up with an answer soon, and it may cost Ms. Vazquez a big part of her livelihood. In two weeks, her son’s online-only classes start running from 9 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. If she can’t find child care, she will give up at least one of her two jobs as a home health-care worker to help her son manage his studies.

“I don’t want to quit my job because it’s going to put us in financial strain,” said Ms. Vazquez, whose husband is a truck driver. “But I feel like I’m out of options.”

It is a trade-off that looms for millions of families across the U.S. whose children are returning to partial or completely remote learning at K-12 schools this fall, and the potential blow to the economy could be big enough to rival a small or medium-size recession.

Read the full article here.

New York Times: Nina Popova, Dancer Who Fled Bolsheviks and Nazis, Dies at 97

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By John Leland

21 August 2020

This obituary is part of a series about people who have died in the coronavirus pandemic. Read about others here.

Nina Popova was a celebrated ballet dancer who escaped the Bolsheviks in Russia and the Nazis in Paris. It was the coronavirus that ultimately caught up to her.

She died on Aug. 7 at Flagler Hospital in St. Augustine, Fla., with a nurse holding her hand, her daughter, Irene Arriola, said. She was 97.

Nina Popova was born in Novorossiysk, Russia, on Oct. 20, 1922, two months before the Soviet Union was established. Her parents, Paul Popoff and Natalie Yacovleff, decided it was time to leave the country. They landed in Paris with their new baby in their arms. Mr. Popoff, who had been a hydroelectric engineer in his home country, joined the ranks of Russian cabdrivers there; his wife found work as a seamstress.

They envisioned a career in ballet for their daughter, enrolling her in a school with the children of other poor Russian refugees. Nina had a gift. At 12 she danced with the Russian opera in Barcelona, Spain, and at 14 she joined the Ballet de la Jeunesse, founded by the Russian ballerina Lubov Egorova.

As World War II and the Nazi occupation of France approached, she joined the Original Ballet Russe, directed by Wassily de Basil, which took her to Australia and eventually to Cuba, where she came to the attention of the directors of what would become American Ballet Theater in New York.

Read the full obituary here.

New York Times: Russian Ballet Returned to the Stage. Then a Covid Outbreak Hit.

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By Alex Marshall

19 August 2020

For the past three weeks, the Mariinsky Ballet, one of Russia’s most renowned companies, led the dance world in showing how ballet could return to the stage.

It hosted galas at its St. Petersburg theaters, featuring solos and duets performed by dancers who had undergone weekly tests for coronavirus.

More ambitiously, it had begun staging full-length ballets, with a run of the Romantic classic “La Sylphide.” Audience members were provided with masks and gloves, and seating was distanced, with an empty space between each viewer.

Then, on Aug. 13, the performances stopped. In a development that will concern other dance companies hoping to return to the stage, the Mariinsky Ballet has suspended all performances, classes and rehearsals, a spokeswoman said in an emailed statement. (The Mariinsky’s opera and orchestral programs continue uninterrupted, the statement added.)

She did not answer questions about the reason for that suspension. But on Monday, Interfax, the Russian news service, reported that about 30 people in the company had contracted the coronavirus. Xander Parish, a British dancer who is a principal soloist with the Mariinsky, confirmed in a telephone interview that there had been an outbreak.

“They’ve tried really hard to be safe,” he said. “It’s not like our rehearsals have been badly organized or anything.”

Read the full New York Times article.

Dance Magazine: This Former Rockette Is Now a Mars 2020 Engineer—and She’s Still Dancing

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By Madeline Schrock

31 August 2020

As the Perseverance rover heads towards Mars, back on Earth, a crew of engineers from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory are supporting the Mars 2020 mission. One of those people is systems engineer Heather Ann Bottom. With a bachelor’s in astrophysics and a master’s in space engineering, she certainly fits the bill. But Bottom has a few extra qualifications on her resumé: She was a Rockette in New York City and in the Broadway national tour of A Chorus Line.

Careers in the arts and engineering might seem like polar opposites. But Bottom, 32, sees the benefits of applying her dance experience to her current role. “I have been able to recognize, as a dancer, what my strengths are,” she says. “Things like picking up choreography really quickly, being a visual learner are important to recognize. Then I can take that into my job and say, ‘Oh, the reason I’m getting this so quickly is because I’m a dancer. I understand it. I can put the steps together in my head.’ ”

“Or many times, I’ve related these grand, large-scale tests in the engineering world to like a dance performance—you have all the different players and they need to be in their spots at the right time and read the script correctly and all of that. Wherever I can recognize, ‘Oh, that’s a part of my dance self or my performing self that is now coming into the engineering world’ has really helped me embrace both sides.”

But this balance of dance and science wasn’t always a constant in her life.

Read the full article from Dance Magazine here.

Pittsburgh-Post Gazette: PBT’s new artistic director brings big dreams, open mind to dance in a pandemic

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By Sara Baukneckt

31 August 2020

Susan Jaffe remembers her reaction when she learned she would be Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre’s next artistic director.

“I was pacing back and forth. I could feel the tears coming down my face. I was hyperventilating, really,” she recalls. “Then I sat down and said, ‘Wait a minute. I can’t come. We’re in the middle of a pandemic.’”

She took the job anyway, reassured by PBT’s board that the company is financially sound and could weather the COVID-19 storm. Nearly two months in, she’s determined to help make sure that happens.

PBT announced last week that, due to pandemic restrictions and theater closures, it will hold open-air performances in lieu of indoor shows, beginning with shows next month outside its headquarters in the Strip District. For now, the 2021 portion of its schedule will remain as is.

The “Open Air Series” will run Sept. 10-14 and include appearances by Pittsburgh CLO, Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, Pittsburgh Opera, Jevon Rushton Group and special guests presented by the August Wilson African American Cultural Center.

PBT’s mainstage season had been set to open in late October with “Balanchine + Tchaikovsky” at Benedum Center. That will become a socially distanced outdoor experience in a new “mobile performing arts venue” outside PBT’s building. “The Nutcracker” is also being reimagined beyond a traditional theater setting.

Executive Director Harris Ferris says Ms. Jaffe is the right choice for artistic director “especially because of the adaptability that’s required with COVID-19 and the programming innovations that are needed. If we can’t get on the stages, we’ve got to figure out another way.”

Doing so comes with many questions, Ms. Jaffe says. How do you get students back in class safely? What about company dancers? Should only those who cohabitate be in a studio at the same time? Dressing rooms, or no dressing rooms?

…

Paying it forward

When Ms. Jaffe’s time on stage ended, her career as an educator, choreographer and administrator began.

“I really felt like it was my responsibility to give back,” she says. “Now I’m in service to ballet and to dance and to nurturing and bringing forth the next generation.”

In 2003-10, she taught in the Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis School of American Ballet Theatre and co-founded, owned and directed a dance studio. For two years, she worked as ballet mistress for ABT. She also created works for the company and other arts organizations across the country.

In 2012, Ms. Jaffe became dean of dance at the University of North Carolina School of the Arts in Winston-Salem. She’s also a board member for the Youth America Grand Prix and Dance Magazine Awards.

She was working in North Carolina when she was approached by a search firm about the PBT position.

“I had built a very strong program and was very happy there,” she says. “But then I reminded myself that to be an artistic director was a lifelong dream for me, or at least through my adulthood.”

Her final interview was in March, shortly before COVID-19 shutdowns took effect. Concerned about getting on a plane during a pandemic, she drove to Pittsburgh from North Carolina for a two-day visit. Her personality, background and vision were deemed a match and she was unanimously approved by the board.

“She’s extremely approachable and amicable,” Mr. Ferris says. “She’s got the emotional stability that can steady the ship and keep everyone positively focused.”

Beyond navigating COVID-19, Ms. Jaffe has big ideas for PBT and its growing school. She wants more diversity in choreography, more collaborations with museums and other institutions and someday, perhaps a choreographic festival in Pittsburgh. In regards to the PBT School, additional satellite locations are being considered as a way to bring ballet into more communities.

Read the full article in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

Los Angeles Times: L.A.’s dance crisis: Studios fight to survive the pandemic

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By Makeda Easter

2 September 2020

The announcements coming from L.A. dance studios feel eerily similar.

In June, an Instagram post from Pieter Performance Space in Lincoln Heights began: “It is with a heavy heart we share news of the departure from our studio home.”

In a July email to supporters of his Silver Lake studio, Ryan Heffington — the choreographer behind Netflix’s “The OA” and Sia’s “Chandelier” video — wrote: “Due to the uncertainty of our lives, both currently and for the foreseeable future, I’ve decided to take the Sweat Spot entity virtual.”

In August, after the announced sale of Hollywood’s Television Center, Edge Performing Arts Center cofounders Bill Prudich and Randall Allaire posted on Instagram: “We have just been informed that Edge will not be part of the building’s future development. … Their plans, combined with the hardship created by the COVID-19 mandatory closures have resulted in this outcome.”

The flurry of goodbye-for-now messages, combined with desperate pleas for support across social media and GoFundMe, paint a picture of a dance landscape in crisis. Without dance studios, professionals lose their places to train or work out new art before it appears to the masses. And amateurs lose their go-to outlet for creative expression or alternative to boring workouts.

Mandatory coronavirus-related closures have wiped out most income for dance studios, which rely on in-person classes, rentals and performances. And although many studios have shifted to online learning, it may not generate enough income to last through the uncertain months ahead.

Read the full article here.