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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

New York Times: She’s Been a Force for Change in Ballet. The World Is Catching Up.

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By Siobhan Burke

6 August 2020

On May 29, four days after George Floyd was killed by the Minneapolis police, Theresa Ruth Howard posted a call to action on Instagram:

“Demonstrate your outrage

Demonstrate your allyship

Demonstrate your authenticity

We don’t need shadow heroes, step into the light …”

Ms. Howard, a former ballet dancer who founded the digital platform Memoirs of Blacks in Ballet (or MoBBallet), was addressing the institutions she has worked with for the past few years, in a role she sums up as “diversity strategist and consultant.” Those institutions, which include some of the world’s most prestigious ballet companies and schools, are predominantly white, onstage and behind the scenes. They know they need to evolve, and she is helping them.

So when protests against systemic racism and police brutality began sweeping the country, she found their silence disconcerting. “You can’t say you want us, and when we are in peril, not be there for us,” Ms. Howard, 49, said in an interview.

Over the next few days, companies answered her call, or tried, posting statements of support with a hashtag she had started: #balletrelevesforblacklives. (Relevé, a ballet term, is a way of saying “rise up.”) Their messages drew both appreciation and criticism, with many commenters demanding action, not merely words. In an opinion piece for Dance Magazine, Ms. Howard expanded on her thoughts about what leadership should look like in this moment, under the headline “Where Is Your Outrage? Where Is Your Support?”

On Aug. 14, leaders from more than a dozen ballet companies and schools will convene for an online discussion titled “#balletrelevesforblacklives … Or Does It?,” a chance to reflect, beyond social media, on the Black Lives Matter movement and its impact on their institutions. The public event is part of Ms. Howard’s second annual MoBBallet symposium, a series of conversations and lectures that, in her words, “centers Blackness but welcomes all.”

Read the full article in the New York Times.

Charlotte Ballet: #WOMENINCHOREO Wednesday with Stephanie Martinez

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17 June 2020

Since Artistic Director Hope Muir took the helm of Charlotte Ballet in 2018 the company has commissioned work into the repertoire from female choreographers each season. Women have long been underrepresented in creative roles with professional dance companies, but thanks to Muir Charlotte Ballet has a renewed commitment to providing opportunities to these intelligent and inspiring choreographers. We are excited about this new social mini-series #WomeninChoreo Wednesday where you will get to hear advice directly from those women, as well as gather insight as to how they are fueling their creative outlets during their time at home.⁠

OUR CHAT WITH STEPHANIE MARTINEZ

1. With theaters closed and schedules disrupted through the crisis of Covid 19, how are you engaging with your art and staying both active and creative?

I’ve been taking class at home, it’s been fun to join classes that I wouldn’t normally be able to attend. I’ve also been reading “True and False” by David Mamet which covers different acting techniques. I’m trying to dig into different art forms and expand my thinking beyond the realm of dance so that I can bring a richer perspective to my work once we’re back in the studio.

2. Every creative process is unique in its own way, can you describe your experience working with Charlotte Ballet and how it may have differed from other companies?

When I create a ballet, especially for the work at Charlotte Ballet, it’s crucial for me to conceptualize and build an environment first. The reality is that an empty space can be a bit paralyzing, so I like to give very clear, specific tasks to the room so that we’re all working collectively towards creating something that feels honest, alive, and satisfying. The dancers at Charlotte Ballet are extremely passionate and have a fascination for exploration that continuously improves their skill level. I’ll be honest, Charlotte Ballet is one of my favorite companies that I’ve had the honor of working with to date. The dancers are open and curious, demanding a lot of themselves and producing an environment that any choreographer would love to work in. I could see the dancers growing day-to-day, trusting their instincts, making new choices, and building characters that were truthful and compelling. It is not a cookie-cutter company, but each individual in the room worked toward a united standard of excellence set by Hope’s leadership.

Read the full Q&A here.

Pointe: Annabelle Lopez Ochoa Has Been Choreographing Up a Storm on Zoom and Learning How to Create Dance on Film

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By Laura Cappelle

31 July 2020

“Can you caress the wall?,” Annabelle Lopez Ochoa said, frowning to get a better sense of the dancers’ living room on her screen. It was April, and the contemporary ballet choreographer was trying something new. Together with two dancers from the Norwegian National Ballet, Julie Gardette and François Rousseau, she was creating a piece entirely over Zoom—the first of what she now calls “a video diary of what dancers do inside.”

What was originally a one-off celebration for Rousseau, whose stage farewell was cancelled due to the pandemic, has turned into a larger creative project for Ochoa. Since then, from her house in Amsterdam, she has taken to creating dance films, all three to five minutes in length, with performers around the world. Dancers from Tulsa Ballet, Joffrey Ballet, Dutch National Ballet and more have already taken part, with others scheduled in the coming months.

Ochoa had to rush to fly out of Tulsa in March, where she had been re-staging her ballet Vendetta, just before international travel was banned. Being stuck at home instead of going from commission to commission prompted some soul-searching. “We’re all forced to go back to point zero. It made me reflect not just on the pieces that I’ve made, but on the artist that I am,” she says. Working with dancers again proved energizing. “What do I like in choreography? I noticed, being on Zoom, that it’s the interaction.”

The early sessions were bumpy. Gardette and Rousseau had to alternate between leaning in close to their screen to see corrections and dancing from enough distance for Ochoa to see the bigger picture. The music proved the biggest hurdle, however. “It was delayed, so I would hear 1, 2, 3, and they would hear pause… 1, 2, 3,” the choreographer says.

She figured out a way to share music that causes less delay (although Ochoa says synchronization is still an issue). One hour on Zoom is now enough for her to craft one minute of choreography, and the dancers she asked to participate generally jumped at the chance to do more than staying in shape while sheltering in place. “It’s not the same just doing ballet class at home: you don’t have that collaboration energy of learning choreography,” Maine Kawashima, a soloist with Tulsa Ballet, says.

Read the full article here.

New York Times: What Is It Like to Watch Live Dance Again? Amazing

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By Gia Kourlas

3 August 2020

TIVOLI, N.Y. — It didn’t bode well that the first live dance I was going to see since mid-March was one I had seen many times before. “Sunshine,” a Larry Keigwin war horse set to the Bill Withers’s classic “Ain’t No Sunshine,” can give a dancer the opportunity to really feel the music in all the worst ways. It’s treacly stuff.

So I’m happy to say that as soon as Melvin Lawovi began to move, my chest tightened; I even sensed — the horror — some tears. Lately, for self-preservation, I’ve been talking myself into believing that I can live without watching dance in person, and while that is true, I clearly miss it. A lot. “Sunshine,” which opened the outdoor Kaatsbaan Summer Festival under beautiful blue skies on Saturday, worked out just fine.

That was also to the credit of Mr. Lawovi, a recent addition to American Ballet Theater, who never delivered a treacly moment as he traversed the stage with the lightest touch. Instead of dwelling on the lyrics or giving into angst, he danced with an unparalleled polish, as if his body were clearing the air.

But repertory alone doesn’t seem the be all end all of this summer festival, the first of its kind in Kaatsbaan’s 30 years as a cultural park. From the performances to Brandon Stirling Baker’s light-and-sound installation in a rustic barn to the peace of being surrounded by so much open space and air, the festival is not only about live dance. It’s a package. The best choreographic moments came in the dancers’ simple yet courtly walks across the grass to the stage.

Kaatsbaan’s artistic director, Stella Abrera, and its executive director, Sonja Kostich, aren’t messing around when it comes to safety, and that was comforting, too, at this socially distanced performance. The experience included frantically filling out the health check survey in the car while thinking hard about the questions: Was that a touch of a sore throat this morning?

I loved the elegant firmness of the handwritten signs telling us to wear masks; the raised stage that seemed like it was dropped from the sky onto a field; and the optional post-performance walk, on the grounds of what was originally a farm, with live music (instead of a meandering or self-congratulatory post-performance talk).

Read the full article here.

The Guardian: The ‘shecession’: why economic crisis is affecting women more than men

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By Amanda Holpuch

4 August 2020

Denise Frederick hasn’t stopped working since the pandemic began. But the nanny and home carer in New York City has also seen her pay cut in both jobs and she is uncertain about how long she will have either with the coronavirus outbreak far from under control.

Like many women, the economic fallout from the coronavirus pandemic has hit Frederick hard. For the first time in history, the US is in a “shecession” – an economic downturn where job and income losses are affecting women more than men.

The family Frederick worked for left the city in the early days of the outbreak, but continued to pay her normally until last month when they cut her pay to hire a nanny where they are staying. They don’t know if they will return to the city before her contract expires at the end of the year.

Meanwhile, Frederick’s pay was cut at her home carer job, which she has commuted to on the bus and subway since the pandemic began and where she has to pay for her own personal protective equipment (PPE).

Frederick, a single mother, moved from St Lucia four years ago to fulfill a life goal: to put her 19-year-old daughter through college. “I keep saying to her, focus on school, let me figure out where the next meal is going to come from, let me figure out how the bills are going to get paid, because I don’t want her to get stressed out about me and then it’s affecting her grades,” Frederick said.

In the Great Recession, men lost twice as many jobs as women. But from February to May, 11.5 million women lost their jobs compared with 9 million men because of business closures intended to stop the spread of Covid-19. By the end of April, women’s job losses had erased a decade of employment gains.

The staggering figures have underlined the changing nature of the workforce and brought into focus the overlooked issues attached to that shift. Women, especially women of color, are more vulnerable to sudden losses of income because of the gender pay gap and are more dependent on childcare and school to be able to work.

Read the full article here.

New York Times: In Her Words: Finish the Fight!

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By Veronica Chambers, Jennifer Schuessler, Amisha Padnani, Jennifer Harlan, Sandra E. Garcia and Vivian Wang

28 July 2020

It took the better part of a century to pass a law saying American women had the right to vote. Three generations of women, and their male allies, worked tirelessly to make the 19th Amendment — which decreed that states could not discriminate at the polls on the basis of sex — a reality. We call the right to vote “suffrage,” but for a long time, that word was a kind of shorthand for women’s rights. Without the vote, suffragists argued, women had little say over their lives and their futures and certainly much less when it came to the larger political questions that shaped the nation.

The 19th Amendment is a cornerstone of gender equality in our country, yet many of us know very little about the way the right to vote was won. For a long time, the history of the suffrage movement has been told mainly as the story of a few famous white women, like Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony. It’s true they were among the most important leaders of the movement in the 19th century.

The 19th Amendment is a cornerstone of gender equality in our country, yet many of us know very little about the way the right to vote was won. For a long time, the history of the suffrage movement has been told mainly as the story of a few famous white women, like Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony. It’s true they were among the most important leaders of the movement in the 19th century.

Mary Church Terrell and the Power of Language

Sometimes freedom is a matter of timing. Mary Church Terrell knew that lesson well. She was born in Memphis in September 1863 — the middle of the Civil War. Her parents had been enslaved, but Mary was born free, and she charted a course of leadership that helped change the lives of women and men across the nation. She became a suffragist. She fought for the rights of all people of color. Holding America to the promises of the Declaration of Independence — life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness for all — became her life’s work.

These dreams were supported by her parents. Her father, Robert Church, was the son of an enslaved woman and a wealthy steamship owner who had allowed Robert to keep his wages. After Robert gained his freedom, he invested in real estate and became wealthy.

Read the full article online here.

2019-2020 Season Overview Release

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Dance Data Project® (DDP) today releases its 2019-2020 Season Overview, a statistical examination of choreographer gender within the seasons of the Top 50 U.S. companies. This year’s report indicates a significant increase in programming equity from last year, but men remain favored in almost every category.

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Global Conversations with Kelly Tweeddale | Navigating Challenging Times Ep. 2

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The Lily: We talked to an employment lawyer about ‘mom bias.’ Here’s what she wants you to know.

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Stephanie Murray

27 July 2020

In late May, a working mom named Dris Wallace filed a complaint to the human resources office at her company. Her manager had been insisting that she keep her toddlers quiet during work calls while working from home during the coronavirus, which she felt was an impossible and discriminatory standard.

A week later, she was fired.

That’s when employment attorney Daphne Delvaux stepped in and filed a lawsuit against Wallace’s company on her behalf.

For Delvaux, who specializes in defending mothers facing discrimination at work — or retaliation for reporting it — this is just another day on the job. According to her, “mom bias” has always been a problem in the corporate world, but the coronavirus has exacerbated it. Businesses are under pressure to cut costs, and workers are terrified of losing work, creating fertile ground for abuse. Since many businesses are reopening while so many day cares and schools remain closed, it will probably get worse before it gets better.

In addition to her work as a litigator, Delvaux runs The Mama Attorney, an organization devoted to educating mothers about their rights at work so that they can protect both their time with their kids and their careers as they transition to motherhood.

Here are a few things she wants working moms to know:

‘Mom bias’ is real and no industry is immune to it

Bias against parents — and specifically mothers — arises out of a workplace culture that favors unencumbered workers, Delvaux said. “Employers like people at work who are a hundred percent committed, so they don’t have any other obligations, no health concerns, they don’t have to take a leave of absence, they don’t have to take breaks, they don’t have to ask for accommodation — the employers favor those employees.” As a result, managers operating under pressure to hit quotas are often really hard on employees with obvious limitations or outside obligations.

With mothers in particular, Delvaux has observed a pervasive perception that they are “less available,” and “too distracted” to do their jobs properly. As a result, a lot of mothers face discrimination either before or after maternity leave, based on the assumption that they will be less committed to their jobs. Some of the mothers Delvaux has represented came back from maternity leave only to be immediately replaced, or let go while their employer continued to post new job openings. Others were muscled out, demoted or forced to cut their maternity leaves short.

Read the full article online here.

Global Conversations with Tamara Rojo | Navigating Challenging Times Ep. 1

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