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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

Dance Magazine: Remembering Contact Improv Co-Creator Nancy Stark Smith, 1952-2020

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By Wendy Perron

5 May 2020

Co-creator of Contact Improvisation, improviser extraordinaire, and founder and co-editor of Contact Quarterly, Nancy Stark Smith passed away on May 1. A force as a dancer and an educator, she created a network of love for improvisation on a global scale. She died in her home in Florence, MA, of ovarian cancer. Messages from all over the world registered shock, sadness and poetic memories on social media.

She cracked open gender codes in dance with one casual comment. After watching Steve Paxton’s Magnesium (1972), a dance of hurling and falling for men, she told Paxton, “If you ever work like this with women, I’d love to know about it.”

She was a buoyant yet grounded improviser. Whether springing up out of the floor or boomeranging off another person, she made the pleasure of touch visible. She had a wondrous way of talking/writing about the sensations of momentum that drew people in.

On Facebook, her friend and early CI dancer, Christie Svane, wrote, “Our beloved Nancy Stark Smith left her wild and gentle dancing, unique, glorious, fearless body on Earth and made for home. Her collaborator and companion, Mike Vargas, pianist, composer and sound artist, was by her side at home in Florence, Mass. with her beloved flower garden beginning to bloom.

Read the full article here.

Dance Magazine: The Choreographer of “The Good Place” Just Launched an At-Home Dance Film Fest With Free Tutorials

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By Madeline Schrock

16 April 2020

Looking for a change from all that social-media scrolling while you’re social distancing? Check out the Shut In Dance Film Fest, a newly launched opportunity for dancers are home. Helmed by Nicole Berger, Andrew Pearson and Cain DeVore, the all-remote festival is doubling as free training grounds for artists who want to boost their dance-for-camera skills.

Here’s how it works: Select one of four prompts—like camouflaging yourself in your apartment or playing with your silhouette and profile—and create a short film using your smartphone. (The Shut In team recommends using FiLMiC Pro, a $14.99 app available for Apple and Android devices.)

Submissions will be evaluated by the creative directors who came up with the prompts: Los Angeles–based dance duo WHYTEBERG, choreographer and freelancer Madison Hicks, spoken word artist City James, and Mark Dendy and Stephen Donovan of dendy/donovan projects. They will choose footage from the submitted videos to each create a final dance film cut together by professional editors.

Read the full article from Dance Magazine here.

Dance Business Weekly: Smuin Ballet Finds a New Permanent Home

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By Rachel Caldwell

29 April 2020

Soon after taking the reins of San Francisco–based Smuin Contemporary Ballet in 2007, artistic director Celia Fushille realized that if the company was going to stay afloat, it would need its own building. With rental rates for commercial spaces in the Bay Area skyrocketing over the past decade, continuing to lease grew unsustainable for the 26-year-old nonprofit troupe. “We tried to lease, but couldn’t compete with tech companies,” says Fushille. “In 2009, I said to my board that we needed a permanent home for Smuin. I didn’t see how we were going to survive otherwise.”

Thanks to a $10 million capital campaign and a fortuitous collaboration with a dancer-turned-real-estate broker, that vision has now become a reality with the purchase of a 7,200-square-foot warehouse space in Potrero Hill, San Francisco.

After years of being nomads, Smuin could no longer justify the ballooning rental rates in the area. A typical commercial lease for an industrial or warehouse space in San Francisco runs about $60 to $72 per square foot compared to a national average of $26. Tack on the taxes, insurance and maintenance fees, and renting gets high pretty fast.

Read the full article here.

Ellevest: How Healthy Will Women Be Financially After All This?

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By Sallie Krawcheck

28 April 2020

Can I fret for a minute?

I’m worried sick about the financial health of women coming out of this pandemic.

Women went into the downturn with fewer financial resources than men. The “gender wealth gap” is just 32 cents to a man’s dollar, much worse — and frankly, much more meaningful — than the more commonly cited 82-cents-to-the-dollar gender pay gap.

It may be early days, but women are losing jobs at a greater rate than men during this pandemic, even though women (particularly women of color) make up a greater percentage of essential workers who are on the front lines.

For those women who are able to work from home, there is some indication that women’s productivity is being hit harder than men’s: In academia, men are submitting 50% more scholarly papers than before quarantine, while women are submitting fewer. Looks like traditional gender roles may be following families into quarantine.

I’m also worried about women entrepreneurs.

Before the pandemic, one could make the argument that women business owners weren’t making enough progress on starting companies and getting them funded, but we were making progress nonetheless. Women-owned businesses have been on the rise for years. Last year saw more $1 billion “unicorn” start-ups led by women than ever before. There was a mini-boom in women entrepreneurs on magazine covers.

Read the full article on Ellevest.

Global Fellowships, Competitions, and Initiatives Guide 2020

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DDP has released Global Fellowships, Competitions, and Initiatives Guide 2020. The Guide is a comprehensive list of international opportunities for choreographers to develop, workshop, and present dance works.

Read more

StarTribune: Minnesota’s dance community needs to confront sexual consent, say former TU Dance dancers

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By Kelly Smith

25 April 2020

The resignation of a renowned Twin Cities dance leader following sexual misconduct allegations has raised a call for greater protections and dialogue in the industry.

At TU Dance, a prestigious dance company in St. Paul, co-founder Uri Sands resigned at the end of December, nearly two months before the company reached an undisclosed settlement with a former dancer. Five former dancers told the Star Tribune they experienced years of misconduct from Sands. But through an attorney, Sands, 46, who started the St. Paul company with his wife, denied any misconduct, saying he “believed that he had consensual, adult relationships with those individuals.”

Now, some dancers are pushing the community to confront consent issues in the wake of the MeToo movement — like other industries, from yoga to gymnastics, have done.

“Definitely [what happened at TU Dance] has repercussions,” said Sally Rousse, a veteran ballet dancer, choreographer and co-founder of James Sewell Ballet in Minneapolis. “We need to talk about it. We could lead the work in the country in exemplifying appropriate touch, appropriate behavior. … Dancers are held up to [a] highly sexualized, objectified place. It would be great if we could reclaim the appropriate behavior.”

Read the full article in the StarTribune.

Laurent Liotardo/The English National Ballet

Latin Post: Watch Frida Kahlo Paintings Come To Life in This Online Ballet Production

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By Amy Santiago

23 April 2020

A Frida Kahlo-inspired production entitled “Broken Wings” premiered online Wednesday, April 22, according to a recent article.

Colombian-Belgian artist Annabelle Lopez Ochoa choreographed the production performed by the English National Ballet (ENB). She is also behind the choreography for Frida, a production for the Dutch National Ballet in 2002.

As the world confronts the challenges brought by the COVID-19 outbreak, theaters are forced to close, but some have brought their productions online. This marks the first time the full-length recordings of the company’s performances premiere online. Over the next month, you can watch their performances every Wednesday with a different production each time.

“[Frida] managed to transform her pain into art and portray herself with no frills. Her work is unapologetic and straightforward,” Lopez Ochoa said in an interview. “I find that very inspiring. I think that in general women are often second-guessing themselves or insecure about whether their work is good enough. Frida didn’t care so much about this. She used her work to fight for the Mexican identity while portraying herself, a woman that endured much suffering physically, emotionally, and psychologically.”

Read the full article in the Latin Post.

Hyperallergic: 95% of US Artists Have Lost Income Due to Pandemic, Survey Says

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By Valentina Di Liscia

24 April 2020

Artist Relief, the sweeping emergency aid initiative recently launched by seven arts funders, has completed its first funding cycle; with it, research partner Americans for the Arts has published the results of its accompanying COVID-19 Impact Survey, which measures the effect of the coronavirus pandemic on individual artists.

Since applications opened two weeks ago, more than 50,000 artists applied for 200 available unrestricted grants of $5,000 each. Of those applicants, over 11,000 also filled out Americans for the Arts’s survey, among them practicing, teaching, and hobby artists; creative workers; and culture bearers.

The findings paint a bleak picture of the cultural sector’s financial health: nearly two thirds of artists in the US are fully unemployed, and the majority see no clear path to recovery.

Read the full article on Hyperallergic.

The Guardian: Are female leaders more successful at managing the coronavirus crisis?

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Jon Henley and Eleanor Ainge Roy

25 April 2020

n 1 April, the prime minister of Sint Maarten addressed her nation’s 41,500 people. Coronavirus cases were rising, and Silveria Jacobs knew the small island country, which welcomes 500,000 tourists a year, was at great risk: it had two ICU beds.

Jacobs did not want to impose a strict lockdown, but she did want physical distancing observed. So she spelled it out: “Simply. Stop. Moving,” she said. “If you don’t have the bread you like in your house, eat crackers. Eat cereal. Eat oats. Eat … sardines.”

The 51-year-old Caribbean premier may not have the global profile of Angela Merkel or Jacinda Ardern, but her blunt message exemplified firm action, effective communication – and showed another female leader getting the job done.

From Germany to New Zealand and Denmark to Taiwan, women have managed the coronavirus crisis with aplomb. Plenty of countries with male leaders – Vietnam, the Czech Republic, Greece, Australia – have also done well. But few with female leaders have done badly.

Ardern, 39, New Zealand’s premier, has held Kiwis’ hands through the lockdown, delivering empathetic “stay home, save lives” video messages from her couch and communicating daily through non-combative press conferences or intimate Facebook Live videos, her favourite medium.

Her insistence on saving lives and her kindness-first approach – urging New Zealanders to look after their neighbours, take care of the vulnerable, and make sacrifices for the greater good – has won her many fans, while her emphasis on shared responsibility has united the country.

Read the full article in The Guardian.

Sarasota Magazine: Sarasota Ballet Announces 30th Anniversary Season

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By Kay Kipling

Local arts organizations continue to march on, planning new seasons even as current ones have been suspended or canceled. Latest case in point: the Sarasota Ballet, which has announced its coming 30th anniversary season to open in October and run through May 2021.

There have been disappointments for the company, as with others; a week of performances planned at Jacob’s Pillow in the Berkshires was eliminated when that dance center canceled its summer season, and fingers are still crossed that the Sarasota Ballet dancers will be able to take the stage at the Joyce Theater in New York as scheduled for August. But director Iain Webb is forging ahead with a season that includes three company premieres postponed from this spring, along with four others. And the 2020-21 season will close by featuring works by three of the greatest female choreographers of the 20th century.

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And for the closing program of the season—and the start of a multi-year project focused on female choreographers—the ballet presents a triple bill April 30-May 1 at the Sarasota Opera House. Opening the program will be the company premiere of Agnes de Mille’s Fall River Legend, retelling the story of the infamous Lizzie Borden in a character-focused piece created for American Ballet Theatre in 1948. Dame Ninette de Valois’ signature Checkmate returns to the Sarasota stage, and another company premiere—Les Biches by Bronislava Nijinska (sister of the better-known Vaslav Nijinsky, but a creator in her own right) with music by Poulenc will conclude the performances.

Read the full article from Sarasota Magazine.