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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

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.

Forbes: 2020 Drama Desk Awards: Complete List Of Nominees

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By Lee Seymour

Nominations for the 65th Drama Desk Awards were announced today, recognizing theater at every level of New York’s industry, from downtown hideyholes to the glitz of Broadway.

Even with the season cut short by the coronavirus, there were still over 200 eligible productions vying for recognition. Over three dozen shows received nods, everything from epic two-part plays to intimate chamber musicals to children’s puppet theater. The winners will be announced online on May 31st. (Full list below).

Leading the pack with 11 nominations, including Outstanding Musical, was Soft Power, which premiered downtown and had been eyeing a Rialto transfer next year.

Outstanding Choreography 

  • Camille A. Brown, for colored girls who have considered suicide/when the rainbow is enuf
  • Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker, West Side Story
  • Keone Madrid and Mari Madrid, Beyond Babel
  • Kathleen Marshall, The Unsinkable Molly Brown
  • Sonya Tayeh, Moulin Rouge!
  • Travis Wall, The Wrong Man

The category of Outstanding Choreography includes 5 women – a first we’ve seen in award nominations that includes a majority of women choreographers.

Read the full article on Forbes.com.

Marie Claire: The Worst Thing That Ever Happened to Me Is Now an Episode of ‘SVU’

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By Alexandra Waterbury as told to Chloe Angyal

A week or two before the episode was meant to come out, a stranger direct-messaged me on Instagram with a link to a Law & Order: SVU trailer: “I think this is about you.”

As I watched the trailer, I thought, That literally looks like us. There were two blonde people kissing, wearing dance clothes. It was so obviously cast to look just like me and my ex-boyfriend Chase Finlay, the man who shared revenge porn of me with his friends, who were also principal dancers at New York City Ballet.

I felt weird about it, and then I felt anxious. You never know how the media is going to portray you, and this was a TV show taking what happened to me and making it their own; they could do anything that they wanted with my story.

And then I felt angry, which is how I feel about a lot of things these days. No one at SVU talked to me about my story, or told me that they were making an episode that was so clearly based on what happened to me. The disclaimer at the start of the show states that the episode is fiction, but everyone knows that Law & Order is “ripped from the headlines.” Over the summer, one of the show’s writers had followed me on Instagram. Now I understood why.

Read the full story in Marie Claire.

DDP Releases the Financial Literacy Checklist for Women in Dance in Honor of Financial Literacy Month

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Did you know April is Financial Literacy Month?  Dance Data Project® has pulled resources from our friends at Ellevest to provide a platform that encourages financial literacy.

Read more

Wall Street Journal: Americans Can Track Stimulus Payments on New IRS Site

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By Richard Rubin

WASHINGTON—Americans can now track the status of their stimulus payments and provide their bank-account information to get their money faster via direct deposit, thanks to a new IRS website.

The Treasury Department has already issued the first round of payments via direct deposit, sending money to more than 80 million households that had bank-account information on file from their 2018 or 2019 tax returns. That money is starting to show up in bank accounts this week.

The IRS “Get My Payment” system made its debut Wednesday, though it was experiencing high volume and wasn’t providing information to all users. By providing bank-account information, people can get their payments faster through direct deposits instead of paper checks, which may take weeks or months to arrive.

Read the full article here.

Sun Times: Durbin, Duckworth, other Dem senators: End ‘ambiguity’ over jobless benefits for gig workers

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By Lynn Sweet

13 April 2020

A group of Democratic senators, including Dick Durbin and Tammy Duckworth of Illinois, implored Labor Secretary Eugene Scalia on Monday to “eliminate ambiguity” and make sure self-employed gig workers qualify for newly available COVID-19 jobless benefits.

The letter, signed by 32 Democratic senators, notes part of the guidance issued by the Labor Department dealing with eligibility “appear narrow or ambiguous, which could make states think they need to exclude workers who Congress clearly intended to receive unemployment compensation through the Pandemic Unemployment Assistance program.”

“While we believe that such workers are covered by the text of the law, we appreciate the Department’s action to eliminate ambiguity and ensure these workers receive benefits,” they added.

A package of unprecedented enhanced and extended unemployment benefits are in the emergency $2.2 trillion federal Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act — known as the CARES Act — signed into law March 27.

The CARES Act created the Pandemic Unemployment Assistance program, known as PUA. The Labor Department has the job of writing rules for states on executing the new program.

Read the full article in the Chicago Sun Times.

Pointe Magazine: Susan Jaffe Named Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre’s New Artistic Director

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By Steve Sucato

14 April 2020

Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre announced today that former American Ballet Theatre principal Susan Jaffe will succeed Terrence Orr as artistic director of the company, effective July 1. Jaffe becomes PBT’s seventh artistic director and only the second female director in the company’s history.

Dubbed “America’s Quintessential American Ballerina” by The New York Times, Jaffe comes to PBT after eight years as dean of the dance program at University of North Carolina School of the Arts. Born and raised in Bethesda, Maryland, Jaffe joined ABT II at age 16, followed by ABT’s corps de ballet in 1980, at age 18. She was promoted to principal dancer just three years later, and was a company star until her retirement in 2002. Jaffe has held a wide range of teaching and leadership positions since then, and has also choreographed for ballet companies and colleges around the country. She recently launched The Effect of Intention, a series of live and online wellness workshops and audio meditations.

Pointe spoke with Jaffe shortly after receiving the news of being named to her first artistic directorship.

Why leave UNCSA?

I love UNCSA and debated leaving, but being the artistic director of a professional ballet company has been a lifelong dream of mine. I knew I would regret it if I didn’t throw my hat in the ring. When the headhunter called to say the search committee had chosen me, I was so overwhelmed with joy and emotion and a little bit of fear. This is a really big deal for me.

What are you most looking forward to?

Being back in the studio. As a dean, I didn’t get to be in the studio as often as I wanted. I am really good in the studio and am thrilled to be able to do that.

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Giving female choreographers more opportunities is something a lot of companies have embraced; will you and the company be championing any specific interests?

I want to make sure there is a beautiful, diverse pool of choreographers and that be one of the ingredients every time I am making a program.

Read the full article in Pointe.