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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

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.

Dance Magazine: Learning the Principles of Choreography, Alone But Together

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By Marina Harss

13 April 2020

Choreography may be the most social art. A composer can write music alone at her piano; a painter has his paints. But dance requires human bodies sharing space and physical contact, neither of which is possible at the moment. And yet the imagination is a powerful tool. As the choreographer Jessica Lang recently told a group of seven American Ballet Theatre dancers in a Zoom session, “We may not be together, but we get to use our imaginations.”

The dancers’ faces popped up on the screen, each framed by his or her current living arrangements. Some were sitting in living rooms, between the couch and the TV. Others in the kitchen, or in a bedroom. For an hour and a half, they talked, listened, moved.

The session was part of a new initiative connected to ABT Incubator, a choreographic workshop started by the dancer David Hallberg two years ago. That first year, the dancers were simply given time and space to create a dance. Lang, who has been involved since the beginning of the Incubator, felt this wasn’t enough. She suggested that it might be useful to have a forum in which the dancers could be exposed to principles that underpin the creative process.

So this year, ABT introduced a preparatory workshop, ahead of the creation period in the fall. Then COVID-19 happened, and suddenly everyone was stuck at home. Like so much else in people’s lives, the sessions went online. The dancers meet up with Lang on Zoom for an hour and half every Wednesday, for a total of five weeks.

Read the article on Dance Magazine online.

Women’s Media Center: Federal COVID-19 relief policies failed women workers — and now feminists are fighting for them

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By Carmen Rios

9 April 2020

The COVID-19 numbers have led to widespread alarm: 16 million workers have filed for unemployment, and 100,000 to 250,000 lives are at risk. “This is a public health crisis,” Senator Kamala Harris told viewers during a tele-town hall organized by nonprofit One Fair Wage on Tuesday, “that has resulted in an economic crisis.” For women workers, who make up a disproportionate number of the low-wage workers providing essential services during the novel coronavirus’s outbreak in the U.S., that crisis is both political and personal.

“The coronavirus catastrophe has exposed what has always been a devastating reality for millions of low-paid women workers across the country: Despite working hard and providing essential services that we depend on, they are paid rock-bottom wages that devalue the work they do and put them at high risk of living in or near poverty, even when they work full time,” Julie Vogtman, National Women’s Law Center director of job quality and lead author of the organization’s recent report, When Hard Work Is Not Enough: Women in Low-Paid Jobs, said in a statement. “As thousands of restaurant servers, hotel clerks, waitresses, and fast food workers are losing their jobs every day due to the pandemic, their economic security and that of their families have become even more tenuous. Let this be a wake-up call to policymakers to increase the federal minimum wage, expand paid sick and family and medical leave, strengthen unemployment benefits, and shrink the gender wage gap that shortchanges them.”

These recommendations echo the demands of groups like Justice for Migrant Women, which in March launched an Emergency Pandemic Fund for Farmworkers with Hispanics In Philanthropy to advocate for the 2 to 3 million farmworkers, an estimated 900,000 of whom are women, who continue to plant, pick, and pack the food we’re all rushing to pick up at stores or order to our doorsteps.

Read the full article on Women’s Media Center.