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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

Bay State Banner: ‘See | Be Seen’ upends expectations of female dancers

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By Celina Colby

On Saturday, December 21, an enormous crystalline inflatable dome rose almost to the ceiling of a performance space in the South End’s Calderwood Pavilion. Inside the inflatable dome, three nude dancers reclaimed their bodies and their artistic agency in “See | Be Seen,” a new piece by artist Emily Beattie.

The seeds of the show were planted three years ago when Beattie began considering her experience as a female dancer. Trained in ballet, modern and improvisational dance, she found that very specific rules came tied to each form. Her thought process aligned with the beginning of the Me Too movement, which further spurred her work.

“There are patriarchal expectations put on dance. That you need to look a certain way, that you need to move in a certain way, that the audience needs to necessarily feel welcomed,” she says. “There are power dynamics in that.”

In “See | Be Seen,” those power dynamics are flipped completely in the dancers’ favor. The dome in which the women perform can be looked into but not with complete clarity. Audience members are encouraged to walk around the dome in the round while the performers are dancing. If they want to be involved and to witness the piece, they have to work for it.

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“I think it takes a team to say go beyond, go beyond where you think you should go,” says Beattie. “We’re proud that we have an all female show.”

Read the full article in the Bay State Banner.

New York Times: ‘Just Speaking From My Body’

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By Siobhan Burke

24 December 2019

Every so often a great dancer transcends her own brilliance, somehow expanding its outer limit. Last week at City Center, Linda Celeste Sims, a member of Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater for 24 years, did just that in a rapturous performance of Ailey’s 1971 “Cry,” a 16-minute solo dedicated “to all black women everywhere — especially our mothers.”

This season Ms. Sims, 43, danced the work for the first time as a mother — she gave birth to her first child, Ellington, in May — and something shifted.

“I went deep, I went really deep,” she said in a telephone interview on Thursday, reflecting on her performance the night before. “It almost felt like I wasn’t performing for you, I was actually just speaking from my body.”

The Youngest (and Liveliest) ‘Nutcracker’ Audience of the Season

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By Julia Jacobs

24 December 2019

The red velvet seats at the David H. Koch Theater were quickly filling up — not with the usual ballet audience, but with squirming, shrieking and giggling elementary school students.

On a Tuesday morning in December, the day after the first snow of the season, a couple thousand students spilled out from school buses and marched single file into the theater, where the New York City Ballet would perform “George Balanchine’s The Nutcracker” just for them.

Each class at Girls Prep is named after a woman of significance; these students are in the “Maria Tallchief class,” named for the ballerina who played the Sugarplum Fairy when Balanchine first restaged “The Nutcracker” in 1954.

Read the full article in the New York Times.

Women Dominate This Sport. Why Is the Coaching a Boys’ Club?

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By Billy Witz

20 December 2019

PITTSBURGH — As Taylor Morgan’s volleyball career at the University of Minnesota comes to an end this week, she has set her sights on becoming a college coach. She understands what the career entails from her father, who coaches track and field at Minnesota, and she is confident that she will take the lessons taught by her respected coach, Hugh McCutcheon, and figure out the rest.

But Morgan harbors no illusions.

She recognizes that even in a sport played overwhelmingly by women, there are few former female players coaching at the sport’s highest college level.

So when Minnesota played Iowa last month, Morgan made a point of seeking out Iowa’s coach, Vicki Brown, who is one of two women coaching in the Big Ten and who, like Morgan, is African-American, a rare combination.

“She’s doing what I want to do,” Morgan said. “I told her after the game that I aspire to be like you.”

Read the full article in the New York Times.

“IT’S A NEW ERA FOR WOMEN IN BALLET” – DDP GENDER EQUITY RESEARCH CENTRAL TO NATIONAL PUBLIC RADIO “HERE & NOW” STORY

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December 23, 2019 Northfield, Illinois Dance Data Project® (DDP) research was discussed in a Here & Now piece on National Public Radio (NPR) on Friday, December 20. Following reporter Sharon Basco’s initial investigation of the lack of women choreographers in ballet, published in WBUR’s The ARTery and covered in a Here & Now story in 2015, the program discussed the shifting “no girls allowed” atmosphere in the artform.

The 2012-2013 ballet season research by Amy Seiwert and Joseph Copley – in which of 290 ballets programmed by a sample of companies that season, just 25 were choreographed by women – set the stage for the story. “Major companies went year after year without staging a single ballet by a woman,” narrated Basco, “People began to take notice.” Former chief dance critic of the New York Times, Alastair Macaulay, was one of those people, Basco shared, “[Macaulay] points to an awakening in the past few years – and changes are underway, starting with several companies hiring female artistic directors.”

The notion that having more women running ballet companies may serve as a catalyst in the growing equity in ballet, has often been discussed, and has been reflected in the seasons of companies like the English National Ballet, Cincinnati Ballet, and more. Basco interviewed the artistic director of the former, Tamara Rojo, who agreed, stating, “Today it will be very, very strange for any company to announce a season where there is no female representation.”

Basco noted, however, that female representation in programming is just the tip of the iceberg. Citing DDP’s July 2019 report, she said, “This season, fewer than 20% of ballets are by female choreographers.” Furthermore, she noted, “The women commissioned for major work do so mainly as freelancers, not resident choreographers.” As the DDP team conducted research this month on global resident choreographers, indeed, not one of the “Top 10” U.S. ballet companies (ranked by budget) had a female resident choreographer in 2019. Women are rarely afforded the “luxury of an institutional home,” and, beyond this, they are often paid only a fraction of the compensation offered to male choreographers. Twenty-seven-year-old choreographer (and principal dancer at New York City Ballet) Lauren Lovette weighed in, saying, “That is the next step. It’s like, okay, thank you for giving an opportunity, now will you pay me the same?”

One of the rare “exceptions” to the glass ceiling is veteran choreographer Helen Pickett, who concluded the piece on an optimistic note, saying, “This is the ground we walk on now – that WE walk on now – and let’s keep on going forward with that.”   

DDP will release more findings in January following an investigation of the role of equity in major U.S. dance venue leadership and programming, as well as the first global study of resident choreographers.

Listen to the story on WBUR’s website or below:

Vogue Australia: The Australian Ballet’s Alice Topp explores gender politics in the world of dance

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By Victoria Baker

In a discipline where women are under-represented, Alice Topp shines bright. Appointed a resident choreographer at the Australian Ballet in 2018, she writes about finding the confidence to take on a new career challenge.

“I never saw myself becoming a choreographer. I thought it must be something you’d always dreamed of doing, a calling, and that there’d be some sort of lightning-bolt strike of inspiration that led you to your destined choreographic path. But it wasn’t like that for me. The opportunity came about when the only woman creating for the Australian Ballet’s choreographic season Bodytorque withdrew to go on maternity leave. It had been a few years since a woman had choreographed for the program and the conversation about the lack of female choreographers had become a popular discussion worldwide. Nicolette Fraillon, the company’s music director, felt I would be a good replacement. I’m not quite sure what it was she saw in me, but I’m forever grateful. She prompted our artistic director David McAllister to ask me if I’d be interested in filling the gap in the program.

I had a weekend to make a decision, but as intimidating as it was to accept the challenge without any notion of what I was doing or how to go about it, I had watched many freelance friends fight for funding, space and a platform just like the opportunity that had landed in my lap, so I felt it was something I should have a crack at. It was easier not to place too much pressure on myself at first – I was a last-minute wild card with nothing to lose. All the other choreographers were male principal dancers with previous choreographic experience and I was a third-year corps de ballet dancer with no clue what I was doing! I felt there was no expectation, so I couldn’t really fail.

Read the full article in Vogue.

City Pages: The decade in theater: New leaders, #MeToo, and more POC visibility defined the ’10s

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By Jay Gabler

18 December 2019

This decade saw a sea change in the leadership of local theaters, with new artistic directors taking the helm at the Guthrie, Penumbra, the Jungle, Theater Mu, Park Square, Ten Thousand Things, and elsewhere. The shift is generational, but it’s also marked a fundamental shift in focus as Twin Cities theaters recognize the need to tell stories that much more authentically and extensively reflect the diversity of their communities.

“I have been thrilled to see women and [people of color] assuming leadership roles in our theater community,” says actor and director Austene Van. “These changes have allowed audiences to see images and artists of various cultures that are not frequently seen on our stages. These changes have allowed our audiences to experience relatable stories through diverse lenses.”

Sun Mee Chomet agrees. “It has been wonderful to see diversity celebrated on stages throughout the Twin Cities. As an Asian American actor, there have been many doors that have opened at theaters like the Jungle and the Guthrie that did not feel as wide open 10 years ago for actors of color.” What’s more, Chomet adds, “I’ve also seen much more opportunity for directors, designers, and technicians that are people of color, women, and non-binary-identifying folks.”

Read the full article in City Pages.

Boston Globe: Premieres aplenty in Boston Dance Theater program

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By Karen Campbell

14 December 2019

It’s been less than two years since Boston Dance Theater made its debut, but the company made enough of an impression to garner major support from Global Arts Live — not once, but twice, an impressive coup for co-directors Jessie Jeanne Stinnett and Dutch-Israeli choreographer Itzik Galili. Friday night’s program backed up this artistic imprimatur with three newly commissioned world premieres and a US premiere.

Read the full article in the Boston Globe.

Richmond Magazine: Ballet for Everybody

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By Kristen Green

15 December 2019

“The Nutcracker” is a beloved tradition in our family, in part because the multiracial and multiethnic families in the Richmond Ballet production’s opening party scene look like ours.

I first noticed this diversity three years ago, when my oldest daughter played a mouse. I thought it must have been a fluke. But since then, the cast has become even more diverse, while professional dancers have come and gone. Stoner Winslett, the ballet’s longtime artistic director, says she made the decision to have multiracial families in the party scene when she directed her first “Nutcracker” production in 1980.

“Ballet is an incredibly beautiful thing,” she says, “and I think it should be for everybody.”

Read the full article in Richmond Magazine.

KSFY: South Dakota woman trying to start state’s first professional ballet company

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DOWNTOWN SIOUX FALLS, S.D. – Madeleine Scott is the founder of the South Dakota Ballet. She and other founding board members are trying to raise enough money to start a professional ballet company in South Dakota. The company’s first fundraiser will be Thursday at the Museum of Visual Materials in Downtown Sioux Falls. It’s from 6:30 PM until 8:30 PM.

Learn more from KSFY’s article.