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December 31st: Jacob's Pillow: Ann & Weston Hicks Choreography Fellows Program, December 31st: New England Presenter Travel Fund, December 31st: Central Pennsylvania Youth Ballet Scholarship, December 31st: 24 Seven Dance Convention, December 31st: National Theater Project Presenter Travel Grant, December 31st: Breck Creek Artist-in-Residence Program, December 31st: Indigo Arts Alliance Mentorship Residency Program, March 31st: SIA Foundation Grants

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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

Dance Spirit: A Behind-the-Scenes Look at Michelle Dorrance’s Delightful Tap “Nutcracker”

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By Amanda Sherwin

3 December 2019

There’s a new holiday dance tradition in the works, thanks to the genius brain of tapper Michelle Dorrance. Dorrance Dance, her innovative company, is putting its own spin on The Nutcracker, using Duke Ellington and Billy Strayhorn’s jazzy version of the classic score and a slew of talented tappers, including Josette Wiggan-Freund as the production’s “Sugar Rum Cherry.” Check out this behind-the-scenes look at the company’s fast-paced, anything-goes creative process, and catch the world premiere of The Nutcracker Suite at The Joyce Theater in NYC from December 17 to January 5.

Read the full article on Dance Spirit’s blog.

New York Times: After Misty Comes Marie: Breaking Barriers in ‘The Nutcracker’

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By Gia Kourlas

28 November 2019

She may not remember it, but during the first summer of her life Charlotte Nebres canvassed for Barack Obama with her mother, Danielle, who carried her in a sling. She attended political rallies. And on a frigid day in January 2009, she accompanied her parents and older sister to his inauguration.

When Charlotte was 6, Misty Copeland became the first female African-American principal at American Ballet Theater. That, she remembers.

“I saw her perform and she was just so inspiring and so beautiful,” Charlotte, 11, said. “When I saw someone who looked like me onstage, I thought, that’s amazing. She was representing me and all the people like me.”

Read the full article in The New York Times.

SMU DataArts: Joint Study in Gender Disparity Shows Gap Persists Despite Gains in Art Museum Directors

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The Association of Art Museum Directors (AAMD) and the National Center for Arts Research (NCAR) at Southern Methodist University in Dallas today released findings from the second iteration of their gender gap study, which was designed to deepen understanding of the gender disparity in art museum directorships to help AAMD member institutions advance towards greater gender equity. Through a combination of quantitative analysis of 2016 data collected from AAMD member institutions and interviews with female museum directors and executive search consultants who specialize in recruitment for art museums, NCAR and AAMD researchers – led by Zannie Voss, director, NCAR, and Christine Anagnos, executive director, AAMD – examined the ongoing and historical factors of the gender gap in art museum directorships, and compared their findings to those of the previous study, conducted in 2013. While incremental gains have been observed in the last three years, the study found that the gender gap persists: women still hold fewer than 50% of directorships and, on average, earn less than their male counterparts. The study also found that museum type and budget size were influential factors on representation and salary differentials.

In 2016, AAMD conducted a survey of its members, collecting data from 210 respondents that included each institution’s operating budget, endowment, the salary of the director (or top leader), the director’s gender, and the self-reported museum type (e.g. encyclopedic, contemporary, etc.). Of these 210 museums, 181 also participated in the 2013 survey, allowing for examination of trends. The study sought to answer three main questions: What is the current state of women in art museum directorships? How has the gender gap in art museum directorships shifted in the past three years? What are some factors that may drive the gender gap? The NCAR and AAMD study had several key findings:

  • While men continue to outnumber women in director roles, there has been a 5% increase in female directorships from 2013: women represented 48% of art museum directorships in 2016 (compared to 43% in 2013).
  • There are clear disparities in gender representation depending on operating budget size: the majority of museums with budgets of less than $15 million are run by a female, rather than a male, director. The reverse is true for museums with budgets of over $15 million, where female representation decreases as budget size increases.
  • Women are at a salary disadvantage: on average, female directors earned 73 cents for every dollar that male directors earned.
  • When segmented by operating budget, the gender disparities are more nuanced:
  • For museums with a budget of over $15 million—roughly the top quarter of museums—female directors earned 75 cents for every dollar a male earned, an improvement from 2013, when women earned only 70 cents per dollar earned by a man.
  • For the other three-quarters of member museums (those with budgets of less than $15 million), female directors on average earned 98 cents to every dollar earned by a man. This represents a reversal from three years ago, when female directors at these same museums earned an average of $1.01 for each dollar earned by their male counterparts.
  • Women hold the majority of directorships in College/University museums (60%) and Culturally Specific museums (57%). Men hold the majority of directorships at Single Artist (67%), Encyclopedic (59%) and Contemporary (54%) museums.

Read the full summary on SMU DataArts’ blog.

Montclair Local: DANCE REVIEW: MARTHA GRAHAM COMPANY LOOKS BOTH WAYS

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By Elaine Molinaro

The air was filled with anticipation in the Alexander Kasser Theater for the opening of the Martha Graham Company’s “Appalachian Spring,” Graham’s iconic dance honoring the spirit of life on the American frontier.

Montclair State University’s Peak Performance series celebrated the work’s 75th anniversary by putting the past in conversation with the present. On the same program the company debuted “The Auditions,” a dance conceived by choreographer Troy Schumacher and composer Augusta Read Thomas to resonate with Graham’s classic.

Graham started a revolution when she had her dancers remove their pointe shoes to dance barefoot and round their torsos into the movement she called the contraction, the basis of her dance technique, in a clear departure from the upright body of elite classical ballet.

Read the full article in Montclair Local.

Women’s Media Center: A few cracks in the Baby Bump Ceiling

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By Rosalind C. Barnett, Ph.D. & Caryl Rivers

In recent months, three exceptionally prominent female journalists with large TV followings appeared on the air visibly pregnant and worked right up to their delivery dates. 

Margaret Brennan of Face the Nation, NBC News correspondent Katy Tur, and Kasie Hunt — a political correspondent and host of MSNBC’s weekly program Kasie DC — did not leave TV when their pregnancies became very evident.

Perhaps most remarkably, Face the Nation, the largest of all Sunday public affairs programs, which in 2017 had an average of 3.538 million viewers, broke all the rules. The network hired Brennan, a CBS News senior affairs correspondent, to replace John Dickerson as anchor while she was expecting. Just two months after her hiring was made public, Brennan announced that she was five months pregnant with her first child.  

Until recently, viewers almost never saw visibly pregnant women broadcasting news on television — much less heading up a major Sunday network news show. The Baby Bump Ceiling was very real for women. Will these three cracks in that ceiling put a dent in a harmful stereotype? Maybe so. 

Read the full article on Women’s Media Center.

Wall Street Journal: ‘We Were White and Sleepy Before’—The Baltimore Museum of Art’s Radical Makeover

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By Kelly Crow

A new director shakes up the institution with moves such as showing only works by women and acquiring overlooked artists.

Read the full article in The Wall Street Journal.

Ludwig Van: SCRUTINY | National Ballet Showcases Technical And Artistic Brilliance In Mixed Program

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By Paula Citron

28 November 2019

The National Ballet of Canada Mixed Program/Piano Concerto #1 choreographed by Alexei Ratmansky, Petite Mort choreographed by Jiri Kylian, and Etudes choreographed by Harald Lander, Four Seasons Centre, Nov. 27 to Dec. 1. Tickets available at national.ballet.ca/Tickets.

I continue to be in awe of Karen Kain’s programming skills, in particular, the way she finds links to bring diverse pieces together. In this very satisfying mixed evening of dance, the throughline is the piano. Two of the pieces are set to piano concerti, while the third is an orchestral arrangement of piano exercises.

The new kid on the block is Jiri Kylian’s off-pointe Petite Mort (1991) set to the slow movements of Mozart’s piano concerti Nos. 21 and 23. The term, petite mort, refers to orgasm, and one would think that the stage would be crackling with all manner of sexy and/or romantic moves, but that is not the case. The very physical, clinical choreography is in direct contrast to the shimmering, aching, melancholy quality of the music. But then, that’s Kylian, the brilliant Czech-born master who layers his pieces with a combination of wit and mystery.

The work is set on six women, six men, six fencing foils, five stand-alone, black, eighteenth-century dresses on rollers (symbolizing protective armour for the women?), and a large, billowing silk cloth (symbolizing bed sheets?) that is pulled over the dancers a couple of times during the piece. So controlled is the movement that Petite Mort calls for the big guns, and of the twelve dancers, six are principals (Elena Lobsanova, Skylar Campbell, Jillian Vanstone, Brendan Saye, Greta Hodgkinson and Guillaume Côté), four are first soloists (Jenna Savella, Donald Thom, Tina Pereira and Hannah Fischer), with second soloists Spencer Hack and Joe Chapman completing the roster.

Read the full article here.

Broadway World: Dutch National Ballet Presents the Premiere of FRIDA – A Ballet Inspired By The Life Story Of Frida Kahlo

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26 November 2019

Dutch National Ballet presents the world premiere of Frida, a ballet inspired by the life story of Frida Kahlo. Annabelle Lopez Ochoa choreographs the ballet about one of the most intriguing artists of the 20th century. Frida Kahlo became world famous for her paintings, many of them self-portraits. She was also a great advocate of equal rights, broke taboos, was far ahead of her time in her battle for gender neutrality and did not let the doom that struck her restrain her.

Frida will have its world premiere at Dutch National Ballet on Thursday February 6, 2020 and can be seen until Tuesday February 25, 2020 at Dutch National Opera & Ballet, Amsterdam.

Annabelle Lopez Ochoa, half Colombian, half Belgian, is only partly attracted by the Latin American connection she has with the Mexican Kahlo. Ochoa is particularly fascinated and inspired by the way in which Kahlo has managed to transmute her sorrow, pain and immobility into art. The ballet is not so much about the life of Kahlo, but depicts Frida’s feelings and perceptions through important events in her life such as the loneliness that haunted Kahlo all her life, her complex relationship with Diego Rivera, her bisexuality and the way she has crafted her own image.

Read the full article on Broadway World.

Atlanta Black Star: ‘Misty Copelands’ Are Rare in World of Ballet, and Black Entrepreneur Looks to Change That

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By Lauren Floyd

19 November 2019

When Robin Pitts, founder of the dance studio Dance Makers, started dancing at 7 years old she didn’t see many people on TV who looked like her.

Her mother wasn’t even sure she’d like dance, after it didn’t take with her older sister.

Still, the aspiring ballerina begged until her mother relented.

More than 30 years later, she still hasn’t stopped dancing.

“I’m a studio kid,” Pitts told Atlanta Black Star Nov. 12.

She’s focusing more on the administrative side of dance these days, having founded the Maryland-based Dance Makers studio in 2001 and leading the organization into its 18th year.

Read the full article in the Atlanta Black Star.

WTTW: Chicago Dance Companies Unite for Black Dance Legacy Project

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By Angel Idowu

19 November 2019

Eight of the city’s most prominent dance companies are coming together for a one-night-only concert this week.

“Lineage: The Black Dance Legacy Project” has a single mission: to celebrate the legacy of black dance in Chicago.

The project will not only document the history of dance for future generations, but pay homage to black dance companies that have been around the city for generations.

Joel Hall Dancers and Center is one of those companies.

“We worked closely with Joel (Hall) back in the day, so it’s wonderful to see him honored now in this way and can give our last little bit to help the family,” said Joel Hall Dancers and Center alum Tracey Hodgkin-Valcy, who is performing a duet in the show.

Other longtime companies like Ayodele Drum and Dance, Muntu Dance Theatre and Najwa Dance Corps will share stories reflective of the African diaspora.

Read the full article and watch the coverage on WTTW.