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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

Datebook: Smuin Ballet finally has a home after 25 years adrift

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By Sam Whiting

30 October 2019

Smuin Contemporary Ballet dancers don’t normally use white respirator masks, but they have been vagabonds for 25 years and they weren’t going to wait another day. They were willing to breathe in paint fumes and dust to finally rehearse in their long-awaited and still-unfinished $10 million studio at the base of Potrero Hill.

The San Francisco company founded by the late choreographer Michael Smuin in 1994 had never managed to secure a studio lease, but now it owns a space in the city. So this first day of rehearsal for its annual “The Christmas Ballet” was historic because it marked the first day the 16-dancer troupe could rehearse at the official Smuin Center for Dance.

Gone is the hassle and the wear and tear of subletting space, which meant dancers were kicked out for children’s classes. Gone are the days they’d have to pack up their gear, traipse across town and find parking at some other borrowed space, with a different sprung floor to adapt to. Shin splints and knee troubles are an occupational hazard in constantly changing surfaces. So is transportation. Most dancers supplement their income by teaching. Without a studio they are like adjunct professors, known as “freeway fliers,” shuttling between dance schools.

Read the full article on Datebook.

Pointe Magazine: Stella Abrera to Take on New Role as Artistic Director of Kaatsbaan

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By Chava Lansky

19 November 2019

Yesterday, Kaatsbaan, the Tivoli, NY-based cultural park for dance, announced that Stella Abrera will join the organization as its new artistic director, effective January 1. This news come just weeks after we learned that Abrera will be taking her final bow with American Ballet Theatre in June.


While we’ll miss seeing Abrera on the ABT stage, we’re excited to see her grow into this new role. As artistic director, Abrera’s position will including working with artists to develop their projects and strengthen their ties to Kaatsbaan. She’ll also continue to teach and coach dancers in her role as the head of Kaatsbaan’s ballet intensives and the Pro-Studio/Stella Abrera program, which launched last summer.

Since its inception, Kaatsbaan has been closely linkedto ABT, making Abrera’s appointment all the more natural. ABT artistic director Kevin McKenzie and ABT’s Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis School faculty member Martine van Hamel are among the organization’s four co-founders, and McKenzie still chairs its board. As part of this transition, Van Hamel will take on the role of principal ballet teacher for Kaatsbaan’s ballet and special weekend intensives.

Abrera brings much more than her decades at ABT to her new position. In 2014 she founded Steps Forward for the Philippines to benefit victims of Hurricane Haiyan, and since 2018 has directed an annual benefit gala in Manila to raise money for the Stella Abrera Dance and Music Hall at CENTEX (Center of Excellence in Public Elementary Education) in Batangas. She was also part of ABT’s first Crossover Into Business class at Harvard Business School, and has been recognized by the New York State Assembly and New York’s Philippine Consulate General for her service to the community.

Read the full Pointe Magazine article here.

Broadway World: Photo Flash: Take a Look Inside Dance Lab New York’s Collaboration with The Joyce Theater

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18 November 2019

In the final two weeks of the Joyce Lab Cycle, choreographers Courtney Cochran and Margarita Armas explored the classical and neoclassical ballet idioms prior to their presentation at Works & Process at The Guggenheim.

New York-based choreographer and dancer Courtney Cochran said, “To be nominated for this opportunity was incredible. As a woman, a woman of color and a choreographer, I feel seen.” Regarding her discoveries in The Lab, “Dance Lab allowed me to dive much deeper into my exploration of human relationships in a narrative I’m developing.”

19-year old Margarita Armas reflected on her time in The Lab, “I am completely changed from this experience. I thought I was just a dancer before, and now I have really found the choreographer and the creator in me. It has changed me.”

Read the full article and view the gallery on Broadway World.

LA Dance Chronicle: IT’S TIME TO CELEBRATE THOSE MASTERS OF MOVEMENT…. CHOREOGRAPHERS!

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By Joanne DiVito

9 November 2019

It’s the 9th Annual World Choreography Awards (WCA) on Monday, November 11, 2019 at the Saban Theatre, 8440 Wilshire Blvd., Beverly Hills, CA 90211.  That’s the time we celebrate the glorious “designers of dance” by honoring the outstanding work of global media choreographers.  It salutes the future, celebrates the present and honors the past in dance.

From 1994-2004, the dance community had the good fortune of having the American Choreography Awards (ACA) co-created by Julie McDonald of MSA fame.  In lieu of the Oscars, which did not recognize the “choreography” category, the ACA’s special event began years of recognition for our hard working dance artists and craftsmen, but ended in 2004.

Not until 2010, when dance and choreography could no longer be ignored, and was growing at such a frenzied pace, (thanks to  “So You Think You Can Dance” and “Dancing with the Stars”), did the World Choreography Awards throw down the gauntlet.  The Producer and Director, Allen Walls with Cheryl Baxter insisted on creating the vehicle that recognized the incredible talent that was soon to become household names, not only in the dance world but the civilian world.   They felt it was important to honor the work in all forms of media not only TV, Commercials, music video and motion pictures, but also adding Digital Content and Digital Content Independent.  They’re feeling is, everyone is important and it is necessary that their work gets seen.

Read the full article in The LA Dance Chronicle.

The Guardian: Hollywood’s gender divide laid bare by analysis of this season’s Oscar contenders

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By Katherine Purvis and Catherine Shoard

15 November 2019

Striking contrasts in the choices of male and female awards contenders – and their potential impact on gender parity in Hollywood – have been uncovered by the Guardian.

The three youngest men likely to be in the race for next year’s best actor Oscar have never worked on a film directed by a woman, while the category’s frontrunner, Joaquin Phoenix, has worked with a female director only once during his 34-film career.

The picture is flipped for the female actors, with the youngest of the possible nominees working with female directors up to 75% of the time.

Meanwhile, Phoenix’s director on Joker, Todd Phillips – one of the youngest up for this year’s best director award – was found to be the only filmmaker likely to win an Oscar nomination who has never made a film with a female lead or co-lead.

The findings arrive as this year’s awards season prepares to begin, with the fight for the best picture Oscar in particular shaping up to be a battle of the sexes.

Proudly post-#MeToo female ensemble films Bombshell (about the sexual harassment of news anchors Megyn Kelly and Gretchen Carlson by Fox boss Roger Ailes) and Greta Gerwig’s adaptation of Little Women are expected to vie for the top prize with two male-dominated frontrunners: Martin Scorsese’s The Irishman and Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.

Read the full article in The Guardian.

Three Out of Five Choreographers For Ballet Arkansas Program Are Women

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Arkansas Times: Five dances, five moods in Ballet Arkansas’s “Debut”

By Leslie Newell Peacock

14 November 2019

Orson Welles once said that the enemy of art is the absence of limitation. Perhaps Michael Fothergill had a similar adage in mind when he drew up the rules for Ballet Arkansas’s most recent evening of new works. The terms were these: Five dancers had nine hours each in the studio to create a new work. They drew their casts from a hat, and rehearsals began. The result was “Debut,” performed Nov. 15-16 at Argenta Community Theater in downtown North Little Rock.

Read the full article in The Arkansas Times.

Yale News: YUBC performs cinematic fall show

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By Ella Goldblum

11 November 2019

“A gang that don’t own the street is nothin’!”

This quote from West Side Story appeared on the backdrop as Yale Undergraduate Ballet Company dancers emerged in flannels and jeans at the Off-Broadway Theater on Nov. 6 and 9. Company members also danced against bare trees, warped New York City buildings and moonlit beaches.

Karen Jiang ’21, co-president of YBC, said this show used ballet “to complement and further deepen our understanding of another form of art.”

“The Moving Picture,” a two-act show in which company members danced exclusively to songs from movies, was YBC’s first show of the academic year. It was also the first time in YBC history that the company invited a guest choreographer. Guest choreographer Miriam Mahdaviani previously danced and choreographed works for the New York City Ballet and was invited to choreograph the show as part of the 50WomenatYale150 celebration of women in the arts.

Read the full article on Yale News.

Zora: What It’s Like to Perform Ballet While Black

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By Felicia Fitzpatrick

5 November 2019

The lights dim. An anticipatory hush settles over the audience. The air feels warm and sweet. The string section begins their quick and staccato phrasing of the overture, launching us into ballet’s beloved holiday tradition, “The Nutcracker.”

This is the moment my mom would pinpoint as the beginning of my love of dance. I was only two years old, and she bravely took me to see Texas Ballet Theater’s “The Nutcracker.” We didn’t make it past Act I, but she insists that the lush orchestrations of Tchaikovsky’s composition filtered into my brain. Soon after, I was enrolled in creative movement classes at the local Children’s World.

After outgrowing toddler classes and moving to San Jose, California, I joined a competitive jazz and tap dance group full of Brown, curvy bodies. Yes, we were different shades and our curves sloped at different angles, but we loved to dance and we were a family. It was that simple. Each time we stepped on a stage to dance, I felt a surge of liberation rush through me. I felt empowered. I felt like the most authentic version of myself. I felt the purest sense of joy.

Read the full article on Zora.

Cage 541: Five questions with Eugene Ballet’s Toni Pimble

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By Destiny Alvarez for The Register-Guard

5 November 2019

From the time Toni Pimble was 8 years old, ballet has been her life.

As a child Pimble, now the art[istic] director of Eugene Ballet, grew up in Camberley in Surry, England, near London and developed a love of music from her parents, who enjoyed playing classical music. She was incredibly energetic and when her parents put her in ballet classes as an outlet, dance became her everything.

The path led her to a professional performing arts school where she studied classical ballet, jazz, tap, modern, and even forms of classical Indian dance. After graduation she joined a classical ballet company in Kiel, Germany, and later danced with companies in Germany for many years. She eventually met Riley Grannan, lifelong Eugene-area resident, and the pair founded the Eugene Ballet Company in 1978.

While she no longer performs, Pimble has helped build the Eugene Ballet Company’s reputation of artistic excellence throughout the Pacific Northwest and beyond.

Read the full article in The Register-Guard.

Harvard Business Review: The Trillion-Dollar Opportunity in Supporting Female Entrepreneurs

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By Shalini Unnikrishnan and Roy Hanna

31 October 2019

There is much discussion and debate about how to support female entrepreneurs — and rightly so. Currently, women-led businesses are less likely to survive, despite evidence that their startups are often highly successful. New analysis by Boston Consulting Group (BCG) shows that if women and men around the world participated equally as entrepreneurs, global GDP could ultimately rise by approximately 3% to 6%, boosting the global economy by $2.5 trillion to $5 trillion.

So how do we support female entrepreneurs? The focus is often on improving access to credit (financial capital) or providing training to help women build new skills (human capital) — two areas critical for improving the success of women-led businesses. However, another key factor in the success of these businesses tends to be overlooked: access to networks.

Working with public, private, and social sector clients around the world, we have seen first-hand how potent such networks can be. And we have also come to understand that these supportive mechanisms are in short supply.

The good news is that action in all sectors can address this gap.

Read the full article in the Harvard Business Review.