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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 Magazine: What Does It Take to Transition from Dancer to Director? Three New Leaders Open Up

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By Rita Felciano

5 August 2019

Becoming an artistic director can be a lot more complicated than it may seem. Dance Magazine spoke with three newly minted leaders, at the beginning and then again at the end of their first seasons as artistic directors of long-running ballet companies.

The Directors:

Amy Seiwert—Sacramento Ballet

Previous experience: Dancer with Sacramento Ballet; dancer and resident choreographer with Smuin Contemporary Ballet; director of her own pickup troupe, Imagery; freelance choreographer

Her thoughts on the job in fall 2018: “This is not a cookie-cutter company; there is a lot of diversity among the dancers. The company will be 65 years old, so I’m very aware of being part of a lineage. I hear Michael Smuin’s voice in my head all the time: He said that if you invite people into the theater and take their money, you better damn well entertain them.”

Garrett Anderson—Ballet Idaho

Previous experience: Dancer with San Francisco Ballet, Royal Ballet of Flanders, Hubbard Street Dance Chicago and Trey McIntyre Project

His thoughts on the job in fall 2018: “I like the openness and genuine joy in this company’s performances, and was struck by the sense of transparency and lack of pretension. I’ve had to build a season in a short time, which is a great opportunity to jumpstart my vision, but I’ve had to make decisions without knowing the company very well.”

James Sofranko—Grand Rapids Ballet

Previous experience: San Francisco Ballet soloist and founder of SFDanceworks

His thoughts on the job in fall 2018: “I had heard that the company had come a long way under the previous director, Patricia Barker. They were doing a lot of great work and had become noticed on the big stage. But for me, coming from a huge metropolitan area into a smaller one, I wonder whether there is an audience for the smaller pieces that can show that ballet is more than the big story ones.”

A year has gone by. How do you feel?

Seiwert: “The sheer amount of work was overwhelming. I felt like Sisyphus rolling up that boulder, fearing that it would kill me if I stopped. But I love working with these dancers.”

Anderson: “I have been treated so well, but people didn’t know what to expect from me, so we were careful about how we framed our message. Change has been about evolution and organic, rather than a pivot. I didn’t want our community only exposed to the finished product, so we invited people into our studios to observe the dancers at work. We also initiated preshow talks. Audiences right away were excited about what was happening.”

Sofranko: “Some people have left, and I’ve hired another bunch and now have a group of dancers who are 100 percent behind my vision. I have big dreams, but I don’t want to bankrupt the company with a moon shot that won’t serve anyone in the long term.”

Read the full interview in Dance Magazine.

Dance Spirit: Why Choreography Should Be More Than An Elective, According to Dean College Faculty Members

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12 August 2019

Imagine: It’s your first year in a dance company and the artistic director is staging a new work. She works through a few phrases of choreography and then turns to you, asking you to come up with something of your own. Are you ready?

In many of today’s most exciting companies, the choreographer/muse relationship is being disrupted in favor of collaboration. Many dancers also find that their own dancing improves after they have tried their hand at creating new work. “Choreographers want to work with performers who aren’t afraid to take risks, make bold decisions, and contribute something that will ultimately make the work stronger,” says Dean College professor of dance studies, Stephen Ursprung.

Make sure your dance degree is going to work for you in the real world. At Dean College in Franklin, Massachusetts, The Joan Phelps Palladino School of Dance is preparing their BFA and BA dancers for the changing professional world that awaits them with a special focus on dance composition. Whether you are in school with an ambition to be a professional dancer, a choreographer, or both, look for opportunities to deep dive into the process of creating dance.

Integrate choreography all semester long.

Read the full article on Dance Spirit’s Blog.

Dance Magazine: NYCB’s Choreographic Institute Rejected Pam Tanowitz Five Times. Now She’s Readying Her Second Commission for the Company.

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By Siobhan Burke

3 August 2019

In the annals of dance history, 2019 may go down as the year Pam Tanowitz got the attention she deserved. In the past six months the New YorkCity–based artist, 49, has brought her imaginative formalism to the Martha Graham Dance Company, New York City Ballet, the Paul Taylor Dance Company and the Kennedy Center’s Ballet Across America festival. The recent recipient of an Alpert Award in the Arts, Tanowitz is not slowing down, with new works on deck for Vail Dance Festival this month and The Royal Ballet’s Merce Cunningham celebration in October.

A couple of years ago we were talking about New York City Ballet, and you said something like “I’ve realized that’s just not my world.” Having come to that conclusion, how did you feel when they contacted you?

I was shocked. I think it just speaks to their new leadership. Throughout my career I applied to their choreographic institute about five times and got rejected.

Read the full article on Dance Magazine’s Blog.

The Times: Witch hunts and hysteria: Helen Pickett’s The Crucible is a ballet for our times

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By Allan Radcliffe

2 August 2019

It is a warm, sticky summer day in Glasgow in 2019, but the occupants of the rehearsal room of Scottish Ballet’s headquarters at the Tramway have travelled back in time to Salem, Massachusetts, in the spring of 1692. The company — with the choreographer Helen Pickett at the helm — is fine-tuning an early sequence in its new ballet of Arthur Miller’s play The Crucible. A group of young women are dancing in a forest at night, weaving among each other with staccato abandon.

Read the full article in The Times.

Seattle Times: Ballet has a diversity problem. Here’s what some people, in Seattle and elsewhere, are doing to change that.

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By Moira Macdonald

31 July 2019

Zariyah Quiroz is just 12, but she’s had a dream since she was a very little girl: “I always thought dance, and ballet specifically, was so beautiful,” she said, chatting before class at Pacific Northwest Ballet School (PNB) earlier this summer, “and I wanted to be part of that.”

A rising seventh grader who’s studied at PNB since 2015, Zariyah, who lives in Seattle, has many of the attributes that seem essential for a career in a professional ballet company: long limbs, elegant posture and innate poise, not to mention a supportive family willing to commit to five-days-a-week classes at PNB. But the road to that goal isn’t easy for any young dancer. And it’s especially difficult for students of color, like Zariyah, who look at ballet stages and see few, if any, dancers who look like them.

The visibility of Misty Copeland, who in 2015 became the first black female principal dancer at American Ballet Theatre, has been an inspiration for Zariyah — and has elevated a jarring truth in this most graceful of arts. Though he’s beginning to see change, “ballet in my lifetime has been very white,” said PNB artistic director Peter Boal, who danced with New York City Ballet (NYCB) from 1983 to 2005.

Read the full article in The Seattle Times.

Philanthropy Women: Funders, Please Step Up On Crisis in Women’s Media

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By Ariel Dougherty

1 August 2019

The failure of the feminist movement to tackle changes in public media policy may be one of the most significant shortcomings of my generation. Take these few facts as proof. According to a report from the Global Media Monitoring Project by Margaret Gallagher entitled Who Makes the News?, the percentage of women in newsmaking roles stagnated at 23% from 2005 to 2015. And the output from media that focuses on women? Even more dismal. According to the report, “Across all media, women were the central focus of just 10% of news stories – exactly the same figure as
in 2000.” And just a few more statistics to get your hair standing on end: women only directed 8% of the top 250 grossing films in 2018, and women-directed films reach just 2.75% of screens in the U.S.

Challenging the image of women was a founding goal of the National Organization for Women in 1966. A year later, more radical women raised addressing media stereotyping of women as one of four demands made at the National Conference for New Politics. I am learning about all of this and will be telling the longer story of the evolution of feminist media in an upcoming book. Alarmingly, though, in just the past month of my research, two major feminist media outlets have announced either closure all together and/or dire drops in their funding and major layoffs. In this time – when Roe v Wade is threatened, immigrant children in camps are sexually abused, and women of color leaders are asked “to go back to where they came from” – it is deeply disturbing that the strongest and most experienced feminist voices in media might be curbed.

Read the full article on Philanthropy Women.

Inspired by DDP Founder’s #AskB4UGive, Ellevest Publishes “How to Know if Your Investing Firm Supports Women”

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BY SALLIE KRAWCHECK

31 July 2019

A woman I know once said something to me that I think about every day: “I’m tired of supporting businesses and institutions that haven’t supported me. I no longer want to have my money managed at a company at which I wouldn’t want my daughter to work.”

That hit me, hard. And I couldn’t agree more.

So what does that look like — in an industry in which 86% of financial advisors are men? What are the questions we should be asking so that we can dig deeper, find out if our values align, see whether an advisor will truly support us?

Here are six of them.

What does your team look like?

First things first: What’s the gender breakdown of your team of financial advisors? What about the senior leadership team? And how has that changed over the past 5 years?

Most will lead with their “commitment to diversity.” But the proof is in the executive team, so to speak. If they say they’re all about diversity, but the people who lead the firm or look out for their clients’ best interests all look the same, then their “commitment” doesn’t hold much water, does it?

Read the full article on Ellevest.

The List: Helen Pickett: ‘I learnt so much about what to leave alone – about the note that is not played, and leaving space for that note’

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By Kelly Apter

29 July 2019

In 2014, when Scottish Ballet premiered Helen Pickett’s one-act version of The Crucible, I wrote in my review that ‘the world needs more Helen Picketts’. Five years later, with the imbalance between male and female choreographers on the world stage still problematic, I stand by that statement. But happily, in 2019 what we do have is more of Pickett herself – literally.

That 45-minute, one-act adaptation of Arthur Miller’s play about the Salem witch trials has been razed to the ground and rebuilt – emerging as a full-length narrative ballet that will premiere at this year’s Edinburgh International Festival. Written in 1953, Miller’s tale of 17th-century paranoia and oppression has benefitted not only from Pickett’s punchy and intelligent choreography, but the assured directorial wisdom of James Bonas.

Each brings something unique and special – Pickett trained at San Francisco Ballet, spent 11 years working with William Forsythe at Ballet Frankfurt, then moved to New York to hone her own creative style. Bonas bagged a First from Oxford University then studied at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, before carving out a career as an actor, then theatre and opera director.

‘I’d never worked on a ballet before,’ concedes Bonas straight off the bat, ‘I didn’t even call myself a dramaturg, because I didn’t know what that meant. But the principal thing I could bring to The Crucible, is how to tell a story with people’s bodies – and a lot of the work I’ve done in both theatre and opera is coming from that place anyway.

Read the full article on The List.

Ellevest What The Elle Newsletter Mentions DDP

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Links to Love (or Hate-Read)

How often should couples talk about money? Plus: What’s the stupidest financial advice you’ve heard lately? Sallie answers the real questions in the latest Money in 60 Seconds.

Missing the pointe: The Dance Data Project looked at the 2018–2019 seasons of the 50 largest ballet companies in the US. Turns out that 81% of ballets produced last season were choreographed by men. OK then.

Megan Thee Stallion is trademarking #HotGirlSummer. She should, and here’s why.

“The endgame is clear: Bank of America wants the women out of power at Alex and Ani.” That’s from a $1.2 billion lawsuit by the women-led company, which is also claiming that Bank of America’s actions “have sent a once-thriving American success story into a death spiral.”

Read the full newsletter or subscribe here.

KQED Arts: Why Do Employers Lowball Creatives? A New Study Has Answers

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By Nastia Voynovskaya

23 May 2019

Larissa Archer has been asked to perform for free so many times she’s lost count.

Despite her years of training, impressive resume and credibility as the founder of San Francisco Bellydance Theater, she often finds herself turning down invitations to dance for a few wrinkled dollar bills. 

As Archer explains it, event producers “can’t cut corners on how much beer costs. They can’t cut corners on the rental of the venue.” But many can, and often do, skimp on the take-home pay of the talent that attracts showgoers in the first place.

And it’s not just small clubs. As KQED first reported in March, despite reaching a valuation of $1 trillion last year, tech giant Apple doesn’t pay the artists performing in its stores, compensating them with low-end merchandise such as AirPods and AppleTVs instead.

Following our report, we heard from graphic designers, musicians, muralists and comedians who say they’re frequently asked to work for “exposure” by companies large and small, sharing tales of missing payments, false promises of paid work and full-time jobs disguised as unpaid internships.

Read the full article on KQED Arts.