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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

Meet the Choreographer: Annabelle Lopez Ochoa

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By Liza Yntema, DDP Founder and President

DDP Founder and President Liza Yntema had the pleasure of interviewing choreographer Annabelle Lopez Ochoa for DDP’s latest Meet the Artist. Read the article below and learn more about Annabelle Lopez Ochoa on her website, here.

Liza Yntema (LY): Can you tell me about your background, both as a dancer and as a choreographer?

Annabelle Lopez Ochoa (ALO): I trained in the classical Vaganova technique at the Royal Ballet of Flanders for seven years, along with some Martha Graham technique, jazz, and flamenco. Then I danced in four different companies in Germany and The Netherlands for 12 years, going from a Dance Theatre based group in Germany, to a modern jazz troupe in Holland, and ending at the Scapino Ballet, a contemporary dance company in Rotterdam, where I choreographed my first pieces during the annual choreographers’ workshop. The company’s artistic director, Ed Wubbe, noticed my talent and subsequently commissioned a new work of mine for the company. The same happened after I made a short duet during the choreographers’ workshop at the Dutch National Ballet. After seeing the work, Ted Brandsen commissioned me to create a new work for the company – this would be my first ballet piece with the dancers en pointe.

LY: What was your first piece?

ALO: I started choreographing at the age of 11, so I’m not quite sure what I would count as my first piece. I suppose I could choose “Symbiosis,” my first creation for the 1997 choreographers’ workshop at Scapino Ballet. It was a short female duet based on a French rhyme that I had written during my daily commute on the train. The piece became very popular and was performed for a few years by the Codarts students.

Annabelle Lopez Ochoa, Liza Yntema, and BalletX artistic director Christine Cox together at the opening night of The Little Prince, Lopez Ochoa’s 2019 commission for the company.

LY: What obstacles have you had to overcome?

ALO: Obstacles are there for you to bounce back from average work you make or bad reviews you get. Finding solutions to problem tickles my creativity. I have had lots of average work, and I still get bad reviews! I keep learning and keep growing as an artist.

It just doesn’t take as long anymore to bounce back from a bad review. Each time I am reminded that I am lucky to be a choreographer instead of a dance reviewer in this life.

LY: Tell us about your 2019-2020 Schedule?

ALO: My 2019-20 season is jam-packed with 11 premieres and nine revivals, comprised of three full-length ballets:

  • Chamber Dance Project – Rondo ma Non Troppo (June 20, 2019)
  • BalletX- The Little Prince [world premiere] (July 10, 2019) and at Joyce Theater (Oct 1-6, 2019)
  • DTH – Balamouk [extended version] premiering at Jacob’s Pillow (July 9-14, 2019)
  • Incolballet – Memorias del Dorado (July 19, 2019)
  • Arnott Dance – Khepri (July 24, 2019)
  • Kansas City Ballet – Tulips and Lobster (Oct 11-13 & Oct 18-20, 2019)
  • The Washington Ballet – Delusional Beauty (Oct 23-27, 2019)
  • BalletMet- New World Premiere (Oct 25-27, 2019 & Oct 31- Nov 2, 2019)
  • Nashville Ballet- A Streetcar Name desire [US premiere] (Nov 1-3, 2019) 
  • Ballet Nacional de Cuba – Celeste (Nov 1-3, 2019)
  • Ballet Hispanico – New Work (Nov 22-23, 2019)
  • HNB – Frida (Feb 6-25, 2020)
  • Central School of Ballet – Requiem for a Rose (March 2020)
  • Cincinnati Ballet- Bloom [US premiere] (March 19-21, 2020) 
  • Tulsa Ballet – Vendetta [US premiere] (March 26-29, 2020) 
  • Smuin Ballet – Requiem for a Rose [revival] (April 24, 2020)
  • Diablo Ballet- Cylindrical Shadows [revival] (May 1-3, 2020) 
  • Josh Beamish – New Solo & Duet (May 5, 2020) 
  • Whim W’Him – New Work (May 29-30, 2020)
  • Jacob’s Pillow – New Work for the Contemporary Classical Summer School (June 13, 2020)

 

LY: Do you have any future commissions you can discuss?

ALO: The future doesn’t exist and has no certainty, so I rather not discuss it. What I am certain about is that the premiere of The Little Prince is approaching soon [DDP note: at the time of interview], and it has been a beautiful journey to work with BalletX and dig deep into the symbolism of Antoine de Saint-Exupery’s wonderful story.

LY: What motivates you? A piece of music, a story?

ALO: The concept usually comes first, then the music.

LY: Tell us about your relationship with BalletX: Christine Cox has supported so many emerging artists.

ALO: Christine invited me in 2008 to create a work for an all-female choreographers’ evening. I think I might have been the first overseas choreographer at the time. She is fearless- she didn’t let the whole visa application process phase her.

Since then, Christine has invited me three more times. BalletX has really grown as an art institution in Philadelphia, and I have grown and matured as a choreographer. The Little Prince will be my fourth piece for the company. I think that Christine focuses on the potential of artists and hence invites them back. I am forever grateful to her.

Program from BalletX’s world premiere of Lopez Ochoa’s The Little Prince . Photo of program by Liza Yntema. Image of Roderick Phifer of BalletX. Photo by Gabriel Bienczycki.

LY: What might change the culture of ballet to allow more talented women to emerge?

ALO: Parents should allow their daughter(s) to behave in a more “masculine” way. Why do we make a difference between games boys versus girls should play? Young girls, with their leadership instinct, should be allowed to pick their teams in gym class and be captains of a soccer team. We need to stop talking to young girls about the fact that marriage and becoming a mother is the highest form of success and happiness one can achieve. Our happiness should not depend on others.

In ballet school you are taught that if you get chosen for the main character, the princess or the ingenue who is cheated on by a prince, you made it. Seriously?

We should make the other roles just as important. Who are the villagers in Giselle? What is the backstory of the corps of swans? Please, let’s give the corps de ballet more identity instead of screaming at them to stand in line on the right count. Let’s inspire these young women.

That being said, you can’t impose choreography on a woman for the sake of creating more female choreographers. Unlike choreographers, some artists simply love being the vehicle of someone’s creation- and they’re great at it. However, if there is a female choreographer with potential, please don’t ditch them after their first work just because it wasn’t as amazing as you had hoped. Masterworks come much later in one’s life and career, and that is the difference between young male and female choreographers. Male choreographers are given a second opportunity much faster than their female counterparts. Hence, they grow faster at their craft.

Smuin Contemporary Ballet rehearses Annabelle Lopez Ochoa’s Requiem for a Rose (2016). Photo by Chris Hardy, courtesy of Smuin Contemporary Ballet.

LY: Do you have a dream ballet or an idea you carry around with you?

ALO: If I had, I wouldn’t tell it.

LY: So, what is home right now? You are on the road so much.

ALO: I’m a Buddhist, I don’t give much importance to material things. Home is the place where happiness is. It can be anywhere. But my fiscal address is in Amsterdam.

LY: Do you have a routine for preparing a piece? Thinking it through?

ALO: I think a lot, and I’m aware I should be writing more down. That being said, when I work on a narrative ballet, I usually start with the script six months in advance, and I update it as I rehearse. When it is an abstract ballet, I hardly write anything down (except my search for a title can be found in my notebooks). I find that creativity happens mostly in the studio with the dancers, but can also happen on the street, in the shower, at an exhibition, or while observing any human behavior.

LY: How about what restores you? Spending time with family? Meditation?

ALO: I try to disconnect once a year: turning off the internet, watching and listening to the sound of the waves, and reading books.

I always meditate for a hot second right before rehearsal starts – that’s why in that moment I can never hold a conversation.

LY: Are you still dancing yourself? 

ALO: I don’t dance anymore, except every now and then I’ll dance to salsa or 80’s music. Dancing is good for the soul!

LY: Any thoughts about how Dance Data Project can better serve women leaders in ballet and connect you with funders? the press?

ALO: Give women visibility. Have them be interviewed for magazines like Vogue, etc. to reach to a larger spectrum of young women. Make documentaries. Anything that receives exposure becomes a normalcy, and hopefully in 20 years we won’t be having this gender gap discussion anymore, and we will simply be talking about artists and leaders.

Tamara Rojo as Frida in Broken Wings by Annabelle Lopez Ochoa. Photo by Laurent Liotardo.

Find out more about The Little Prince here.

AFTER NYCB IS FORCED TO HIRE BACK RAMASAR, HE GETS ANOTHER GIG ON BROADWAY – PERPETUATING THE ISSUE?

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‘West Side Story’ Producers Announce Cast for Broadway Revival

By Julia Jacobs

10 June 2019

The reimagined production of “West Side Story” from the experimental Belgian director Ivo van Hove will open on Feb. 6 at the Broadway Theater, the producers announced on Wednesday. They also named the show’s full cast, which includes 23 actors making their Broadway debuts.

Isaac Powell, best known for playing the young love interest in the 2017 revival of “Once on This Island,” will be Tony, a former leader of the Jets street gang. Shereen Pimentel, an undergraduate at the Juilliard School who made her Broadway debut in “The Lion King” at 9 years old, will be Maria.

Portraying Bernardo, Maria’s brother and leader of the Puerto Rican gang the Sharks, is Amar Ramasar, a principal dancer with New York City Ballet who had a prime role in the 2018 Broadway revival of “Carousel.”

Mr. Ramasar returned to the City Ballet stage in May after he was fired for sending sexually explicit photographs of a female colleague in the company. 

Read the full article in The New York Times.

The Guardian: ‘I’m beyond anger’ – why the great pay gap reveal is an explosive moment for gender equality

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By Amelia Gentleman

28 February 2018

A badly designed and painfully clunky page hidden away on the Government Equalities Office website is beginning to grab the attention of women all over the country. If you work for a company that employs more than 250 people and you haven’t looked at the site yet, set aside some time and prepare for your eyeballs to spring from their sockets.

The government’s gender pay gap reporting website opens up for scrutiny the hidden power dynamics inside all mid-sized to large organisations, revealing pay differences between male and female staff, and the proportion of women in the best- and the worst-paid roles. With a month to go before the deadline for reporting, the site is already having an explosive impact on how women view their employers.

Last week, a female senior manager at Barclays investment bank in London opened the site, searched for her own company and discovered that women’s median hourly rate is 43.5% lower than male colleagues and that women’s bonuses are 73.3% lower. It was an unpleasant sensation, confirming in black and white something that she had long suspected. Perhaps most revealingly, the website also divides organisations into four groups according to the amount staff are paid – the best-paid quartile, the second best, the third best and the worst quartile. At Barclays, 81% of the best-paid employees are men; 63% of the worst paid are women.

“Sadly, I wasn’t shocked,” the woman, who has asked not to be named, says. At 29, she is paid very well but is conscious of younger male colleagues advancing faster through the ranks. The pay gap data has crystallised her desire to quit. “Junior women are feeling very dispirited and upset. The figures made me feel that this organisation isn’t the right place for me, that it won’t let me achieve my potential.”

Read the full article in The Guardian.

Broadway World: BWW Review: BARAK BALLET BOURREES BACK TO THE BROAD WITH NEW REPERTOIRE at The Broad Stage

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9 July 2019

Melissa Barak’s Ballet Company, Barak Ballet, is becoming a staple at the Broad Stage in Santa Monica.

Since 2013, they have been appearing annually and she has continually delivered her talent and creativity to her home town. A native Santa Monican, she is now one of America’s foremost rising female choreographers. Ms. Barak spent a decade dancing for New York City Ballet and choreographing for the School and Company of American Ballet at age 22. And her tenacity has paid off.

On the program were three new works, the first being choreographed by South African born Andi Schermoly, entitled “Within Without,” which explores the pain women endure when a pregnancy does not come to fruition; featuring Julia Erickson, Zachary Guthier and Stephanie Kim, to several haunting and beautiful pieces of music by Vivaldi, The Chopin Project and an operatic vocal solo “Cessate, omai cessate,” it begins with a fervent female solo, very nicely done. 

Read the full article on Broadway World.

Broadway World: WOMEN RISING Comes To The Ford Theatres, August 16

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9 July 2019

Ford Theatres presents Women Rising – Choreography from the Female Perspective, a program assembled and produced by Deborah Brockus, artistic director of the annual Los Angeles Dance Festival, featuring a stellar line up of ten Los Angeles-area choreographers and dance companies on Friday, August 16 at 8:30pm at Ford Theatres.

The companies include Blue13 Dance (Achinta S. McDaniel), BrockusRED (Deborah Brockus), Heidi Duckler Dance, JazzAntiqua (Pat Taylor), Kitty McNamee, Kybele Dance Theatre (Seda Aybay), LA Contemporary Dance Company (Genevieve Carson), Luminario Ballet (Judith FLEX Helle) presenting “Turf” by Bella Lewitzky, , MashUP Contemporary Dance Company (Victoria Brown and Sarah Rodenhouse) starting the show in a production number by JoAnn Divito, Rosanna Gamson/Worldwide, and Whyteberg (Gracie Whyte and Laura Berg).

Filling every inch of the Ford with dance, Women Rising celebrates both the groundbreaking work of the Los Angeles-based female choreographers that were instrumental in the creation of modern dance beginning in the early 1900s. That creative excellence lives on today in the current generation of female choreographers, whose styles are influenced by modern, jazz, Bollywood and contemporary but who share the perspective that comes from being a woman creating dance in Los Angeles today.

Read the full article on Broadway World.

Dance Magazine: If the World Cup Champions Were Dancers, Here’s What Style They’d Do

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By Lauren Wigenroth

8 July 2019

Congratulations to the U.S. Women’s National Soccer Team for their epic World Cup dominance! Now that the tournament is over and we’re basking in all the patriotic feminist glory, we decided to do the only thing that made sense to us as soccer-obsessed dancers: Decide what kind of dancers the USWNT players would be if they made sudden and drastic career changes.

We’ve been watching their technique closely for weeks now, and have come up with what we’re pretty sure is a definitive and highly accurate list:

Megan Rapinoe: Contemporary Ballet 

You’re probably familiar with star forward Megan Rapinoe’s port de bras. But have you seen her attitude derrière?! We’re honestly envious. Pinoe clearly has the technique for ballet, but with her penchant for pink hair and outspokenness (which we love!), we think a contemporary troupe would be the best fit.

Read the whole list on Dance Magazine’s blog.

Wall Street Journal: A Popular Women’s World Cup Raises Pressure for More Prize Money

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By Rachel Bachman

8 July 2019

LYON, France—FIFA president Gianni Infantino called the 2019 World Cup phenomenal, incredible, fantastic, the best Women’s World Cup ever. He added: “There will be a before, and an after, the Women’s World Cup 2019, in terms of women’s football.”

Such success has immediately raised a difficult question for FIFA: With record-setting TV ratings around the world, and a four-time U.S. champion whose players have made issue of pay equity, how much should the prize money be paid to women’s teams be increased?

Read the full article in The Wall Street Journal.

New York Times: The Dominance of the White Male Critic

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By Elizabeth Méndez Berry and Chi-hui Yang

5 July 2019

“It’s 2019 and we are in the middle of a renaissance in black artistic production. And you are telling me the best people to evaluate that are the same ones who basically ignored black artists for decades?” the art critic Antwaun Sargent tweeted in May.

He was referring to reviews of this year’s Whitney Biennial, which will close in late September. But he could have been writing about reviews of film, theater, dance, even hip-hop.

The curators were a black woman and a white woman, and a majority of the artists they featured were people of color. Half were women; many were young.

But in major media outlets, white critics wrote the reviews that defined the conversation about the country’s pre-eminent contemporary art show. But not without resistance.

When Peter Schjeldahl of The New Yorker described photographs by John Edmonds as “slang,” some readers wondered if he did so only because the artist and his subjects were black. After Deborah Solomon of WNYC called “white supremacy” a “tired academic slogan” in her positive review of the artist Nicholas Galanin’s “White Noise, American Prayer Rug,” he challenged her online.

Read the full article in The New York Times.

Four Companies Announce Upcoming Seasons – With Highly Inclusive Seasons from ABT and Hubbard Street

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Four companies have announced their upcoming seasons following May 19, 2019. American Ballet Theatre, Hubbard Street Dance Chicago, Los Angeles Ballet and California Ballet announced their seasons, with new work by women in both ABT and HSDC’s roster.


Of the total works announced in the four companies’ new seasons, 38% will be choreographed by women. Forty-three percent of the mixed-repertory works will be choreographed by women and no full-length works by women have been announced, however two full-length works by Los Angeles Ballet’s co-founders, a male-female team, will be included in the company’s season.


American Ballet Theatre’s season will be 64% works by women. All of the company’s premieres will be female-choreographed work. Similarly, the majority (67%) of Hubbard Street Dance Chicago’s premieres will be works by women.


These newly-announced seasons come at a great time following DDP’s May “First Look” report, which revealed a lack of female work in the upcoming season. American Ballet Theatre and Hubbard Street Dance Chicago are among the best in terms of including world premieres of female choreographers on the main stage.


Figures from our First Look report (in which the aforementioned companies’ seasons were not included) will be compared with the figures depicting gender distributions within the 2018/19 season of the Top 50 companies in our upcoming July report. Find the July report soon on our website.

WHY AREN’T WOMEN ADVANCING MORE IN CORPORATE AMERICA?

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More than 40 years ago, the Harvard business professor Rosabeth Moss Kanter published a pivotal book, “Men and Women of the Corporation.” Kanter showed that the disadvantages women experienced at work couldn’t be attributed to their lack of ambition: Women aspired to leadership as much as men did. But organizations often funneled women into jobs that didn’t have much of a career ladder.

By understanding gender-based expectations at work, some women were able to overcome them. From the 1970s into the 1990s, women made serious progress in the workplace, achieving higher positions, closing the gender wage gap and moving into male-dominated fields. Then that progress stalled, especially at the top. Why?

To answer that question, I talked with two experts who direct centers for leadership: Katherine W. Phillips, a professor of organizational management at Columbia University, and Shelley Correll, a sociologist at Stanford. They’ve known each other for a long time; they went to graduate school together.

[Why are some of America’s wealthiest professionals so miserable in their jobs? Read more in our Future of Work Issue.]

Emily Bazelon: At this point in our history, what are the major barriers to women’s advancement, and how do we dismantle them?

Katherine Phillips: Let’s start with the double bind that women face. If they’re perceived as nice and warm and nurturing, as they’re expected to be, they don’t show what it takes to move into a leadership position. But when they take charge to get things done, they’re often seen as angrier or more aggressive than men. It’s like a tightrope women are asked to walk: Veer just a bit one way or the other, and they may fall off.

Shelley Correll: Yes, women in leadership positions are seen as less likable when they do the same things male leaders do. That was a problem for Hillary Clinton and now Nancy Pelosi.

Read the full article in The New York Times.