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March 26th: New & Experimental Works (NEW) Program, March 31st: SIA Foundation Grants, April 1st: Palm Desert Choreography Festival, April 1st: New England States Touring (NEST 1 and 2), April 17th: World Arts West (WAW) Cultural Dance Catalyst Fund, September 14th: New England Dance Fund, October 13th: Community Arts Grant - Zellerbach Family Foundation, December 1st: Culture Forward Grant - The Svane Family Foundation, December 31st: National Dance Project Presentation Grants - New England Foundation for the Arts, December 31st: National Dance Project Travel Fund, December 31st: New England Presenter Travel Fund

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DDP Talks To

"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: 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.

BalletX: Meet the Creative Team Behind ‘The Little Prince’!

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BalletX presents The Little Prince, opening July 10-21 at The Wilma Theater. This world premiere full-length story ballet is unlike anything the company has done before!
Meet the amazing collaborators behind The Little Prince, and secure your seats today–tickets going fast!!!
Annabelle Lopez Ochoa, Choreographer
Won the UK’s Critics’ Circle National Award for Best Classical Choreography for Streetcar Named Desire, and is the 2019 recipient of Jacob Pillow’s Dance Award.
Peter Salem, Composer/Musician
Won the Best Television Programme Music category at the Music and Sound Awards 2016 for composing the soundtrack to BBC’s hit TV show Call the Midwife.
Matt Saunders, Set Designer
Designed Opera Philadelphia’s critically acclaimed 2017 premiere We Shall Not Be Moved, which toured to NYC’s Apollo Theater and London’s Hackney Empire Theatre.
Danielle Truss, Costume Designer
Costume creator for Tulsa Ballet, Les Grands Ballets Des Canadiens and Linea Recta for Ballet Hispanico. Costume shop manager at Grand Rapids Ballet.
Michael Korsch, Lighting Designer
Longtime resident lighting designer/technical director for Complexions Contemporary Ballet, Ballet Arizona, and the Laguna Dance Festival, among several leading companies.
Nancy Meckler, Dramaturg
Theater director whose credits include productions with the Kennedy Center, Shakespeare’s Globe, and the UK’s Shared Experience, where she was Artistic Director for twenty-two years.

Learn more on BalletX’s website!

New York Times: Obama Signs Equal-Pay Legislation

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By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG

29 January 2009

WASHINGTON — President Obama signed his first bill into law on Thursday, approving equal-pay legislation that he said would “send a clear message that making our economy work means making sure it works for everybody.”

Mr. Obama was surrounded by a group of beaming lawmakers, most but not all of them Democrats, in the East Room of the White House as he affixed his signature to the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, a law named for an Alabama woman who at the end of a 19-year career as a supervisor in a tire factory complained that she had been paid less than men.

After a Supreme Court ruling against her, Congress approved the legislation that expands workers’ rights to sue in this kind of case, relaxing the statute of limitations.

“It is fitting that with the very first bill I sign — the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act — we are upholding one of this nation’s first principles: that we are all created equal and each deserve a chance to pursue our own version of happiness,” the president said.

He said was signing the bill not only in honor of Ms. Ledbetter — who stood behind him, shaking her head and clasping her hands in seeming disbelief — but in honor of his own grandmother, “who worked in a bank all her life, and even after she hit that glass ceiling, kept getting up again” and for his daughters, “because I want them to grow up in a nation that values their contributions, where there are no limits to their dreams.”

Read the full article in The New York Times.

Dance Magazine: Brooklyn Mack Thought It Was a Prank When ABT Asked Him to Guest—and Now He’s Dancing the Opening Night of Le Corsaire

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By Marina Harss

11 June 2019

After almost a decade at The Washington Ballet, Brooklyn Mack has struck out on his own. Last summer, after unsuccessful contract negotiations with the company—now under the direction of Julie Kent—the 32-year-old star decided to go it alone. So far, his full-time freelance career has taken him to Hong Kong, Mexico, Norway, Russia, Georgia (the country, not the state) and various cities across the U.S. But his biggest debut is still to come. This month, he appears with American Ballet Theatre at the Metropolitan Opera House for four performances of Le Corsaire, playing both Conrad and Ali.

How did the invitation come about?

I was contacted on Instagram by Kevin McKenzie’s assistant. At first, I thought I was being pranked!

Has ABT always been a goal for you?

Most kids dream about dancing at ABT, and I was no exception. Actually, I spent one year in the Studio Company when I was 18 (in 2005). Isabella Boylston, Cory Stearns and Thomas Forster were all there at the time. So I’m excited to reconnect.

Read the full interview on Dance Magazine’s blog.

Philanthropy Women: Time and Space to Create: Ways Funders Can Help Women Artists

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By Julia Travers

27 June 2019

Being a working artist is demanding. Most artists hold other jobs to support themselves, which limits their studio time.

“It’s a cycle. You don’t have the time to create the work, so you can’t create enough work to sell to support yourself financially, so you need to have the job, which takes up your time. It’s hard to get out of that loop,” says Rhode Island artist Kathy Hodge . Hodge is an award-winning artist with many exhibitions and shows to her name who also served as the Artist in Residence at multiple U.S. national parks. Because the gender gap is still prevalent in the art world, as in many sectors and professions, women artists like Hodge are in particular need of support.

Gender Disparity in the Arts

In 2019, the Freelands Foundation in England released its report, “Representation of Female Artists in Britain During 2018.” It’s the fourth study of its kind from the arts-focused charity that focuses on “the lack of sufficient support for female and emerging artists,” among other issues. The report’s author, Kate McMillan, an artist and fellow at King’s College, London, found while progress has been made, the “slow pace mirrors what is happening in other sectors across the world.” She cites “The Global Gender Gap Report 2018” from the World Economic Forum, which estimates it will take 108 years to achieve gender parity at current rates of change.

Read the full post on Philanthropy Women.

Scene from Citizen, Choreography by Laurie Stallings, Courtesy of American Ballet Theatre, Photo by Rosalie O'Connor

New York Times: Female Choreographers Take Center Stage in Ballet Theatre’s Fall Season

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By Michael Cooper

27 June 2019

American Ballet Theater’s Women’s Movement — a recent initiative to support female choreographers, who have often struggled to get their dances staged by major companies — will yield more fruit this fall, when the company will present world premieres of ballets by Twyla Tharp and Gemma Bond and the New York premiere of a Jessica Lang work.

The season, which the company announced Thursday, will open Oct. 16 with a gala featuring the premiere of the new Tharp ballet, which will be set to Brahms’s String Quintet No. 2 in G major, Op. 111. The gala will also feature the New York premiere of Ms. Lang’s “Let Me Sing Forevermore,” a pas de deux set to a medley of songs recorded by Tony Bennett.

The following week the company will give the world premiere of a new work by Ms. Bond, a member of its corps de ballet, which she is setting to Benjamin Britten’s “Suite on English Folk Tunes.” And Ballet Theater will bring back a number of other works by women during the fall season, including Ms. Tharp’s popular “Deuce Coupe,” set to music by the Beach Boys; Ms Lang’s “Garden Blue,” which had its premiere last fall; and Michelle Dorrance’s “Dream within a Dream (deferred),” set to the music of Duke Ellington.

Read the full article in The New York Times.