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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

New York Times: ‘Hadestown’ Director Rachel Chavkin: Diversity ‘Is Not a Pipeline Issue’

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By Nancy Coleman

9 June 2019

In a Broadway season nearly devoid of female directors, the sole woman at the helm of a musical this year — Rachel Chavkin, director of “Hadestown” — took home the Tony Award for best direction of a musical.

Ms. Chavkin, who was previously nominated in the category for “Natasha, Pierre & The Great Comet of 1812” in 2017, emphasized diversity in the industry in her acceptance speech Sunday night.

“There are so many women who are ready to go. There are so many artists of color who are ready to go. And we need to see that racial diversity and gender diversity reflected in our critical establishment, too,” Ms. Chavkin said in her speech. “This is not a pipeline issue. It is a failure of imagination by a field whose job is to imagine the way the world could be.”

Read the full article in The New York Times.

Ballet Black: FREED POINTE SHOE COLLABORATION

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This year Freed of London have teamed up with Ballet Black founder and artistic director Cassa Pancho MBE and Senior Artist Cira Robinson to create the first skin tone pointe shoes, handmade in the U.K. for black, Asian and mixed race dancers.

After over a year in development, Freed of London has introduced new colours ‘Ballet Bronze’ and ‘Ballet Brown’ to their core collection. The Freed of London ethos has always been to develop shoes to meet the needs of each generation of dancer and these new colours continue to reflect this.

“This wouldn’t of been achievable without the help of everyone involved, especially “Ballet Black” whom we collaborated with to create these beautiful new colours.”
– Freed of London

“I am beyond delighted that Freed have launched these two new colours. Although it may seem like a very small change to the outside world, I believe this is an historic moment in British ballet history and another step forward for culturally diverse dancers across the globe who wear the iconic Freed brand of shoe.

I would like to thank Freed for using their platform to help instigate change, and Cira Robinson, Senior Artist at Ballet Black, for her unending dedication to making this possible.”- Cassa Pancho MBE, Founder & Artistic Director

Read about the collaboration here.

New York Times: Parenthood Is Still Uneven, but an Hour a Day Could Help

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Part of what is holding women back from leadership in ballet is a challenge for women in every field: parenting.

Maya Salam explores this topic in her latest ‘In Her Words’ for The New York Times below:

The invisible, unpaid work that women are often expected to shoulder — like raising children and managing households — is an “urgent matter” of gender justice, according to a new report on modern fatherhood.

The report, The State of the World’s Fathers, which examines data from over two dozen countries and information from nearly 12,000 people, was released this week by Promundo, a global advocacy group focused on gender-equality issues, and MenCare, a campaign focused on men’s family involvement.

Its major finding: that women still spend way more time than men, up to 10 times as much, on unpaid tasks like child care and senior care, as well as on volunteer work and domestic chores.

Read the full article in The New York Times.

Shropshire Star: Choreographer Didy Veldman talks ahead of [Un]leashed show Sense of Time in Birmingham

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By Rebecca Stanley

6 June 2019

Dutch choreographer Didy Veldman has created a brand-new piece for the [Un]leashed triple bill, Sense of Time has been commissioned by BRB as part of their Ballet Now programme and will receive its World Premiere in Birmingham.

“It’s a very physical work. Physical, theatrical, accessible, hopefully touching. A realisation of how we deal with time in our current society,” she says.

“It wasn’t a lightbulb moment, but it is something I’ve been interested in for a while. I am curious about how our society perceives time, why it is so difficult for instance to make time available for each other or for certain moments in our lives.

“Are we slaves to time, always running and catching up with the latest technology, or are we in charge of our own time? Are our dealings with time dependent on our surroundings and how does time manifest itself physically?

“These questions and many more are part of the inspiration of Sense of Time.”

Read the full article in the Shropshire Star.

New York Times: A Ballet ‘Jane Eyre’? Reader, She Dances With Him

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By Roslyn Sulcas

4 June 2019

“You feel trapped, like the walls are closing in,” said the ballet mistress, demonstrating a sequence of frantic, elbow-jutting arms. “Keep the legs low, it’s not about the height, it’s about wanting to get out of here.”

Devon Teuscher, Misty Copeland and Isabella Boylston, the American Ballet Theater principals who are all cast in the title role in Cathy Marston’s “Jane Eyre,” opening at the Metropolitan Opera House on Tuesday, listened intently as they copied the movements and tried to absorb the intentions behind them. It was February, and an early rehearsal for the full-length ballet, based on Charlotte Brontë’s 1847 novel.

With its first-person narrative and intense focus on an interior consciousness, Brontë’s novel isn’t an obvious candidate for a ballet. But Ms. Marston, 43, a British choreographer who has slowly forged a reputation for her ability to create narrative works, seems undaunted by the challenges of transmuting literary complexity into dance.

It was the strength and unpredictability of Jane’s character that attracted her, she said, adding that she was often drawn to strong women as protagonists, including Mrs. Alving in Ibsen’s “Ghosts,” Cathy in “Wuthering Heights” and Queen Victoria — all characters around whom she has created ballets.

Read the full article in The New York Times.

Pointe: How The Australian Ballet’s Alice Topp Went From Coryphée To Resident Choreographer

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By Marissa DeSantis

4 June 2019


Though Australian Ballet coryphée Alice Topp has been dancing since she was four, when it comes to choreographing, she’s just getting started. Topp created her first piece, Trace, on a whim in 2010 as part of The Australian Ballet’s annual Bodytorque program. Since then, she has gone on to make several main stage works for the company, as well as music videos for artists like Ben Folds and Megan Washington; in 2018 she was named one of the The Australian Ballet’s resident choreographers.

Topp plays what she calls “a fine Tetris” to balance her responsibilities as both dancer and choreographer. Yet despite her jet lag and packed schedule of rehearsals and sightseeing, she was bursting with energy when we met in New York during The Australian Ballet’s visit to the Joyce Theater last month, where her ballet Aurum was given its US premiere. “This is the first time my work is being performed overseas,” she says. “To be able to bring it to New York, which is my favorite city in the world—what a debut!”

…

“I think the lack of female choreographers in ballet comes down to a combination of things, and I can only share this from my own experience. It’s not necessarily that the women work a lot harder, but we tend to be there until the end of the night in a lot of those big classical ballets. In Swan Lake, the guys are done after Act III, and we’re there at the very end—it’s the same with Giselle and the Willis and La Bayadère with the Kingdom of the Shades. I think it can be more demanding as a corps.

“Another big thing is just the nature of the work doesn’t lend itself to the individual artistic voice, so you never really nurture that. Those big scenes—the swans, shades, snowflakes, flowers—are about the women dancing in unison, and the guys don’t do as much of that. I think the guys tend to get away with a bit more individualism, and if they’ve got a bit of chutzpah and cowboy attitude, they stand out and it’s rewarded. Whereas women are taught to conform and to fit in, and not to stand out for the wrong reasons. Your goal for the first few years in the company is about fitting in—if you’re one of 24 swans and you spend all day, every day, thinking, ‘Is my arm higher than the other person?,’ or ‘I’m not on the red mark,’ you’re not exploring and exercising that creative part of your brain that’s making different artistic choices.

Read the full article on Pointe’s blog.

HuffPost: Behind The Tutus, Ballet Is A Boys’ Club. This Ballerina Wants To Fix That.

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By Chloe Angyal

15 March 2017

Ballerina Ashley Bouder is crying. She’s standing alone in a rehearsal studio in front of 20 or so dance journalists and several funders of her small self-titled ballet company, and she’s crying. And I’m pretty sure it’s my fault.

She’s just finished showing us a snippet of pas de deux that she choreographed, and that she’ll perform in just over a week’s time with her fellow New York City Ballet principal dancer Andrew Veyette. The entire evening of dancing is devoted to women choreographers and to women composers. In over 15 years of dancing with City Ballet, Bouder tells the assembled crowd, she’s danced works by about 40 choreographers and can count only seven women among them. She can’t name a single woman composer whose music she’s danced to ― not a single one.

Which brings us to why Bouder is crying. I’ve asked her why it matters to her that more women be allowed to choreograph ballets. What does gender have to do with it?, I ask, channeling the purportedly gender-blind proponents of pure, context-free meritocracy. Ballet is ballet, right? Does it really make a difference if it’s made by a man or a woman?

She takes a deep breath, and begins to answer, her voice breaking before she can get more than a few words out. “I think a lot of it is about telling little girls that they can. I have a daughter. As a kid, I was told that I can’t, a lot. For me, to have my voice be relevant, and for people to listen, is really important. To say what I have to say, even if they don’t like it. I get to say it.” The room erupts into applause, and Bouder wipes her eyes and nods, her short brown ponytail bobbing.

Read the full article on HuffPost.

Pointe: Dance Theatre of Harlem Kicks Off Ballet Across America with a New Ballet By Claudia Schreier

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By Theresa Ruth Howard

28 May 2019

The Kennedy Center’s Ballet Across America festival (May 28–June 2) is celebrating women leadership and creativity this year, kicking off with three evenings of performances by Dance Theatre of Harlem. (Miami City Ballet joins them in a shared program on May 31, followed by their own performances.) Led by artistic director Virginia Johnson and executive director Anna Glass, DTH is a natural programming choice; so is bringing choreographer Claudia Schreier’s new ballet for the company, Passage, which has an all-female creative team. The work premiered earlier this month in Norfolk, Virginia, and was originally commissioned by the 2019 Commemoration, American Evolution and the Virginia Arts Festival, which honored the 400th anniversary of the first Africans to English North America. The overarching theme of the ballet celebrates the fortitude of the human spirit and the enduring will to prevail, which is apropos given that this is the 50th anniversary of a company that has seen much tribulation and triumph.

Passage shares the program with three older DTH ballets: Balanchine’s Valse Fantaisie, Geoffrey Holder’s Dougla and Dianne McIntyre’s 2016 work Change. Schreier started working with the company last summer, shortly before the passing of founder Arthur Mitchell; hers was the first rehearsal at DTH after his loss. “Just walking through a hallowed hall… to see the studio that was the launching point for so many historical works brings a sense of gravitas to every thing,” Schreier remarks. “It’s an enormous responsibility to carry the knowledge that you, with the dancers, are carrying that legacy forward.”

Read the full article on Pointe’s blog.

Pointe Magazine on Ballet Across America

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Chava Lansky for Pointe Magazine writes, “The Kennedy Center’s fifth annual Ballet Across America festival runs from May 28-June 2, and it shines a spotlight on women’s creativity and leadershipby presenting two female-led companies: Dance Theatre of Harlem and Miami City Ballet. May 28-30, audiences can see DTH in George Balanchine’s Valse Fantasie, Dianne McIntyre’s Change, Claudia Schreier’s Passage and Geoffrey Holder’s Dougla. June 1-2, MCB presents Balanchine’s Walpurgisnacht Ballet, Sir Kenneth MacMillan’s Carousel Pas de Deux, the jointly choreographed Brahms/Handel by Jerome Robbins and Twyla Tharp, and Justin Peck’s Heatscape. On May 31 the companies come together for a shared program; dancers from both ensembles present the world premiere of Pam Tanowitz’s Gustave Le Grey No. 1 to a score by Caroline Shaw.”

Read the full article on Pointe’s blog.

Watch Miami City Ballet’s preview for Ballet Across America below.

The Telegraph: From female nudes to the Ballet Russe: Natalia Goncharova, the avant-garde rebel painter

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By Rosamund Bartlett

1 June 2019

On March 24 1910, in the heart of old Moscow, the plush surroundings of a club for the cultural elite became the scene of a scandal. In the space of a few years, the Free Aesthetics Society had achieved renown for its weekly meetings devoted to contemporary poetry, music and art. On this occasion there was to be a lecture, and the first solo exhibition of a young artist.

It was a one-day event for members only, but word had got out, and a journalist of the old school bribed a member of staff in order to gain entry, intent on exposing the decadence of this den of aesthetes. In the next morning’s paper, he denounced as an abomination the 20 or so paintings on show, singling out a few that, in his…

Read the full article in The Telegraph.