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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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"The Devil Ties My Tongue" by Amy Seiwert performed for the SKETCH Series, 2013. Photo by David DeSilva. Courtesy of Amy Seiwert's Imagery

NYU: The Center for Ballet and the Arts Fellowship Announcement

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Announcing 2019-2010 Director’s Fellows

We are thrilled to announce CBA’s 2019 – 2020 Director’s Fellows: choreographer and filmmaker Kim Brandstrup and performing arts critic and author Alastair Macaulay.

The Director’s Fellowship gives a CBA residency to artists, scholars, and practitioners who have made significant contributions to the field of ballet. Director’s Fellows bring deep expertise and informed practical guidance to the residency, strengthening the work of CBA’s fellows, staff, and community at large.

Read the full press release on the website of The Center for Ballet and the Arts.

Independent: Birmingham Royal Ballet, (Un)leashed, Sadler’s Wells, review: Laura Day is a pugnacious female Peter in urban take on Peter and the Wolf

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By Zoë Anderson

In [Un]leashed, Birmingham Royal Ballet (BRB) shows off alert, individual dancers in a programme by women choreographers. Didy Veldman’s new Sense of Time lacks focus, but the dancers highlight the delicacy of Jessica Lang’s Lyric Pieces and the nimble characterisation of Ruth Brill’s new Peter and the Wolf.

This London season will be BRB’s last under director David Bintley, who has led the company since 1995. It shows some of the key qualities of Bentley’s tenure: his commitment to new work, his record of programming work by women (all too rare among ballet directors) and, alongside this triple bill, his own popular romcom, Hobson’s Choice.

Lang’s Lyric Pieces, created in 2012, sets dancers moving fleetly through Grieg piano pieces, weaving in and out of a folding paper set. Maureya Lebowitz and Celine Gittens are standouts in a bright cast.

See the full article in The Independent.

Just Released: Boards of Directors & Trustees Analysis

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The following is a report on the gender distribution of leaders within the Top 50 domestic companies’ Boards of Directors and Boards of Trustees. The data is separated into two subsections: Chair Gender Distribution and Executive Committee Gender Distribution. DDP cites sources and expresses limitations at the end of the report.Download the June 2019 Report

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The City Paper Bogata: Scottish Dance Theatre delivers its double bill Ritualia/TuTuMucky at Teatro Mayor

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21 June 2019

The Teatro Mayor Julio Mario Santo Domingo is bringing the very best of UK culture to Colombia as part of a year-long program to host the United Kingdom as its Guest Nation of Honor. Starting with the first-ever performance in the country by the Academy of Ancient Music to the much-anticipated concert in May of the London Symphony Orchestra under the baton of Sir Simon Rattle, and recent piano recital by Benjamin Grosvenor, the main stage of the Teatro Mayor is also the venue for representatives of other artistic genres; including theatre with a romping – almost tribal – take on Dickens’ Oliver Twist by the Avant Guard Dance Company, and on June 22, the double bill “Ritualia/TuTuMucky” by the Scottish Dance Theatre.

Based in Dundee, Scotland, the Scottish Dance Theatre is also marking its first performance in Colombia with a work by Colette Sadler inspired by Bronislava Nijiaka’s ballet Les Noces and set to the music of Igor Stravinski. The second performance of the evening is TuTuMucky by the London choreographer Botis Seva.

With its focus on the physicality of dance, the Scottish Dance Theatre delivers an energetic production. Adding to a narrative that elevates classical dance with avant-garde sequences, Ritualia celebrates gender and the body as an extension of the natural world. “There is also the idea of the body as a way to gain power, to empower ourselves,” states Joan Clevillé, the theatre’s artistic director. “I think there’s a sense of urgency, of moving in a very visceral way and finding a very urban language. It’s a very different contrast between the two pieces.”

Read the full article in the City Paper Bogata.

Inside Philanthropy: Gender Norms Don’t Get Enough Attention from Funders. Here’s How Philanthropy Can do Better

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By Riki Wichins

20 June 2019

In many ways, social justice funding stands at a crossroads. The field has traditionally been animated by a strong impulse toward racial equity, using philanthropy as a means to challenge the infinite ways that that opportunity in America continues to be stratified by race and class.

At the same time, funders themselves are increasingly aware that race and class are “not enough,” that to really address complex and intractable issues of equity, there must be more. But what might that be?

One buzzy answer to this question is intersectionality—to recognize that those living in disinvested communities often must contend with several different kinds of oppression that interact, and that one or even two-dimensional models are not enough.

An intersectional approach can be particularly important when addressing individuals who make their lives at the borders of identity—who are not just black or Latinx, but also low-income, gay or trans, living with a disability, or living without proper immigration paperwork.

And then, of course, there’s also gender. Some social justice funders interpret addressing genderto mean increased equity for women and girls; others to mean funding issues affecting LGBTQ and other gender-nonconforming individuals.

By either measure, the field has far to go. Funding specifically devoted to women and girls totals only about 7 percent of total U.S. foundation grants (about $400 million); to LGBTQ issues, less than 2 percent (about $180 million).

And then there are gender norms. While virtually ignored in the U.S. when it comes to social justice funding, major international donors have thoroughly embraced it. Institutions like CARE, PEPFAR, UNAIDS, UNFPA, USAID, WHO and the World Bank have all implemented “gender transformative” initiatives that challenge rigid gender norms, and found them effective.

USAID no longer funds new programs that lack a strong analysis of gender norms and the inequities they cause; PEPFAR has made addressing masculine norms its No. 3 priority worldwide.

Read the full article on Inside Philanthropy.

BalletX: Sneakpeek of Annabelle Lopez Ochoa’s ‘The Little Prince’

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Watch a sneak peek of BalletX’s newest commission: The Little Prince. The work will be full-length – one of very few by women this season.

Courtesy of BalletX.

The Guardian Praises an Inclusive Company – and Its Female Programming – Birmingham Royal Ballet Continues To Shine

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Birmingham Royal Ballet: Unleashed review – ravishing risk-taking

By Laura Joffre

16 June 2019

We are used to seeing Birmingham Royal Ballet in traditional classical productions, in which they always excel. But this mixed bill sees the company in a more contemporary mode, experimenting with distinctive styles in pieces by three female choreographers.

Jessica Lang’s Lyric Pieces, created for the company in 2012, illustrates Edvard Grieg’s piano suites with pure classical ballet. It is not the most innovative work, but harmonious ensembles and flawless dancing, particularly from elegant Yvette Knight and sharp and precise Maureya Lebowitz, raise the overall effect.

Read the full review in The Guardian.

New York Times: Gender Stereotypes Banned in British Advertising

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When Can These Stereotypes Be Eliminated From the Stage?

By Valeriya Safronova

14 June 2019

Men unable to change diapers; women cleaning while men kick their feet up on the couch; women having trouble with parking: Scenes like these, which play on gender stereotypes, are now banned in British advertisements. Britain’s advertising regulator announced the changes in December, but companies were given a six-month adjustment period before they took effect.

The U.K.’s Advertising Standards Authority said in a statement that it will also ban ads that connect physical features with success in the romantic or social spheres; assign stereotypical personality traits to boys and girls, such as bravery for boys and tenderness for girls; suggest that new mothers should prioritize their looks or home cleanliness over their emotional health; and mock men for being bad at stereotypically “feminine” tasks, such as vacuuming, washing clothes or parenting.

The guidelines were developed after a report from the regulator found that gender-stereotypical imagery and rhetoric “can lead to unequal gender outcomes in public and private aspects of people’s lives.” The report came on the heels of a few British ads that perpetuated negative assumptions about women, including one for Protein World, a weight-loss drink, which paired a bikini-clad model with the question: “Are you beach body ready?” The posters inspired a Change.org petition with more than 70,000 signatures demanding the removal of the ads.

Read the full article in The New York Times.

ELLE: Hadestown Director Rachel Chavkin on the Story Behind Her Viral Tony Awards Speech

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By Bri Kovan

17 June 2019

Last Sunday night, Tony-winning director Rachel Chavkin’s acceptance speech set the internet ablaze with a call-to-arms about diversity on Broadway, asking theater producers (and their counterparts in other industries) to hire artists of color and women artists. “It’s not a pipeline issue,” said Chavkin, who was the only woman to direct a Broadway musical this season. “It’s a failure of imagination.” On stage, Chavkin championed Hadestown, which uses the mythological love stories of Orpheus and Eurydice, and Hades and Persephone as vehicles to discuss workers’ rights, climate change, and authoritarian leadership. (To dive into the show’s folksy New Orleans milieu, check out Hadestown‘s performance from the 73rd Annual Tony Awards, starring Reeve Carney.) The show won eight of its 14 nominations at the Tonys, including best musical, best director, and best original score for singer-songwriter Anaïs Mitchell. It’s the first musical by an all-female principal team to win best musical.

Next up, the Maryland native dives into her next set of projects: Lempicka, a feminist paean to the midcentury Russian artist Tamara de Lempicka, living in Paris between world wars; Annie Salem, an adaptation of Mac Wellman’s 1996 novel, which uses science fiction to understand racism in the post-industrial Rust Belt; and Moby-Dick, her next collaboration with Dave Malloy (of 2017’s Natasha, Pierre & The Great Comet of 1812, for which Chavkin earned her first Tony nod). “We’re trying to use the ‘great American novel’ to wrestle with twenty-first century America,” she says. “It deals with white supremacy—the whiteness of the whale takes on loaded significance in this adaptation—but also climate change. What’s our relationship to nature as hunters, consumers of nature?”

Read the full article on elle.com

Chicago Tribune: Review: ‘Internal Geometry’ by Natya Dance Theatre is hardly radical but has women telling the story

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By Lauren Warnecke

15 June 2019

Perhaps I’ll start at the end. In the post-performance Q&A for “The Internal Geometry,” a world premiere by Natya Dance Theatre at Links Hall, artistic director Hema Rajagopalan spoke about the origins of Bharatanatyam. The traditional South Indian dance began in the temples as an artistic language imparted by the gods to communicate the scriptures though rhythm, expression and drama. It’s a tradition spanning 3,000 years, often used to depict stories steeped in Hindu mythology and part of many children’s cultural and spiritual upbringing.

It is a relatively new development that Bharatanatyam is performed in concert dance venues. And while Western audiences generally get that dance can be equally entertaining and enlightening, this is often less true about dance forms whose cultural origins lie outside the French courts.

So, while audience members (like this critic) unfamiliar with Hindu mythology or the meanings of each hand gesture or shift of the eyes in Bharatanatyam might be there to simply soak in the intoxicating physicality and mesmerizing rhythms of this extraordinary dance form, Rajagopalan reminded us that the goal isn’t entertainment, but “Rasa,” the spiritual enlightenment of the viewer and a deeper connectivity to the gods.

This is perhaps why transitions between the vignettes of “The Internal Geometry” are narrated on a gargled microphone from Rajagopalan’s perch in Links Hall’s light booth, and indeed, Natya often includes English translations or explanations of the stories to appeal to a wide audience. “The Internal Geometry” is a pared-down presentation, with recorded music and a few simple light cues, uncharacteristic for Natya, but typical of most things in Links Hall’s white box theater. Even the dancers were just a bit less adorned than usual, “The Internal Geometry’s” six women wearing relatively simple traditional costumes with characteristic make-up and ankle bells, plus a few personalized necklaces and bracelets.

Read the full article in The Chicago Tribune.