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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

New York Times: A Woman’s Guide to Salary Negotiation

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By Kristin Wong

The first time I negotiated a raise, I had no idea what I was doing. A co-worker whispered that she’d gotten a slight pay increase, so I took a deep breath and approached my boss, making the case for a raise of my own. 

The results were not great. My boss suspected that I had compared notes with a colleague about our pay and reprimanded me for doing so. My stomach dropped and I wanted to cry, but by the end of the conversation I got the raise I’d requested. 

Women face unique challenges when it comes to negotiating, beginning with the fact that we are often viewed as “unlikable” when we do it. Women also have a tendency to underestimate their professional value, and we have been socialized to avoid assertiveness, an essential quality for a successful negotiation. These obstacles make negotiating more difficult, but no less important — which is why you’ve got to be extra prepared. Here’s how.

Read Wong’s full guide here.

New York Times: Want to Close the Pay Gap? Pay Transparency Will Help

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By Kristin Wong

20 January 2019

Here’s what we know about salary transparency: Workers are more motivated when salaries are transparent. They work harder, they’re more productive, and they’re better at collaborating with colleagues. Across the board, pay transparency seems to be a good thing.

Transparency isn’t just about business bottom line, however. Researchers say transparency is important because keeping salaries secret reinforces discrimination.

“From a worker’s perspective, without accurate information about peer compensation, they may not know when they’re being underpaid,” said Emiliano Huet-Vaughn, an economist at U.C.L.A. who ran a study in 2013 that found workers are more productive when salary is transparent. Without knowing what other workers’ salaries look like, “it naturally becomes harder to make the case that one is suffering a form of pay discrimination,” Dr. Huet-Vaughn said.

Read the full article in The New York Times.

New York Times: How a Common Interview Question Hurts Women

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By Claire Cain Miller

1 May 2018

Aileen Rizo was training math teachers in the public schools in Fresno, Calif., when she discovered that her male colleagues with comparable jobs were being paid significantly more.

She was told there was a justifiable reason: Employees’ pay was based on their salaries at previous jobs, and she had been paid less than they had earlier in their careers.

Ms. Rizo, who is now running for the California State Assembly, sued. In April, the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ruled in her favor, saying that prior salary could not be used to justify a wage gap between male and female employees.

It’s the latest sign that this has become the policy of choice for shrinking the gender pay gap. Several states, cities and companies have recently banned asking about salary history. They include Massachusetts, California, New York City and Chicago, as well as Amazon, Google and Starbucks.

Read the full article in The New York Times.

Ballet Now – Birmingham Royal Ballet Commission Announced

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Birmingham Royal Ballet is proud to announce a first-of-its-kind collaboration with the multi-awarding Ballet Black, a company dedicated to increasing diversity in ballet, founded and directed by Ballet Now Creative Consortium member, Cassa Pancho. Dancers of both Birmingham Royal Ballet and Ballet Black will appear in this exciting triple bill.

The bill opens with the fourth Ballet Now commission, from young choreographer and Queensland Ballet dancer Jack Lister and composer Tom Harrold. Second is Cathy Marston’s moving tale of a broken marriage, the critically acclaimed and National-Dance-Award-winning ballet The Suit, in its first UK performances outside London. The bill will close with Twyla Tharp’s sizzling tribute to Old Blue Eyes, Nine Sinatra Songs.

Learn more about the exciting initiative here.

New York Times: The Best Women’s Soccer Team in the World Fights for Equal Pay

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By Lizzy Goodman

10 June 2019

In spring 2018, Abby Wambach, the most decorated soccer player in American history, gave a commencement address at Barnard College that went viral. The player who had scored more goals than any other, male or female, in international competition described standing onstage at the ESPYs the year after she retired in 2015, receiving the Icon Award alongside two peers, Peyton Manning and Kobe Bryant. “I felt so grateful,” she recalled. “I had a momentary feeling of having arrived; like, we women had finally made it.” As the athletes exited the stage, each having, as Wambach put it, “left it all on the field for decades with the same ferocity, talent and commitment,” it occurred to her that while the sacrifices the men made for their careers were nearly identical to her own, their new lives would not resemble hers in one fundamental way. “Kobe and Peyton walked away from their careers with something I didn’t have: enormous bank accounts,” Wambach said. “Because of that, they had something else I didn’t have: freedom. Their hustling days were over; mine were just beginning.”

The United States women’s national team is the best in the world and has been for decades. Since the FIFA Women’s World Cup was inaugurated in 1991, the United States has won three of the seven titles, including the most recent one in 2015. Since women’s soccer became an Olympic sport in 1996, it has won four of six gold medals. The team has been ranked No.1 by FIFA for 10 of the last 11 years and has produced some of the biggest female sports stars of the last several decades, from Mia Hamm to Wambach to the current starting center forward, Alex Morgan.

Read the full article in The New York Times.

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.