DDP Talks To…Anne Maher, Artistic Director of Ballet Ireland
DDP Talks To…Anne Maher, Artistic Director of Ballet Ireland
April 30th: South Arts: Professional Development & Artistic Planning Grants, April 30th: South Arts: Express Grants, May 6th: Doris Duke Foundation Grant, May 7th: South Arts Individual Artist Career Opportunity Grant, May 27th: Dancemakers Residency, June 1st: Miami DanceMakers
×DDP Talks To…Anne Maher, Artistic Director of Ballet Ireland
26 May 2021
By Elaine Sciolino and Alex Marshall
Move over, Mona Lisa. You may be about to have competition as the most-talked-about woman in the Louvre.
For the first time since its creation in 1793 in the wake of the French Revolution, the Musée du Louvre will be headed by a woman, Laurence des Cars, the current head of the Musée d’Orsay and the much smaller Musée de l’Orangerie.
Des Cars, 54, was appointed on Wednesday as the museum’s president-director by the president of France, Emmanuel Macron.
“Four years at the Orsay gave me this confidence, this crazy idea that I could be the next president of the Louvre,” des Cars said in an hourlong telephone interview. “The president probably saw that I was ready for the job and that I am somehow serene. I am not overanxious. I have to stay very calm.”
On Sept. 1, des Cars will replace the museum’s leader of eight years, Jean-Luc Martinez, who had waged an intense media campaign to stay on for a new five-year term.
The two museum directors could not be more different. Both studied art history at the École du Louvre, the museum’s prestigious school. But the Louvre has traditionally been run by upper-class art historians, and Martinez, a trained archaeologist with little expertise in painting, was the son of a postman from a working-class suburb of Paris. Des Cars, a specialist in 19th- and early-20th-century painting, is descended from a French noble family of writers.
To read the full article, click here.
A reckoning with one of our most beloved art forms, whose past and present are shaped by gender, racial, and class inequities—and a look inside the fight for its future
Every day, in dance studios all across America, legions of little children line up at the barre to take ballet class. This time in the studio shapes their lives, instilling lessons about gender, power, bodies, and their place in the world both in and outside of dance.
In Turning Pointe, journalist Chloe Angyal captures the intense love for ballet that so many dancers feel, while also grappling with its devastating shortcomings: the power imbalance of an art form performed mostly by women, but dominated by men; the impossible standards of beauty and thinness; and the racism that keeps so many people of color out of ballet. As the rigid traditions of ballet grow increasingly out of step with the modern world, a new generation of dancers is confronting these issues head on, in the studio and on stage. For ballet to survive the twenty-first century and forge a path into a more socially just future, this reckoning is essential.
Dance Data Project®’s research is featured in the book. Of the importance of our research, Ms. Angyal said, “The Dance Data Project has been doing the essential work of gathering information about the state of gender equity (or lack thereof) in the ballet world. Diagnosing the problem is the only way to begin solving it, and I was glad to include their data in my book.”
The book is published by Bold Type Books and can be purchased wherever books are sold. Learn more about it here.
5 May 2021
By Courtney Connley
In the United States, mothers working full-time, year-round make an average of just $0.75 for every dollar paid to full-time working fathers, according to a new analysis from the National Women’s Law Center.
As a result, the average working mom has to work an additional five months into the new year to reach the same pay fathers earned the previous year, leading Mother’s Equal Pay Day to fall on May 5 this year. That’s nearly two months after equal pay day was reached for women on March 24, as full-time working women on average earn just $0.82 for every dollar paid to men.
This pay gap for working mothers leads to a loss of $1,275 a month and $15,300 a year in wages. For women of color, this gap is even higher with full-time working Latina, Native American and Black moms being paid an average of $0.46, $0.50 and $0.52, respectively, for every dollar paid to white fathers.
“This loss is depriving moms of their ability to weather this [Covid-19] storm,” NWLC Director of Research Jasmine Tucker tells CNBC Make It. “We know that about one in four women who are unemployed right now have been looking for work for a year…just imagine what that $15,000 or more could do if you had that sitting in the bank because you were paid what you were owed before this all happened.”
In front-line occupations like nursing, waitressing and housekeeping, full-time working mothers are paid just $0.84, $0.67 and $0.65, respectively, for every dollar paid to full-time working fathers doing the same job.
To read the full article, click here.
17 May 2021
By Nancy Dobbs Owen
The dance world is undergoing a reckoning and one of the voices leading the way is President & Founder of Dance Data Project® (DDP), Elizabeth Yntema. Ms. Yntema is an advocate for women in ballet and by extension all of those outside of the power structure. DDP recently posted an important new resource on their site, a multi layered section focused on both student and professional dancer safety, particularly in regard to sexual harassment and assault. It includes a Best Practices Guideline for Schools and Companies, a page of links and resources, and an Inclusive Technique Class Checklist. In addition to the website additions, Ms. Yntema interviewed Emma Lister and Zoë Ashe Brown of the Movers, Shakers, Makers podcast on May 6 about mental health and sexual assault in the ballet world. You can watch the interview on the website or on YouTube. Both podcasters are professional dancers, choreographers and educators, working in England, the UK and Europe. Ms. Lister, after training at the Royal Winnipeg Ballet and a freelance career in England, runs Make//Shift company with her husband, circus artist Sakari Männistö. Ms. Ashe Brown is a ballerina and choreographer currently dancing with the Royal Ballet of Flanders and choreographing with the support of The Arts Council of Ireland and Dance Ireland.
I spoke with Ms. Yntema on May 11 regarding the Best Practices Guide and her ideas for moving forward as an industry that often permits or dismisses harm done to its most vulnerable community members. Our discussion took place in the aftermath of British choreographer Liam Scarlett’s death and the day before the conviction of former English National Ballet principal dancer Yat-Sen Chang for sexual assault in England. This follows numerous scandals in the United States over the last several years, the most infamous at NYCB. As both a lawyer and an advocate for women’s rights in ballet, Ms. Yntema is in a unique position to guide the industry and by extension, the country, forward.
“If organizations knew or should have known about assault, they may be criminally liable. There is a duty to investigate, document, and be transparent about their findings once they receive a report. Failure to act opens the organization to potentially catastrophic consequences.”
Read the full write-up here.
Notes from DDP: This is how to move forward post pandemic, with interesting new work and both existing commissions and world premieres from women choreographers. Congrats to Hubbard Street Dance Company alums Alejandro Cerrudo and Robyn Minenko Williams from your fans in Chicago!
Dance Data Project® today announced today released Part 1 of its annual “Largest 50” analysis of United States ballet companies. DDP has also greatly expanded its research scope, surveying a total of 126 U.S. ballet companies,* an increase of 70% from 74 companies surveyed in 2020.