"The Devil Ties My Tongue" by Amy Seiwert performed for the SKETCH Series, 2013. Photo by David DeSilva. Courtesy of Amy Seiwert's Imagery
Up to date announcements of company seasons, featured artists and special programming as well as grant of awards such as Princess Grace, or artistic appointments
In June, American Ballet Theatre performed the US premiere of Cathy Marston’s Jane Eyre at the Metropolitan Opera House. The ballet was brought to the United States through a joint collaboration with Joffrey Ballet, which will now perform the work in its fall season in Chicago.
Given the paucity of female-choreographed, full-length ballets for the main stage around the ballet world, Marston’s invitation and support by these two major companies is of no small significance. Programming women is vital to diversifying ballet company repertoire, and these companies are leading the way.
Learn more about the production in Joffrey Ballet’s Inside the Studio video below or visit the company’s website here.
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It was fall 2016. Gianna Reisen—then 17 and in her final year at the School of American Ballet, New York City Ballet’s official training school—had just been made the offer of a lifetime: the chance to choreograph a work for the company’s fall gala. She would be the youngest person ever to do so.
Two weeks later, Reisen went from an all-time high to an all-time low: She found out she wouldn’t be getting an apprenticeship with NYCB. “I absolutely deflated,” she remembers. “Imagine if, after seven years of working towards something, it simply doesn’t happen. It’s sort of heartbreaking.”
But Reisen, now 20, handled the roller-coaster ride with aplomb. And her career has only accelerated since that fall. She’s created not just one ballet for NYCB but two: Composer’s Holiday, that first commission, which premiered in September 2017, and Judah, which premiered in September 2018. She spent a season at Dresden Semperoper Ballett before joining Benjamin Millepied’s trailblazing L.A. Dance Project, and recently created a new work for LADP.
With such a full plate, when does Reisen stop to catch her breath? As it turns out, she doesn’t need to: Constantly creating is her oxygen.
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The world-renowned dance company Ballet Hispánico is coming to Central Minnesota for a residency, presenting a full week of classes, workshops, a social dance and a formal performance.
“They’re out of this world and out of our usual reach,” said Tanya Gertz, executive director of fine arts programming for the College of St. Benedict and St. John’s University. “We’re only able to do this because of the Minnesota State Arts Board and our local funders.”
The company focuses not only on its Latino/Latina roots, but also its female choreographers. For this local performance the company is presenting pieces choreographed solely by women.
“We started doing an all-female program four years ago… We had a lack of female voices in (dance) leadership roles and choreography,” said Eduardo Vilaro, artistic director and CEO.
The program features an older work by Michelle Manzanales as well as the premiere of a new work by Annabelle Lopez Ochoa titled “Tiburones.”
As Jonathan Holloway presents his final program, and as Melbourne Festival prepares to transform to a new format and season in 2020, many will be remembering the international headliners and “tent-pole” events of recent years (Taylor Mac’s 24-hour performance art party) and past decades.
But this year’s line-up serves as a reminder of what great work we make here in Australia; in particular, it showcases Melbourne’s incredibly strong and diverse dance culture.
New works by Melbourne-based choreographers Lucy Guerin (Split), Jo Lloyd (Overture) and Stephanie Lake (Colossus) appear in this year’s program, off the back of popular previous seasons in Melbourne and elsewhere. And Antony Hamilton will present the world premiere of his first major work at the helm of major dance company Chunky Move (Token Armies).
These dancers-turned-choreographers have worked together previously, and are part of Melbourne’s close-knit dance ecology.
Guerin, Lake and Lloyd are particularly interesting as women who have forged their careers as independent operators in a sector where all the major companies are helmed by men.
They each have decades-deep careers under their belts, a swag of Helpmann, Green Room and Australian Dance Awards, international commissions and tours, and critical acclaim. But instead of joining larger contemporary dance companies (such as Sydney Dance Company, Chunky Move or Australian Dance Theatre) they have either created their own small companies, or in the case of Lloyd, remained a solo operator.
The reduction of funding to the independent and small-to-medium sectors, through the George Brandis-led Australia Council intervention of 2015-2016, has made their advancement even more difficult, and their current positions more fraught.
You might say these women are succeeding against considerable odds.
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Sacramento Ballet is doing something different this year. The ballet’s 2019-20 season – titled Sights Unseen, which kicks off Thursday night with “Mozart in Motion” – features works largely choreographed by women.
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Seiwert has been working hard to change the status quo since she took the role of artistic director in 2018. The company has been recognized as a leader in the gender equity movement sweeping through dance companies across the nation.
According to the Dance Data Project, a group dedicated to documenting gender-related issues in dance, a study in July found 79 percent of the works planned by the largest 50 ballet companies in the nation for the 2019-2020 ballet seasons are choreographed by men.
The Sacramento Ballet topped the list for presenting works choreographed by women this season – tied with New York City’s American Ballet Theater at 67 percent, the Dance Data Project found. The company also made the list for the 2018-2019 season.
“The Top 10 companies for staging work by women in both seasons are: American Ballet Theatre, Cincinnati Ballet, Eugene Ballet Company, Hubbard Street Dance Chicago and Sacramento Ballet,” the Dance Data Project report said. “There was 1 female-choreographed full-length world premiere for the 2018-2019 season, Sacramento Ballet’s commission of The Nutcracker, by artistic director Amy Seiwert.”
Seiwert said she is excited to be leading changes in gender equity at a large ballet company, especially since women have not typically been represented in many companies’ leadership.
“Ballet, as a field, historically has had issues with female inclusion at the leadership level,” Seiwert said. “Trends are slowly changing. But where the change is most apparent is in some of the smaller companies across the United States. I am proud that of the top 50 ballet companies in the country, Sacramento Ballet is at the forefront of commissioning works by women.”
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Ballet Hispánico, the nation’s premier Latino dance organization, returns to the Apollo stage on Friday and Saturday, November 22 and 23, 2019 at 8:00pm with a program that continues its commitment to staging works by female, Latinx choreographers. Ballet Hispánico is sponsored by GOYA, which has sponsored the company since 1977.
In the World Premiere of Tiburones, Annabelle Lopez Ochoa addresses the discrimination and stereotypes placed upon Latinx culture and the power the media has in portraying these themes by diminishing the voices of Latinx artists. Ochoa will deconstruct gender roles and identity to revitalize an authentic perspective of Puerto Rican icons appropriated within the entertainment industry.
In this restaging of Nací (2009), choreographer Andrea Miller draws from the duality of her Spanish and Jewish-American background and employs her distinctive movement style to investigate the Sephardic culture of Spain, with its Moorish influence and profound sense of community, despite hardship.
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You don’t need many fingers to count the female New York City Ballet members who have choreographed during their tenure as dancers. The sad number is five, one hand: Ruthanna Boris, Miriam Mahdaviani, Barbara Milberg, Melissa Barak and Lauren Lovette.
Still, that’s better than it was when Edwaard Liang joined City Ballet in 1993; then, the number was three. What was striking about his return to the company — this time as a choreographer for its annual Fall Fashion Gala program — was the realization of how much the landscape and culture of ballet has changed.
His work, “Lineage,” carried a strong dose of nostalgia. With Anna Sui’s folk-inspired costumes and Mr. Liang’s acrobatic partnering — at one point, a male dancer spun his female counterpart by hooking an arm under her bent back knee — it felt like we were back in the ’90s. Mr. Liang spoke about his inspirations on “City Ballet the Podcast,” and one was clear in performance: The dancers’ gazes were continually drawn to a corner of the stage, as if seeking the spot where the revered choreographer George Balanchine, a founder of City Ballet, watched performances from the wing. (It wasn’t the correct side of the stage, but the sentiment was there.)
Ms. Lovette, a principal with the company, took a radically different approach in “The Shaded Line,” the other premiere on the program. Her dance wasn’t about homage, but about the future of the art form: how ballet might a find a way to sit within the larger world, where gender norms are unraveling, where women can become ballet choreographers and where all dancers can express their strength and fear.
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Sacramento Ballet Ties New York City as a Leader in Works by Women
By Jim Carnes
The Sacramento Ballet‘s upcoming season — the second under artistic director Amy Seiwert — leads the nation in the percentage of its works by female choreographers, according to research published by the Dance Data Project.
According to DDP, which studies the operations of the nation’s top 50 dance companies, Sacramento Ballet moved up from fifth place in the 2018-2019 season study to being tied for first (with New York City’s American Ballet Theatre) in the 2019-2020 season. DDP reports that only 19 percent of the nation’s 467 productions are choreographed by women.
The increase in recognition of female choreographers is thanks to the Ballet’s new season, ‘Sights Unseen.’ This season’s programs will be 67 percent female-choreographed, compared to 47 percent in the 2018-2019 season. In addition, reports DDP, “there was one female-choreographed full-length world premiere in the 2018-2019 season: The Sacramento Ballet’s ‘The Nutcracker’ by Seiwert.”
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Lauren Lovette isn’t just a principal dancer with New York City Ballet — she’s also a choreographer. Since joining the company as a corps member in 2010, she’s captivated audiences around the world with her undeniable talent and charm. In this episode of Doing the Most, Lauren walks the Cut through her typical day from rehearsals to performances and everything in between. Her latest ballet, The Shaded Line, premieres at the company’s fall gala, and performances continue through October 13.
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BOSTON (CBS) — For years, women have been under-represented on the creative side of the ballet world. Boston Ballet is trying to change that.
The year-old ChoreograpHER Initiative encourages female members of the company to put their own stamp on the work we see on stage.In the season opener, “Giselle,” the woman who once danced the title role has restaged the production for the next generation.
Larissa Ponomarenko says there’s no need to do too much to a classical ballet that was created in 1841.
“There’s no need to redo too much, just some adjustments to amount of people on stage, because the size of the company is different,” Ponomarenko said. “Just maybe aiding slightly different technical elements to make it more interesting for male dancers.”
Principal dancer Lia Cirio is one of several women playing Giselle during the run at the Citizen’s Bank Opera House.
She is grateful for Ponomarenko’s guidance. “Getting to see her impart her knowledge of the role is just incredible. It pushes me to become even better.”
Cirio has also participated in the ChoreograpHER Initiative, although she never thought she’d want to be a choreographer.
She said “when a sign went up, I was like, ‘oh, I’ll just try it,’ and then it became this amazing thing for women…For so long, the woman was this object, almost, and the man was like ‘you do this, you do this’ and I think it’s really cool that now we can say, ‘I would like you to do this.’ Roles have reversed a little which is great.”
Cirio is now working on her third piece. “I’m really pushing myself and trying to experiment and take risks which is cool because that is what this project is about,” she said.
DDP Founder & President Liza Yntema is a principal sponsor of Boston Ballet’s ChoreograpHER initiative.
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