By Judith Mackrell

16 July 2018

Ballet companies are unique in ways that are wonderful and preposterous. At best, they are fabulously creative organisations to which loyal dancers, including the biggest stars, may devote entire careers. But, with scores of dancers striving to master extreme levels of physical perfection, pitted against each other for prime roles and principal rankings, they can also be hotbeds of competitive dissatisfaction. That intensity is exacerbated by the fact that presiding over these very young, driven, vulnerable egos is one person – the artistic director – who holds their destinies in his, and occasionally her, hands.

“Dancers today are not ‘behaving badly’, they are asking more of us as leaders,” wrote Scottish Ballet’s Christopher Hampson earlier this year. He was asking fellow artistic directors to reform their practices in the wake of accusations by ballet dancers around the world of bullying, aggression and misconduct. There have been complaints from dancers at leading companies – among them New York City Ballet, English National Ballet, Paris Opera and Finnish National Ballet – and some allegations have been extremely disturbing.

But what prompted Hampson was not so much specific cases as the conviction that such behaviour would continue to occur as long as certain assumptions within ballet culture have remained unchallenged. “I genuinely believe that every artistic director in the UK is trying to do their best by their dancers, but we all have a way to go,” he says. “We have a problem that we need to admit to, and it can be difficult to talk about because it can involve people in the past who we’ve held in such veneration.”

Read the full article in The Guardian.

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.

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.

By Michael Cooper

17 May 2019

When New York City Ballet fired the star dancer Amar Ramasar eight months ago for sharing vulgar texts and sexually explicit photos of a dancer with a colleague, it said it needed “to ensure that our dancers and staff have a workplace where they feel respected and valued.”

But Mr. Ramasar will return to the stage with City Ballet on Saturday afternoon. To the dismay of some women in the company, he won his job back with help of their very own union, which persuaded an arbitrator that Mr. Ramasar’s firing had been too severe a punishment.

From the shop floors of factories to ballet’s grandest stages, organized labor is struggling to balance a set of competing and sometimes conflicting interests as it grapples with the sharp uptick in #MeToo-related cases in recent years.

Unions work to protect members from harassment, but they also have a duty to protect the rights of members accused of misconduct. The most difficult conflicts arise when one union member accuses another of harassment: Several unions, including the United Automobile Workers, have come under fire for seeming to do more to protect the jobs of the accused than the women who were their targets.

Read the full article in The New York Times.

As a 2019 Resident Fellow at the Center for Ballet and the Arts at NYU, Ashley Bouder will be exploring gender fluidity in the pas de deux. The Center wrote:

Gender Fluidity in the Pas de Deux

At The Center for Ballet and the Arts at NYU, Bouder will create choreography for a film that will showcase ballet’s potential to demonstrate gender fluidity. Although we associate the pas de deux with a male/female identity, Bouder wonders what would transpire if we stripped away gender and made the dance about the connection of two people in a specific place and time.

Bouder, a strong advocate for women in dance, founded the Ashley Bouder Project, which “actively recruits women and marginalized individuals to give them voices in creative and leadership roles in the dance and arts world.”

Learn more about the Ashley Bouder Project here.

Learn more about The Center for Ballet and the arts at NYU here.