DDP Talks To
"The Devil Ties My Tongue" by Amy Seiwert performed for the SKETCH Series, 2013. Photo by David DeSilva. Courtesy of Amy Seiwert's Imagery
DDP will cover stories from the corporate, for profit world regarding issues surrounding pay equity and transparency where relevant, such as other industries with low representation of women: tech, the sciences, venture capital, the entertainment industry, etc. to examine parallels between these male dominated spheres where informal hiring and word of mouth is the norm.
Broadway World: New England Ballet Theatre of Connecticut Presents BALLET SPEAKS: AGAINST DOMESTIC VIOLENCE
11 March 2021
By BWW News Desk
New England Ballet Theatre of Connecticut will present Ballet Speaks: Against Domestic Violence, a ballet performance honoring domestic violence victims and survivors through the art of dance.
NEBT believes that it is important to tell the stories that are kept quiet, the stories that have been forgotten or overlooked.
Several advocates for victims of domestic violence will be at the event to speak about the cause and how the community can work to break the cycle of domestic violence.
In honor of International Women’s Month, the evening will feature two female choreographers: NEBT Co-Founder & Artistic Director Emily Orzada and Guest Choreographer Keerati Jinakunwiphat.
The event takes place on March 13, 2021 at 7:00pm at the Hartford Dance Collective. Viewing-In-Person and Virtual Viewer ticket options available.
Learn more at https://www.neballettheatre.com/balletspeaks.
25% of ticket sales for this event will be donated to Interval House, a local non-profit organization working to end domestic violence. 25% of sales of NEBT Merchandise including, t-shirts, stickers and tote bags, will be donated to Interval House. 100% of sales of Pointe Shoe signed by NEBT Company Artists will be donated to Interval House.
Read more about Ballet Speaks and the full feature on Broadway World here.
Americans for the Arts ARTSblog: Connecting the Dots: Why the SheCession Is an Arts Story
This blog originally was published on Americans for the Arts’ ARTSblog.
11 March 2021
By Liza Yntema & Hannah McCarthy
Women in the United States suffered a net loss of over 5 million jobs in the first 10 months of the COVID-19 pandemic, the majority of which were held by women of color, wiping out at least a generation’s worth of progress in the workplace. As women continue to bear the brunt of childcare and domestic responsibilities, many are left wondering if their hard-won positions will ever be restored.
Meanwhile, the U.S. arts and culture sector has suffered an estimated $15.2 billion in financial losses (admissions, non-admissions and expenditures), as performing arts organizations also are dealing with an additional estimated $15.5 billion reduction in sales and audience spending.
These are two devastating blows to the U.S. economy, yet they are too often treated as if they are separate issues needing wholly different solutions.
Federally mandated paid family and medical leave would offer women, especially women in the arts, the ability to maintain their jobs, destigmatize familial responsibility in the workplace, and pour billions of dollars back into the U.S. economy, as working families currently lose $22.5 billion in wages annually due to lack of paid family and medical leave.
We hear constant rallying cries to “fund the arts” and are told how essential arts organizations are to the U.S. economy, yet there is deafening silence when it comes to the disproportionate burden the largely female arts workforce bears in terms of childcare, home schooling, and elder care. U.S.-based activists and pundits frequently point to the European model (or in Australia or New Zealand) of government support for performing and fine arts, yet they largely ignore the vital second part of this equation: Those same governments that fund the arts so generously also broadly support mechanisms such as paid parental leave and government subsidized neighborhood childcare centers—reflecting full recognition and compensation of women workers for their vital labor in arts and culture, as well as their roles at home.
The fact is, women are overrepresented in the working class of the arts world (e.g., 65% of lower- and mid-tier employees in the arts and culture sector in New York are women). Men, meanwhile, are demographically more likely to be leading arts organizations, and those women who do get into leadership positions lag in their ability to reach the highest rungs of the ladder. As noted in the Dance Data Project® Data Byte on our Connecting the Dots – #YesThisIsAnArtsStory campaign, America is looking at a generational loss of female leadership because they must either choose between their families or their jobs. The pipeline is now going dry.
“Everything we worked for, that has taken 25 years, could be lost in a year.” — Anita Bhatia, UN Women Deputy Executive Director
The presumption in the U.S. seems to be that despite the vital contribution of arts to the economy (4.5% of the GDP, $878 billion industry, 5.1 million jobs) and to quality of life of our communities, the decision to have a child (or children) is a personal lifestyle choice that comes at individual expense, having no bearing on how these institutional “impact accelerators” conduct business.
A coalition-built proposal “To rebuild and reimagine the United States post pandemic, we must put creative workers to work” includes 16 specific recommendations for necessary systemic change. While recommendation #10 urges the “overhaul of outdated employment, insurance, food, and housing policies,” it doesn’t recognize that female creative workers, like their sisters in the rest of the workforce, simply cannot return to work without updated childcare and paid leave policies. Any national policies to “activate the economy” cannot ignore that women in the U.S. bear asymmetric burdens of home, elder, and childcare, which have caused them to leave the workforce at four times the rate of men. As has been reported widely, of the net 140,000 jobs lost in December of 2020, all were held by women.
A recent survey by the Institute for Women’s Policy Research found that, across race and ethnicity, 69% of women surveyed support paid sick time and time away from work to have a child, recover from serious health conditions, or to care for a family member.
For many families in the U.S., paid family leave and childcare make the difference between their place above or below the poverty line. Two in four mothers and three in four Black mothers are breadwinners for their family, according to the Institute for Women’s Policy Research.
Senate Bill S.248 – Family and Medical Insurance Leave (FAMILY) Act, sponsored by Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) and Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro (D-CT-03), would ensure that all workers, no matter the size of their employer or if they are part-time or self-employed, will have access to paid leave.
“Nearly a year into a devastating pandemic and recession, we need the FAMILY Act more than ever,” said Olivia Golden, executive director of the Center for Law and Social Policy (CLASP) in a press release introducing Senate Bill S.248. “92 percent of workers who earn low wages—who are disproportionately Black and Brown—have no access to paid family leave. When a baby is born or illness strikes, families are forced to make impossible choices between their economic security and the needs of their loved ones.”
The recent decision to furlough “workers whose jobs require them to work onsite, or whose work can effectively be deferred for the period we will be closed” at The Philadelphia Museum of Art sounds fairly neutral … until you realize that the jobs on the chopping block (such as security guards or cleaning staff) are held primarily by women of color, often making minimum wage, with no job security or health benefits. The same is true in other female-dominated professions—where leadership, better pay, and job security all skew male—such as service, K-12 education, and nursing. In many cases, this uniquely American approach makes it impossible for women to continue in their careers in these female-dominated professions, including the arts, at all.
The corollary is that the pool of candidates for leadership deemed competent by Boards of Directors radically favors men, and often men without parental responsibilities. This phenomenon is not confined to the arts, by the way, and is now threatening to return throughout the broader workforce.
“Everything we worked for, that has taken 25 years, could be lost in a year,” said UN Women Deputy Executive Director Anita Bhatia in regard to the generation’s worth of setbacks women are facing due to the pandemic.
There are direct, negative consequences to viewing a child-free workplace or childless status as synonymous with leadership ability and readiness. Any first-year economics student can tell you that these costs don’t simply disappear if mothers are made to bear them on their own. Just because a dance or opera company says they “cannot afford” parental leave or childcare does not mean there isn’t an impact. That impact is felt in both obvious and subtle ways, and particularly in the inevitable mono-culture of upper leadership.
In summary: we can imagine no better way to ensure the artistic and economic stagnation of the arts, post-pandemic, than the continuing systemic denial of creative and leadership opportunities to women, ongoing erasure of their past contributions to the field, a continuing gender pay gap, and overall refusal to acknowledge the overwhelming impact of unequal elder and childcare burdens.
Dance Data Project® offers these recommendations and calls to action for rebuilding and reinventing the arts industry in the U.S. The requests are nothing new, as advocates have backed similar policy reform in the arts for over 50 years, but here are six ideas to revisit as we move forward:
- Advocate for federally mandated paid leave by formally attaching your name and/or organization’s name to the FAMILY Act.
- Provide paid leave to both parents, with written policies that encourage men to use all of their leave (72% of men who take leave at all in the U.S. return to work within two weeks or less after the birth or adoption of their children).
- Recognize that women are overrepresented demographically in the arts; therefore, employee policies should include acknowledgement of working mothers with provision of comfortable and accessible lactation and nursing facilities, scheduled flexibility where possible, and other motherhood-friendly accommodations.
- Acknowledge that many female arts workers are at the bottom, least secure tiers, and advance policies that work to close the gig worker salary gap, encourage pay transparency, and promote gender equity among arts leadership.
- Include questions related to the unique barriers facing women on arts recovery surveys. For example:
- accessibility to childcare and/or impact on day care centers closing
- homeschooling burdens
- amount of time spent on housework (vs. spouse)
- elder care responsibilities including visitation, cooking, driving to appointments, or searching for vaccine appointments
- Pledge that fellowships, scholarships, artist-in-residence, and commission awards include coverage of childcare costs and stated policy, especially those that call for “seasoned artists” with longer term careers.
Honoring Black History Month with #DDPHerstory
This February, in observation of African American History Month, DDP is sharing the stories and names of Black and African American women leaders (past and present) in ballet/dance.
New York Times: Female Artists Made Little Progress in Museums Since 2008, Survey Finds
By Julia Jacobs
19 September 2019
Over the past decade, there has been a sense in the art world that gender equity was on the horizon: Emerging female artists were landing high-profile solo shows, museums were staging women-themed exhibitions, grants were being awarded to boost female artists, and long-neglected artists were being given overdue recognition.
This assumption of progress is being sharply challenged by new data showing that between 2008 and 2018, only 11 percent of art acquired by the country’s top museums for their permanent collections was by women. And contrary to any hope that acquisitions of artworks by women are inching upward, the percentage remained relatively stagnant, according to the data, released on Thursday.
The new analysis was by Artnet, an art market information company, and “In Other Words,” a weekly podcast and newsletter produced by Art Agency, Partners, an art advisory firm that was acquired by Sotheby’s.
“The perception of change was more than the reality,” said Julia Halperin, the executive editor of Artnet News and one of two lead authors on the report. “The shows for women were getting more attention, but the numbers actually weren’t changing.”
Read the entire article here.
The Guardian: The #QueertheBallet movement: ‘it’s more than a man lifting a woman in a tutu’
By Emily Dixon
10 February 2021
Shortly after Adriana Pierce joined Miami City Ballet, someone watched her train and made an assessment: “Is Adriana a lesbian? Because she looks like one.” The comment propelled Pierce into exacting self-scrutiny: “I was like, does my dancing look gay? Do I look different? I am different – is that OK?”
Pierce, who left the company after seven seasons to focus on choreography and musical theatre, has rarely felt represented as a queer woman in the ballet world but with her new movement, #QueertheBallet, she hopes to inspire change. Her first project is a pas de deux en pointe choreographed on the American Ballet Theatre dancers Remy Young and Sierra Armstrong, which she is developing during a dance residency at the Bridge Street theatre in Catskill, New York. “I want to show people an authentic, complex relationship between two women through ballet,” Pierce explains. “I want people to see that ballet can be more than a man lifting a woman in a tutu.”
Although queer men are also largely cast in heteronormative partnerships, while facing well-documented homophobic stigma, the crucial difference for Pierce is visibility. “Queer women aren’t even on the radar in our spaces. I sometimes do experience overt homophobia, but the worst of it is the micro-aggression. I’m just never considered,” she says. “The idea that a woman might deviate from the image we expect as a professional ballet dancer is just not even a thought people have.”
Read the full article here.
Dance: Virtual Ballet Classes Have Offered Me Glimpses of Gender Inclusivity as a Nonbinary Dancer
9 February 2021
Growing up, I quit ballet as soon as the schools where I was training no longer required it. Because of ballet’s adherence to a strict gender binary, I often felt excluded and frustrated by the art form, even before I had the language to identify how it heightened my gender dysphoria. Midway through college, I quit dance altogether, except for the occasional class, and took up weight lifting instead. But at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, I began taking virtual ballet as a way to stay strong and exercise inside my apartment.
A friend of mine was taking classes on Zoom from a teacher who she said was particularly kind and thoughtful, and she invited me to join her. I agreed because I needed a distraction and my muscles craved fatigue. Ballet still made me anxious, and I even cried after class for the first few weeks.
But overall, ballet felt much more casual. Nobody had a barre at home, many people weren’t wearing leotards, and the main focus was on dancing together as best as we could during a time of crisis. Soon, my previous associations with the technique started to fade. Ballet began to ignite joy in me, and I started taking up to five virtual classes a week from New York City studios, like Ballet Arts, Peridance and Broadway Dance Center. In doing so, I’ve caught glimpses of what inclusive, gender-expansive ballet could look and feel like.
I didn’t come to understand myself as nonbinary until I was 20, but when I did, my frustrations with my dance training began to make sense. I remember being 14, looking through the studio windows at the boys’ ballet class and longing to be in there myself, working on leaps and turns and strengthening my shoulders. At home, I practiced tours and could consistently land a clean double. But during class, even when we were given the option to do either tours or turns from fifth, I felt self-conscious, like everyone was looking at me if I chose the “boy” step.
Now, even though I take virtual classes with my camera on, there’s much less scrutiny from my peers or teachers when I, a feminine person, do a typically masculine step. Alone in my apartment, no spotlight catches me, nobody laughs, and my choice isn’t perceived as a statement. I can do tours and mess up. I can be mediocre, because I don’t have to justify why I’m choosing a step that doesn’t match the gender I was assigned at birth.
During virtual classes I feel more comfortable dressing in gender-affirming dancewear. If I go to a studio wearing leggings and a T-shirt, traveling across the floor between women in their beautiful leotards and skirts can make me feel like I don’t belong or like I’m doing something wrong. It also helps that I don’t have large mirrors at home, and while that’s frustrating for self-correcting my alignment, it alleviates the dysphoria of looking in a mirror for an hour and a half, knowing that everybody in the room perceives me as a woman. On Zoom, I can put my pronouns in my screen name.
In a 1988 article titled “Performative Arts and Gender Constitution” in Theater Journal, queer theorist Judith Butler posits that “gender is instituted through the stylization of the body and, hence, must be understood as the mundane way in which bodily gestures, movements, and enactments of various kinds constitute the illusion of an abiding gendered self.” Virtual classes have given me the opportunity to explore how to do ballet like a nonbinary dancer, like myself. Dancing alone has taught me how to break out of the ingrained training of performing the bodily gestures, movements and enactments of womanhood in ballet.
Read the full story here.
New York Times: On Ballet TikTok, a Place for Young Dancers to Be Real
By Margaret Fuhrer
05 February 2021
“How am I supposed to feel confident in myself when these are the ballet body standards?” begins a TikTok video by user @hardcorpsballet. The question stopped this former dancer mid-scroll. An honest conversation about ballet’s cult of thinness? Yes, please.
Then came the slide show: not a parade of waiflike bodies, but instead the well-padded Bear from Boston Ballet’s “Nutcracker,” and the furred and feathered creatures of Frederick Ashton’s “Tales of Beatrix Potter.”
Reader, I giggled.
I had entered ballet TikTok, where a rule-bound art form meets unruly creativity. Casual, confessional and playful, TikTok offers a release for ballet dancers, particularly students, who spend their days chasing impossible perfection. TikTok is a place to laugh about the impossibility, rather than obsess over perfection.
As more and more stuck-at-home dancers join TikTok, it has also become a place to dissect some of the problems and clichés that dog ballet. Users make darkly funny memes about body dysmorphia, eating disorders, abusive teachers, misogyny and homophobia. They are the same issues that dance films and TV shows mine for drama and melodrama. But the wounded whimsy of ballet TikTok reflects what it actually feels like to be a ballet dancer — the frustrations and joys of a demanding, problematic, beautiful art.
Read the entire article here.
Dance Magazine: What Will It Take to End Sexual Abuse in Dance Education?
By Garnet Henderson
27 January 2021
Though the #MeToo movement has spurred many dancers to come forward with their stories of sexual harassment and abuse, the dance world has yet to have a full reckoning on the subject. Few institutions have made true cultural changes, and many alleged predators continue to work in the industry.
As Chanel DaSilva’s story shows, young dancers are particularly vulnerable to abuse because of the power differential between teacher and student. We spoke with eight experts in dance, education and psychology about steps that dance schools could take to protect their students from sexual abuse.
Make Basic Safety Measures Standard
Peter Flew, director of the School of Education at University of Roehampton in London, trustee of the Royal Academy of Dance, and chair of Safer Dance
“When I joined the RAD Board of Trustees, I couldn’t believe how little regulation there was around dance schools. When a school is hiring a teacher, they need to do a background check. Does that person have a conviction for sexual abuse or child abuse, for example? Are there gaps in their CV that they don’t want to explain?
“Another important issue is data protection. Does the dance teacher have the cell phone number of the student? This is a common and really bad practice. Teachers should be talking to parents, not the children. And this is an issue with social media, as well.
Read the entire article here.
People: The ‘Overwhelming’ Story Behind Inauguration’s Virtual Dance Video, According to Choreographer Kenny Ortega
By Sean Neumann
21 January 2020
…
The “Dance Across America” video was the idea of Julia McDonald, another Emmy Award-winning choreographer dubbed a “Hollywood Dance Super-Agent.”
Ortega says Stranger Things editor Brad Tobler and producer Kelly Parker, another pair of Emmy winners, were part of the project as was choreographer Paul Becker and producer Truman Alfaro.
The team combed over submissions and put together the three-minute video in less than two weeks, Ortega says, after he was invited to head the project just before the new year. The video, set to Martha & The Vandellas’ song “Dancing in the Streets,” features 275 everyday Americans dancing in 30 states and territories.
Ortega says the video ranks up there with his other career milestones, including the Emmys he has won for his work choreographing the 1996 and 2002 Olympic ceremonies, Super Bowls, films like Dirty Dancing and Ferris Bueller’s Day Off and more.
“Dance is a language without words,” he says. “It’s a language that all of us understand. A dancer can express so much: pain, happiness, hope, and despair. So many things.”
Most of all, Ortega says, dance “carries the story forward.”
That was undoubtedly the theme at the Capitol Wednesday, where the nation turned to its next chapter and Biden, its new president, urged the country to move past ideological differences and come together.
Read the full story here.
