DDP Cited in Article “OBT: More questions than answers”

August 26, 2021/0 Comments/in DDP in the News /by dancedata

25 August 2021

By Jamuna Chiarini

In the wake of the ballet company’s abrupt split with artistic leader Kevin Irving, much remains unresolved and unexplained

In June, Oregon Ballet Theatre announced the resignation of Kevin Irving, its artistic director of eight years. When I spoke with Board of Trustees President Allison Lane Lyneham at the time, she said, “Kevin let us know that he needed to resign from OBT,” but would not give any further explanation.

In a separate letter emailed that Friday to friends and supporters, Irving said the board asked for his resignation. “I was informed on Wednesday of this week that the board has decided to go a different direction in the AD role and that my resignation was required by [the end of the day]. This was an unexpected development. Having lost the confidence of the board, and given the alternatives available to me, my only choice was to accede to their request that I resign – albeit with a heavy heart.”

These are two completely different stories. Together, they create both confusion and many questions. Why would the board ask for Irving’s resignation after he successfully directed the company for eight years? What happened? What exactly is this new direction that the board wants to go in? Was the company going in the wrong direction? What does that even mean? And what does this mean for the new AD? (Former company principal dancer Peter Franc has taken over as interim artistic director.) I would feel a little nervous as the incoming AD walking into this situation. I would like answers, and as it happens, so do other folks in the community.

On Monday, Willamette Week revealed that it had obtained a copy of a letter written by White Bird co-founders Walter Jaffe and Paul King and BodyVox co-founders Jamey Hampton and Ashley Roland to OBT Board Chair Lyneham and Executive Director Thomas Bruner. The letter expressed their support for Irving and concern over his departure from OBT.

“The precipitous dismissal of Kevin and the inadequate explanation on the part of the Board of OBT has led the public to assume the worst about all participants involved,” read the letter. “This has been damaging to the stature of the organization in the eyes of donors, supporting foundations, and the public.”

I agree.

OBT is a nonprofit organization, which means that it is accountable to its donors, funders, volunteers, dancers, audience members, and the public. Key characteristics of a nonprofit are accountability, trustworthiness, honesty, and openness. The success of a nonprofit depends on the public’s confidence in the organization.

OBT’s original 2021-2022 season included three works by OBT Resident Choreographer Nicolo Fonte: Rhapsody in Blue, Bolero, and Beautiful Decay. It was to be a celebration of his five years as resident choreographer with the company. But Fonte is also Irving’s life partner, and after Irving resigned, so did Fonte. In his resignation letter to the board, Fonte requested that his name be removed from the staff list and all published materials that refer to him as the resident choreographer.

Then OBT sent out a new email with an updated season that still included Bolero, essentially selling tickets to a season that isn’t going to happen.

Last week, OBT sent out a new email with a revised season that didn’t include any of Fonte’s works. When I asked Bruner, OBT’s executive director, what happened, he said, “When Nicolo resigned, he directed us to negotiate with his agent, which we did, and we were unable to come to terms for the use of his work.”

In one way, at least, the new program represents a slight improvement over the one it replaces: It includes the works of five white men, one man of color, three women of color, and two white women. The original program included work by four white men, one male POC, one female POC, and one white woman. Why are these numbers significant? Because white men have historically dominated the world of ballet while women and POC artists have been notably denied access to artistic leadership roles, choreographic commissions, and resident choreographer positions.

According to a Dance Data Project® report on the gender distribution of choreographers whose works were presented in the 2019-2020 seasons of the fifty largest ballet companies in the United States:

72% of works in the 2019-2020 seasons are choreographed by men.
62% of programs in the 2019-2020 seasons featured work choreographed exclusively by men.
55% of world premieres in the 2019-2020 seasons are choreographed by men.
83% of full-length world premieres in the 2019-2020 seasons are choreographed by men.
53% of mixed-bill world premieres in the 2019-2020 seasons are choreographed by men.
60% of main stage and 48% of non-main stage world premieres in the 2019- 2020 seasons are choreographed by men.

The Dance Data Project was founded and established by Elizabeth Yntema in 2015 as an independent project researching the lack of new female choreographic works. The project has grown and now promotes equity in all aspects of classical ballet by providing a metrics-based analysis through its database while showcasing women-led companies, festivals, competitions, venues, special programs, and initiatives.

I recently spoke with OBT’s Bruner to see if I could get some insight into what happened between Irving and the ballet company.

He told me he could not speak to the situation beyond what OBT had previously stated. So instead, I asked him why OBT’s board of directors was making artistic choices for the company.

Bruner disagreed that the board was making artistic choices. So I asked him to break down what a board does.

“The board’s job is to govern. They hire and direct and evaluate the AD and ED. They look at policies that guide the organization. They help develop and oversee the annual budget. They steward our assets, including community and brand management. They are ambassadors on behalf of the institution. They make sure that we’re operating not just legally and ethically but in accordance with best practices. Whether it’s accounting, or the way we’re raising money, or the way we are doing [the] human resources thing, so they make sure that we’re operating through best practice. They help raise money for the institution and make sure we have the resources that we need.”

In other words, it seems, they have a lot of indirect power to make choices that affect the company artistically.

Who is on the OBT board, and are they artists? The company’s website lists five members of the executive committee, 16 additional trustees, plus Executive Director Bruner and Interim Artistic Director Franc as ex officio members. Company artist Coco Alvarez-Mena is the board’s dancer representative. The board president, Lyneham, is a former dancer. But what about the other board members? If the majority of the board members come from the business world, that mindset will undoubtedly impact the ballet company. This is why ballet is actually as much a part of big business structure as it is a community organization.

According to the Dance Data Project, “The Largest 50 U.S. Ballet Companies operated with combined expenses of $664,103,510 in Fiscal Year 2019. The Next 50 U.S. Ballet Companies operated with combined expenses of $47,402,102 in Fiscal Year 2019. For context, this is 7% of the aggregate expenses for the Largest 50.

“The structures of ballet companies in the U.S. vary greatly. Many of the larger companies have an endowment, professional company, and school. For some, these operate as independent but affiliated entities. For example, New York City Ballet and its affiliated school, School of American Ballet, are independent organizations. Thus the annual expense data for New York City Ballet does not include the expenses of the School of American Ballet.”

Considering how much money ballet companies bring in, the wage disparity between dancers in the company and the artistic director is huge. I’ve known of OBT dancers who have had to work a second job after dancing all day to make ends meet.

According to salary.com, the average ballet dancer’s salary in Portland is $33,955 as of July 28, 2021; the salary range typically falls between $27,981 and $41,457.

Irving’s salary as artistic director, according to OBT’s 990 form for 2019, was $148,032, plus $6,142 in other compensation.

Back to my conversation with Bruner:

Me: So what direction is the board going in?

Thomas: “The Board is in the process of assembling an artistic director search committee. That committee is going to do a national search for the next artistic leader. Before they launch the search, they are going to compile the attributes, the talents, and the gifts they want that person to have. Once they finish that, we’ll be able to clarify this direction.”

In the name of transparency, I asked Bruner if the names of the people on the search committee would be made public once it’s assembled. He assured me that they would.

To read the article originally published by Oregon ArtsWatch, click here.

DDP Founder & President Liza Yntema featured in The Indispensables podcast: Bringing gender equity to the world of dance

August 20, 2021/0 Comments/in DDP in the News, News, DDP Announcements /by dancedata

DDP Founder & President Liza Yntema featured in The Indispensables podcast: Bringing gender equity to the world of dance

In this episode, Liza Yntema and Bruce Tulgan discuss how Dance Data Project® is moving the stodgy, conservative global industry of ballet with a tiny team of dedicated part-timers and volunteers, by staying flexible and listening actively.

To listen to the podcast, click here.

About The Indispensables

Based on Bruce Tulgan’s new book, The Art of Being Indispensable at Work, The Indispensables is a podcast series about how real people, in the real world, become indispensable, go-to people who stand the test of time at work. Featuring conversations with go-to people from organizations of all shapes and sizes, in every industry, Bruce Tulgan drills down into the specifics of what these people do differently to stand out in their jobs and careers. There will be no fads or quick-fix solutions here. This podcast is all about actionable advice that really works. — Bruce Tulgan is the CEO of RainmakerThinking, the management research, consulting and training firm he founded in 1993. All of his work is based on 27 years of intensive workplace interviews and has been featured in thousands of news stories around the world.

LISTEN TO THE PODCAST

DDP Cited in Article “In dance begin responsibilities — the atypical ascent of choreographer Claudia Schreier”

August 20, 2021/0 Comments/in DDP in the News /by dancedata

18 August 2021

By Stav Ziv

In the late afternoon and evening light of August, two solo hikers meet by a yellow steel structure in a grassy field. Their faces are obscured behind masks etched with anxiety as they navigate a world inhospitable to Black bodies like theirs. When they happen upon each other, their masks come off as they find familiarity and perhaps a moment of comfort — but only briefly before they go their separate ways.

The yellow structure is an installation by the artist Rashid Johnson, standing 16 feet tall beneath the open sky at Storm King Art Center’s vast outdoor museum in New York’s Hudson Valley. The masks are literal, also Johnson’s creation. The dancers wearing them are the titular figures in “The Hikers,” a ballet he and choreographer Claudia Schreier first conceived of as a film and later adapted for live performances in gallery spaces in Aspen, Mexico City and New York City — and, later this month, outdoors at Storm King.

“The Black body is often idolized to a fault and represented as this absolute form of strength and beauty and power, which strips the Black identity of a lot of its personhood, a lot of its vulnerability, a lot of its humanity,” Schreier said. “And so ‘The Hikers’ is, in part, about showing or exploring what it means to be Black and what it means to be human.” It is “about upending stereotypes about Black bodies moving through space, and also depicting the discomfort inherent in being a Black body moving through white space.”

“The Hikers,” which premiered in its first iteration in the summer of 2019, isn’t typical of Schreier’s ballet repertoire — up until that year, she hadn’t created anything like it.

‘Music and Dance Were a Part of My Existence’

Born to a Jamaican mother and a white father of Eastern European Jewish descent, Schreier grew up in New York City — where she saw American Ballet Theatre’s “The Sleeping Beauty” as a toddler and soon started creative movement classes at the Y — and then the predominantly white suburbs of Westchester. “I grew up in a home infused with music,” Schreier said. “My dad loves classical music. My mom loves classical music. I grew up with a lot of calypso and reggae around the house as well. So just from an early age, music and dance were just a part of my existence.”

But Schreier didn’t take the usual path, if there is one, into ballet choreography. Often, a choreographer will emerge from within the ranks of a ballet company, creating new works for colleagues or affiliated students while still performing themselves. Though she trained seriously growing up, Schreier never became a professional dancer herself. “I was such a bunhead and I was so in love with ballet,” she said. “When it became clear to me that ballet was not going to happen, I begrudgingly applied to way more schools than I should have.” She headed to Harvard — a dream school though she wouldn’t have admitted it out loud — where she majored in sociology and minored in dramatic arts.

“There really wasn’t any immediate indication to me that ballet would be a large part of my life going forward,” she said. “And it certainly didn’t seem to be the case that it would be something that I’d make a career out of in any capacity.” But when she arrived on campus, she immersed herself in the dance community. In that setting, away from the professional dance world, “you’re there because you love the art, you’re there because dance is such a part of your identity, and you want to continue to foster that no matter what happens on the other end.”

She found like-minded students — some of them former professionals and others dancing at high levels — willing to rehearse until midnight on top of their demanding course loads. The “fertile and supportive environment” allowed her to be “making for the sake of making,” without the pressures of churning out premieres on deadline or facing reviewers on Day One. By the time she was a senior, she knew she wanted to keep at it, “but I couldn’t figure out what that meant or how it was supposed to happen.”

Two consecutive summer internships at Vail Dance Festival in 2007 and 2008 — before and after her final year at Harvard — led to a job at Chamber Dance Project and marketing roles at Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, where she worked in the office for seven years while spending her free hours in the studio creating ballets. In 2017, nearly a decade after graduation, she was finally able to call the latter her full-time job.

Schreier has made a name for herself with abstract works and impeccable musicality, choreographing for her own Claudia Schreier & Company as well as organizations including Vail Dance Festival, American Ballet Theatre Studio Company, Miami City Ballet, Atlanta Ballet — where she was named resident choreographer last spring — and Dance Theatre of Harlem.

“A Haven for Dancers of All Colors”

Virginia Johnson, a founding member and former star of Dance Theatre of Harlem (DTH) and now the company’s artistic director, encountered Schreier’s work at a showing at the Ailey studios, back when Schreier’s day job was upstairs in the marketing offices. “I was always on the lookout for people who had skill, who had talent, who had passion,” said Johnson (no relation to Rashid Johnson). And this, she remembered, “was really very wonderfully crafted work and very clearly and deeply thought-out work.”

Schreier became someone to follow. “One of the things that is important to me, because DTH is of course a ballet company, is somebody who has ballet as their first language, that understands how to use the very particular structure and aesthetic and ideals that are encapsulated in ballet as part of their contemporary voice,” Johnson said. “You can applique classical ballet onto something, or it can be part of who you are. And I really felt that that was what Claudia had,” she said. “And then of course, I’m also looking for people of color who have ballet as their first language to bring a different perspective on what can be said in ballet to the stage.”

The right opportunity came with a commission for the Virginia Arts Festival as part of a 1619 commemoration that marked 400 years since enslaved Africans arrived at Point Comfort, Virginia, on the shores of what was then a British colony. The idea was not to make a narrative depiction of slavery, but to acknowledge, honor and reflect on the past. Still, it was incredibly daunting. Schreier was working for the first time with a venerated company founded as a “haven for dancers of all colors” by Arthur Mitchell, who’d made history as the first African-American principal dancer at New York City Ballet. So she was trying to honor Mitchell and his legacy shortly after his death and, on top of that, to speak to this formative moment in American history in a way that felt true to herself and her artistic voice.

Working with the composer Jessie Montgomery, who was simultaneously creating an original score for the piece as Schreier planned the ballet, she wanted to keep it abstract. “We were fine with having some sort of abstract thematic through-line, but we didn’t want to have any explicit depictions.” Ultimately, they hoped the piece would speak to “the endurance of the human spirit and the willingness to prevail,” Schreier said, while portraying the “survival and cyclical struggle of people, of our people.”

“Passage” premiered in early May 2019 in Norfolk and was presented at The Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. later that month. “In the pain and in the suffering of this history, the beauty that she managed to carve through the work,” struck Endalyn Taylor, a former member of Dance Theatre of Harlem and an advocate for dancers of color in ballet who has just taken the helm as the new dean of the School of Dance at the University of North Carolina School of the Arts. “Also a sense of resilience and perseverance — which I think really epitomizes many of the ways Black people and people of color have survived and overcome the challenges that they have had to as part of a system of racism, systemic racism,” said Taylor, who admired Schreier’s ability to evoke emotion without being literal. “It’s such a fine line to be able to draw people into your work without slapping them over the face with the ideas that you want to convey. And I think she strikes that balance brilliantly.”

‘A New Pathway’

That commission “was the first time that I had really challenged myself to speak to Blackness through dance in an explicit way,” Schreier said. While she’d always recruited dancers of color and Black dancers specifically to perform her works, she hadn’t centered Black experiences or histories as themes of her creations. In part, it was a process of becoming more comfortable with herself. She grew up in a mostly white, privileged community where very few people looked like her and absorbed the kind of “underlying latent racism” that can fester unrecognized for years. “It took me a while to come to terms with how I saw myself, how I identify with my own Blackness, and how I placed that within the world of ballet,” she said.

The opportunity with DTH “created a new pathway for me,” she explained. “I am indebted to that commission for helping me find a more powerful voice.”

Schreier was working on “Passage” at the same time as she was collaborating on “The Hikers” project. The overlap allowed her to draw on very different movement styles and approaches, she said. “It was liberating because I could go between these two spaces and create work on Black dancers that spoke to different facets of the Black experience, without having to feel pigeonholed into either because I was at once allowing myself to see, well, OK, in this space, what does this represent? In this space, what does it mean to be Black? And for me, that was very freeing and it was also illuminating.”

‘This Is Something That You Carry With You Until It Just Becomes Too Much’.

By the time Schreier was imagining the next project that would allow her to continue exploring some of these same questions, a global pandemic had shut down studios and theaters, George Floyd had been murdered like so many other Black Americans, and anger and anguish over the endless stories of brutality had boiled over into the streets of cities and towns across the country.

“A lot of feelings flooded through and up and everywhere very quickly” last year, said Schreier, who was slated to participate in the Guggenheim Museum’s virtual commissions program. Put in place almost immediately in the wake of coronavirus shutdowns to support artists looking to create even as traditional venues went dark, it asked participants to make videos under five minutes long that could be posted online.

She knew she wanted to speak to that surge of emotions she was contending with, but “artistically and personally and emotionally, I needed to take some time to absorb what was going on and reflect on it,” she said. Earlier this year, while living temporarily in Chattanooga, Schreier began talking with her husband and partner on the project, filmmaker Adam Barish, about what the film could be and speaking and rehearsing virtually with Keith Reeves, the Atlanta Ballet company member who would star in it, before heading to Atlanta to film.

“We had a lot of conversations about Blackness and about walking through the world while Black and all the things that could mean and how that could be represented,” Schreier said. “This work was dedicated to Black people for whom daily existence is survival.”

The video begins with an alarm clock beeping followed by the first notes of Duke Ellington’s “The Single Petal of a Rose.” A man’s head and his bare shoulders appear in the frame as he sits up, pauses and stretches, then builds up to calisthenics. In quick succession, he dons the layers he needs to face the outside world: socks, undershirt, button-down, belt, shoes, jacket. Poised to exit, he hovers for a moment at the door, then continues. As he makes his way down the streets of Atlanta, the man is hyper-aware of everything and everyone around him, veering out of the way, stepping off the sidewalk, reaching his hand out to pet a dog only to have it yanked away by its owner.

“There are these little micro moments that to anyone unassuming or to anyone who walks through the world and doesn’t have to worry about the way they carry themselves or the way that they present in the world can seem so minor and negligible and just forgettable, honestly,” Schreier said. “But to someone like this character, like this person, it just builds and it builds and it builds, and this is something that you carry with you until it just becomes too much,” she said. “The quotidian element of it was something we really wanted to emphasize — that this is not just a day in the life of this man, this is every day in the life of this man.”

At one point, the man closes his eyes and when he opens them again, he finds himself alone in a field. The camera has zoomed out, the light is soft as the sun sinks, invisible below the horizon, and he begins to move expansively. “It’s a moment of freedom. It’s a moment to find himself uninhibited by the weight of the world,” Schreier said. “It’s the moment in the day where he can take that deep breath, find himself and then carry forward. But nothing has changed.” Transported back to the city streets once again, he allows himself to move as he did in the field for a few seconds before catching and collecting himself and facing reality once again.

The film felt very personal for Reeves. “It really did resonate with me, especially being Black and just my experience going through the dance world and navigating everyday life,” he said. More broadly, “I feel like it was much needed,” said Reeves, who’d stayed out protesting with his roommates for a week or two straight last spring. “It was great for the African-American community to see a film that’s ballet-based tell a story about someone that is a reflection of them..”

‘A Lot of Black Artists Feel That Burden’

Ballet is, historically, a white, Eurocentric art form that has elevated the voices of men as creators and leaders even as the art form is often associated first and foremost among the general public with women as practitioners: images of women in tutus being escorted around the stage by their male cavaliers — or the more modern incarnation of women in leotards being manipulated to extremes by their male partners. Only about a quarter of the works programmed by the top 50 ballet companies in the U.S. for their 2019-20 seasons were choreographed by women, according to the Dance Data Project®, up from 17 percent the previous year.

When it comes to race, ballet in America is still counting firsts. Perhaps the most famous outside of ballet circles, Misty Copeland became the first Black woman to be named a principal dancer at American Ballet Theatre in 2015. New York City Ballet had its first Black Marie, the child at the center of its famous production of “George Balanchine’s The Nutcracker,” in 2019 — 65 years after the ballet’s 1954 premiere. And in 2020, Sidra Bell became the first Black woman ever to choreograph a work for NYCB during its digital fall season.

So Schreier’s path to a career in ballet choreography isn’t just atypical in that she attended a prestigious university rather than dancing in an elite company. It’s also still rare for Black women to be onstage with those ballet companies, let alone to make the works presented. “For such a long time this art form has been the voice of the dominant society, very often the male voice,” said DTH’s Johnson. “As long as you only have one point of view, one vision of what can be said or what needs to be said, then ballet can’t change,” she added. “It is absolutely essential that ballet begin to tell more and different stories and that it has more and different creators.”

Taylor, too, insists that ballet must open itself up to a more diverse mix of performers, choreographers and stories. “It is a form and a discipline and a genre that has a lot of space for those narratives to live and be highlighted and celebrated,” she said. At the same time, what artists “should have is this endless wellspring of abilities and opportunities to create anything we can imagine and not feel a sense of responsibility to stay in a certain lane,” she explained. Schreier “should be allowed to be a choreographer who happens to be a woman of color. So the range of what she is capable of doing should not be boxed or limited [and] I look forward to seeing the many avenues and directions and stories that she seeks to convey through her work.”

In the two years that Schreier made “Passage,” “The Hikers,” and “Force of Habit,” she also made works that took her in entirely other directions. “Pleiades Dances,” set to music by Japanese composer Takashi Yoshimatsu, for example, was “pretty much as abstract as it gets,” said Schreier. Working on it with Atlanta Ballet in early 2021 alongside “Force of Habit” provided a necessary counter. “I needed to create something that challenged me in a different way and represented who I am from that perspective. I needed that just as much as I needed ‘Force of Habit’ at the same time.”

Looking to the future, Schreier said she does want to keep exploring the threads and questions about Black identity and history that she began parsing with her recent string of works. But she also wants to continue making ballets that allow her to express a myriad of other aspects of her creative imagination. “A lot of Black artists feel that burden. They feel that the only work that is being honored by the greater community is work that kind of pigeonholes who they are. And so much of what I do doesn’t speak to that, and that doesn’t mean that it’s invalid or that it’s not contributing,” Schreier said. But part of “who I am as an artist is rooted in my love for immersing myself in the musical language of others, and in probing the many routes each score offers to determine how I will paint the stage with its rhythms and textures,” she added. “And that’s OK too.”

Read the article here.

DDP Cited in Research Article — “Sex Roles and the Erasure of Women from Conversations About Gender Oppression: The Case of #BoysDanceToo”

July 29, 2021/0 Comments/in DDP in the News /by dancedata

23 July 2021

By Canton Winer

Abstract

In 2019, the #BoysDanceToo movement reacted in anger to controversial, misogynistic remarks made on Good Morning America. These reactions highlighted the challenges faced by men and boys in dance. Yet, previous studies have documented significant advantages for men in dance. In an analysis of the discourse used in online posts related to the #BoysDanceToo movement, I find that these broader structural gender inequalities are generally not examined. Responses also do not interrogate the antifemininity that fuels the stigma against boys and men who dance. Analysis suggests that this is due to an overreliance on the language of sex roles—which can mask the oppression of women (as a group) by men (as a group)—and the neglect of a relational understanding of gender. As a result, women are largely erased from a conversation about gender oppression.

Excerpt

“It is also worth noting that despite the prejudices men who dance often face, they
also hold many advantages, including less competition for professional jobs and
disproportionately holding powerful and prestigious positions as artistic directors
and choreographers (Chin 2021; Fisher 2007; Larson 2017). Certainly, some of this
‘advantage’ stems from the stigmatization and bullying of boys and men in dance
(Risner 2014), which produces a scarcity of men dancers and decreased competition
(Risner 2009a). Nonetheless, scholars have also long noted ‘patriarchal underpinnings’
in dance that center the male gaze and subordinate women dancers to
men (Daly 1987; Foster 2004). These longstanding issues remain relevant. For
example, a report on the 50 largest ballet companies in the U.S. found that 79%
of works in the 2019–2020 seasons were choreographed by men, and 62% of programs
in the 2019–2020 seasons featured work choreographed exclusively by men
(Dance Data Project 2019). Moreover, ballet choreographers who are women have
historically been marginalized and treated as second-rate by dance critics (Harris
2012). This suggests that dance, like other ‘feminine’ professions, has hidden
advantages for men (particularly at its higher rungs) despite the stigma these men
often face, particularly from outside the profession (Williams 1992). Especially
because this #BoysDanceToo incident arose in the wake of the #MeToo movement,
it is worth examining whether the resulting discourse acknowledged relational disparities
in dance that advantage men and disadvantage women—even as these disparities
reflect difficulties for men as well.”

Read the full article here.

Broadway World Chicago: Auditorium Theatre Announces Partnership With Dance Data Project

June 28, 2021/0 Comments/in DDP in the News /by dancedata

By Chloe Rabinowitz

25 June 2021

Dance Data Project, in partnership with the Auditorium Theatre, announced the upcoming release of Global Conversations: Behind the Stage, the fifth round in a series of virtual interviews. Round 5 will highlight those professionals who work behind the scenes and out of sight, creating artistic magic in every production, while coping with disasters on a regular basis. This Round features 11 conversations with a roster of renowned women in their respective fields, from stage managers and lighting designers to fight choreographers and filmmakers.

For the first time, DDP presents Global Conversations in partnership with the Auditorium Theatre. The Auditorium continues its commitment to lifting up diverse voices in the performing arts with their 2021-22 Season featuring performances by Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, Ballet Hispánico, Deeply Rooted Dance Theater, Ensemble Español Dance Theater, and Ballet Folklórico de México.

Rich Regan, Chief Executive Officer of the Auditorium Theatre noted: “Emerging from these difficult months, the performing arts community must come together to address inequity in all forms and forge a sustainable future post-pandemic. The innovative work performed by Dance Data Project provides a necessary perspective on classically based dance and presents it in an accessible way. Behind the Stage will become yet another resource for dancers and arts professionals to learn from, aligning well with the Auditorium’s mission to be ‘The Theatre for the People.'”

“Dance Data Project is delighted to be working with the historic Auditorium Theatre as co-presenter for Round 5 of Global Conversations: Behind the Stage,” commented DDP Founder and President Elizabeth Yntema. “On the cusp of their re-opening, it’s critical to be thinking about the role that women artists and artisans play in the $61 billion performing arts economy. The Auditorium Theatre, one of the greatest stages in the U.S., has always been at the forefront of innovative productions, so this true partnership is a great fit.”

In Round 5, Yntema will lead conversations covering each artist’s career path, ability to cope with glitches large and small, and the role the pandemic has had in shaping their respective fields. The roster of participants includes the following list of leaders in producing and creatively constructing some of the world’s best dance and theatre performances.

To read the full article, click here.

Dance Magazine: Dance Data Project®’s Latest Report Includes Some Stunning Numbers

June 10, 2021/0 Comments/in DDP in the News /by dancedata

10 June 2021

By Jennifer Stahl

Since 2015, Dance Data Project® has become a reliable source for hard numbers backing up conversations on gender inequity in ballet. Today it came out with an Artistic and Executive Leadership Report detailing the gender distribution among directors at the largest 100 ballet companies, as well as the pay gap between male and female leaders.

The results are mostly unsurprising. For instance, only 30 percent of artistic directors at the largest 50 companies are women, and they make an average of 73 cents for every dollar earned by men in the same position.

However, in a note about the limitations of the research, DDP explains that Peter Martins throws a wrench in the findings, because his compensation remains much larger than any other artistic director’s—even after his retirement from New York City Ballet.

Martins officially resigned as ballet master in chief on January 1, 2018, following accusations of sexual harassment and physical and verbal abuse (although the allegations were not corroborated in an investigation).

DDP’s report shows that in the fiscal year ending June 2017—his last full one at NYCB—Martins was compensated $900,000 as an employee, plus $16,750 for choreographic royalties/fees. Additionally, the School of American Ballet (which, although it’s the feeder school to NYCB, is set up as its own entity) paid him $127,748 during its fiscal year ending August 2017. Taken all together, that’s $1,044,498, and DDP points out that “the next highest compensated artistic director that year made only 68 percent that much.”

In the fiscal year ending June 2018—which Martins left in the middle of—NYCB reported paying $986,000 to Peter Martins Productions Inc for “services performed as ballet master in chief” as well as $14,625 in choreographic royalties/fees. (The season featured both his Swan Lake and Romeo + Juliet.) SAB paid him an additional $128,386 in the fiscal year ending August 2018. In total, that’s $1,129,011, which is more than he made the previous year, despite having retired from his full-time positions at NYCB and SAB in January. DDP notes that his total compensation was “1.5 times larger than that of the next highest paid artistic director in that year.”

The following season, NYCB continued to perform Martins’ works—his Sleeping Beauty and his staging of La Sylphide, among other ballets—so it makes sense that he would again receive compensation for his choreography. Yet the number is larger than might be expected: In the 2019 fiscal year, NYCB paid Peter Martins Productions Inc. $975,273 total, and noted that $936,000 was for “services performed by Peter Martins as a choreographer, etc” and $5,250 was for choreographic royalties/fees. (Though details are unknown, this could be due to a severance package.) DDP notes that his fee was 1.3 times larger than the highest paid artistic director in that year.

Other Notable Findings:

Overall, more women than men hold executive director positions today. At the largest 50 ballet companies, there are 27 female and 23 male executive directors. When you zero in on the largest 10 companies, 70 percent of executive directors are women—and the most recent available data shows they earned an average of $400,282, while male executive directors averaged $397,867.
However, women typically earn less than their male counterparts. In 2019, at the largest 100 ballet companies, women were paid an average of 60 cents for every dollar men earned as artistic director. Among executive directors that same year, women at the largest 100 ballet companies earned 80 cents for every dollar men did.
The most recent data available shows that female artistic directors earned an average of $104,656 while male artistic directors averaged $173,541 (in the largest 100 ballet companies). The only female artistic director working in the largest 10 companies made $517,955, while the average compensation for the nine male artistic directors at that level was $461,923.
In 2019, NYCB reported that 176 employees were compensated more than $100,000 each, though DDP notes that it’s unclear whether that number also includes Koch Theater employees. San Francisco Ballet had the second highest number, with 49 employees paid more than $100,000 each. Out of the largest 50 ballet companies, the average number of employees who made more than that amount was 9.

To read the full article on the Dance Magazine website, click here.

The Body: Dancing Towards the Dream of Asian Representation

June 1, 2021/0 Comments/in DDP in the News /by dancedata

By Juan Michael Porter II

28 May 2021

Last year, Phil Chan and Georgina Pazcoguin—the founders of Final Bow For Yellowface, an initiative created to eliminate offensive stereotypes of Asians on the stage—marked Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month by interviewing a different ballet dancer of Asian descent during each day of May. The video series was entitled, “What’s The Tea?”

For 2021, the duo has leveled up: This month, they are presenting work created by choreographers of Asian descent. Only this time, instead of focusing solely on ballet dancers, Chan and Pazcoguin decided to show audiences the full scope of what is possible in dance.

It’s all part of “10,000 Dreams: Virtual Choreography Festival,” a free online dance festival that the two curated with Jessica Tong, the associate artistic director of Hubbard Street Dance Chicago. Through the end of May, viewers can visit the site each day to see a different dance piece created by a choreographer of Asian descent. There is no cost to view the videos, though if one feels moved, they can make a donation to help support Final Bow For Yellowface’s vision.

Final Bow for Yellowface is an organization that Chan and Pazcoguin created in 2017 to encourage ballet companies around the world to divest their productions of racist caricatures while promoting diversity throughout the art form. To date, almost every major ballet company in the United States has taken Final Bow’s pledge to reject orientalism and racism in their work.

But the mission does not stop there: According to Pazcoguin, it’s not enough to simply reject these tropes—they need to be replaced with something that is culturally meaningful and engaging to audiences.

That’s where “10,000 Dreams” comes in. “If an artistic director complains that they don’t know where to find an Asian choreographer or creative to work with,” Pazcoguin said, “well, we’ve found at least 31 for you. So no more excuses.”

Fighting for Representation

Pazcoguin is used to hearing excuses like this. She is the first and only ballerina of Asian descent to ever be promoted to the rank of a soloist at the New York City Ballet, one of the world’s leading dance companies. Sadly, she is also the only woman of color to dance in the upper ranks of the company in over 20 years.

Though speaking out about matters of racial equity could torpedo her career—particularly in a world where the mantra “dancers should be seen, not heard” is the rule of thumb—Pazcoguin said that she has “never been able to keep my head down.” Pazcoguin rejects the awful stereotype of Asian women being submissive—and anyone who has ever seen this powerfully lyrical dancer knows that there is nothing subservient about her. That is why she is known in the dance world as the “Rogue Ballerina.”

But her outspokenness has had its costs. As Chan points out, Pazcoguin is the only ballerina in the upper ranks at City Ballet who has never been given the opportunity to perform the iconic role of the Sugar Plum Fairy in The Nutcracker, which is one of the most popular ballet productions in the world. Nonetheless, “Georgina is an amazing ballerina—and I’m not saying that because she’s my friend,” Chan said. “That’s why she’s consistently handpicked by guest choreographers when they work with the company.”

Chan knows what he is talking about. In addition to being a former dancer himself, he is also a 2020 New York Public Library Dance Research Fellow and author of the acclaimed book, Final Bow for Yellowface: Dancing Between Intention and Impact, which serves as a resource guide that demystifies ballet’s stereotypes through a historical lens and helps readers with updating their classical pieces, so they remain relevant to today’s audiences.

“I don’t want people to think that they have to cancel ballet,” Chan said. “It’s possible to change a few things that are offensive to create something that speaks to the world today.” Though some purists may balk at this idea, Chan pointed out that choreographers and directors have been updating ballets for centuries. He said an obvious indication of this is that ballerinas did not lift their legs up to their ears 200 years ago, though this is quite common today.

Beyond aesthetic choices, Chan cautioned that “if artistic directors want millennials and Gen Z to come to the ballet, they’re going to have to stop offending everybody. It’s not enough to say, ‘But this is the way we used to do it back in the day.’ Especially when we see updated versions of Shakespeare and operas all the time.”

Pazcoguin agreed. “Why should anyone pay $200 to sit through horrible stereotypes?” she asserted. “Can you imagine what that does to a young Asian or Black girl? When they’re told that they can never be the queen or princess—that they have to play a slave or a maid?” Pazcoguin added that “no one goes to the ballet to feel like they don’t count or that if they want to join in, they have to stand in the back.”

Asian Erasure

The message that Asian people don’t count has been percolating in this country for decades. We see it today even in language from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which trumpets that “Asians” have the lowest recorded HIV seroconversion rates among all groups in the U.S. without addressing the glaring problem that Asian Americans also have the lowest rates for HIV testing.

The issue is brushed under the table in part because of the model minority myth, which claims that Asian people are all magically perfect, don’t experience challenges, and therefore require zero resources or investment into their communities.

Much like the practice of redlining, which primarily afflicts Black communities, the model minority myth has translated into decades of AAPI divestment and erasure—even in progressive metropolises like New York City. According to Coalition for Asian American Children and Families’ analysis of the city’s budget for 2020, organizations serving Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders (AAPI) or led by AAPI were only allocated 4.4% of the City Council’s discretionary dollars and less than 1.5% of social service contract dollars. This even as people of Asian descent account for 15% of the city’s overall population.

But the practice of ignoring problems that affect AAPI communities does not stop there; it extends into crime reporting as well. For instance, the New York Police Department (NYPD) crime statistics from Jan. 1 through Nov. 1, 2020 recorded only three hate crimes against Asian people, despite reporting that suggested the actual number was far higher. Meanwhile, in a category that was only created last year, the department also listed 24 “Other Corona” based hate crimes without referencing race. By the end of 2020, there were 25 recorded “Other Corona” based hate crimes, and 24 of them occurred against people of Asian descent. By erasing racial representation in this manner, the NYPD was able to neglect a community that was in dire need of assistance during a pandemic that awakened horrific levels of racist violence.

A similar act of injustice was only recently corrected in Atlanta, Georgia, when the district attorney of Fulton County finally announced on May 11 that she would seek hate crime charges in her county for the massage parlor shootings in March that ultimately left six Korean American women and two bystanders dead. Prior to the announcement, some political figures had dismissed the targeted murders as being motivated by sex rather than race. This denial went as far as 63 Republican members of Congress voting against an anti-Asian hate crimes bill that was signed into law on May 20, with some members denouncing it as an infringement upon free speech or proof that police powers needed to be expanded.

This attempt to ignore issues that affect Asian people exists in the entertainment industry as well. According to UCLA’s Hollywood Diversity Report for 2020, only 6.5% of all top film roles (and 5.4% of all leading roles) went to Asian people. Meanwhile, an Asian American Performers Action Coalition study of New York City’s theatrical 2017-2018 season found that Asian American actors accounted for only 6.9% of all actors cast—and that they were the group least likely to be cast when a role had no designated race.

The consequences of this Asian erasure were made clear earlier this month in a survey commissioned by the nonprofit organization Leading Asian Americans to Unite for Change. The survey, which included 2,766 adults from across the U.S., found that 42% of respondents who were asked to name a famous Asian American answered “don’t know.” Eleven percent of respondents listed Jackie Chan, while 9% listed Bruce Lee.

Transforming the Face of Dance

Chan and Pazcoguin look at figures like these and know that the outlook isn’t much better in the dance community. While ballet companies often hire dancers of Asian descent, most of those dancers have been poached from national schools in other countries where their talent was nurtured. But when it comes to cultivating the talent of Asian dancers born in this country, one sees the same appalling treatment that Black women receive in ballet—apathy and exclusion.

It is even worse when it comes to hiring Asian choreographers to create new work; overwhelmingly, those commissions go to white men. A review of Dance Data Project’s survey of works that were scheduled for the 2019-2020 season reveals that among the top 50 dance companies in the U.S., only five had hired a choreographer of Asian descent to work with them for the season. Edwaard Liang accounted for four of those commissions; Cali Quan of BalletX was the fifth.

By producing “10,000 Dreams,” Chan and Pazcoguin hope to change this reality. They have already made progress: Recently, they announced that six major ballet companies have agreed to commission new ballets from all-Asian creative-led teams by 2025, including the choreographer, composer, costume designer, and set designer.

Those companies—Ballet Met, Boston Ballet, Dance Theatre of Harlem, Houston Ballet, Oakland Ballet, and Washington Ballet—are going beyond the virtue signaling that many organizations flashed after the hate crime attacks in Atlanta. Those attacks are what motivated Chan and Pazcoguin to jump into high gear with their efforts to make the dance world confront its complicity in the erasure and silencing of AAPI voices.

Honoring a Legacy

Chan says that a “patron saint” for their plan is Choo San Goh, a Singaporean-born choreographer of Chinese descent who died in 1987 from viral colitis at the age of 39, one year after he was diagnosed with AIDS.

“[Goh] would have been the next Balanchine if he hadn’t died,” Chan said—a reference to George Balanchine, who is widely considered one of the greatest choreographers of the 20th century. Prior to his passing, Goh was an internationally acclaimed choreographer who created works for many of the world’s leading dance companies, including Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, American Ballet Theatre, Bat Dor Dance Company, Boston Ballet, Dance Theatre of Harlem, Houston Ballet, Joffrey Ballet Royal Swedish Ballet, Pacific Northwest Ballet, Paris Opera Ballet, Royal Danish Ballet, and Washington Ballet, where he served as resident choreographer.

Chan said that the idea for “10,000 Dreams” follows a plan set out by Goh, who believed in nurturing Asian voices. Following his death, a foundation was created in his name in 1992 to support the creation of new choreography. Funding for the foundation would have come from licensing ballets that Goh created during his lifetime, but because many of those works have not been performed in years, the organization’s funding has dried up. Luckily, the mission to elevate Asian voices lives again through “10,000 Dreams.”

Chan and Pazcoguin have even contacted a number of companies that hold Goh’s ballets in their repertoires and asked that they revive them. Thus far, all six companies that have agreed to commission new Asian-creative led works, have also signed on. Chan said that the Dance Theatre of Harlem’s artistic director, Virginia Johnson, told him that “everyone should see Choo San’s ballets. They are so good.”

Hopefully, by the time 2025 rolls around, the world will see Goh’s work in tandem with many other Asian choreographers. With Chan and Pazcoguin leading the way, that dream is on its way to becoming a reality.

To read the article, originally published on The Body, click here.

DDP Featured in Turning Pointe by Chloe Angyal

May 27, 2021/0 Comments/in DDP in the News /by dancedata

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.

Dance Data Project®’s New Sexual Assault Prevention Resources Featured in LA Dance Chronicle

May 17, 2021/0 Comments/in DDP in the News /by dancedata

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.

Liza Yntema Interviewed on 5.6.7.EIGHT Podcast Ep 101: The Numbers Don’t Lie — Elizabeth Yntema

April 8, 2021/0 Comments/in DDP in the News /by dancedata

07 April 2021

This week on 5.6.7.EIGHT, Aleksandra speaks with Elizabeth Yntema — the President and Founder of the Dance Data Project, which provides helpful resources and studies of the world of dance, all in an effort to inform gender equity and level the playing field. Elizabeth holds a law degree and serves on multiple nonprofit boards — arts-related and otherwise. Additionally, two years ago, she was one of 450 global participants selected to the final full year training cohort of The Philanthropy Workshop, where she spent a year honing her skills as a philanthropist.

The Dance Data Project is a collision of two of Elizabeth’s dearest passions — dance and equal opportunity — and through her company’s work, she’s looking to move the needle towards gender fairness in the arts world. On the podcast, Elizabeth lays out her company’s mission and reveals that the hard data points towards a bleak reality in the world of dance — one where men have been given a clear advantage and women have been shown the backseat. However, Elizabeth is hopeful that her shedding of light on this issue using real, tangible data will make a world of difference.

Moving Quotes:

“I started Dance Data Project because I think this is something I can solve. There are a lot of problems in the world that I can’t fix… I saw this problem as something that I could attack and succeed at.”

“People may say, ‘This is just ballet. This is how it’s always been.’ That’s actually not true… Most of the big companies in the United States were founded by women.”

“I think mentorship is critical — whether it’s formal or informal. The best way to get better is feedback.”

“Common sense and the willingness to drill down and keep asking questions gets you a long way.”

“With big budgets, I think the assumption is that, if a man runs the company, it’s somehow more prestigious.”

“Sometimes you don’t know why you’re doing what you’re doing. You just try something.”

“At every step of the way, men do have mentors. I think we need to institutionalize it for women.”

Listen to the episode here.

DDP in the News

DDP Cited in Article “OBT: More questions than answers”

In the wake of the ballet company’s abrupt split with artistic leader Kevin Irving, much remains unresolved and unexplained

DDP Founder & President Liza Yntema featured in The Indispensables podcast: Bringing gender equity to the world of dance