News

"The Devil Ties My Tongue" SKETCH Series 2013 | photo: David DeSilva

Pacific Northwest Ballet Presents Eva Stone’s Choreography & It Features Music By Women, Too

/0 Comments/in /by

The Seattle Times: 6 dance performances to catch in the Seattle area in fall 2019

By Moira Macdonald and Megan Burbank

18 September 2019

A classic pointe-shoe ballet; a weekend of work examining masculinity, queerness, race and gender; and an array of new choreography all over town — yes, it’s fall in Seattle and the dance is begun. Here are a few highlights of the season.

…

Locally Sourced

Here’s a welcome rarity at Pacific Northwest Ballet: an evening of all-new work, all from local choreographers. Presenting world-premiere ballets will be Eva Stone, founder/producer of CHOP SHOP: Bodies of Work; Donald Byrd, artistic director of Spectrum Dance Theater and a Tony Award-nominated choreographer (“The Color Purple”); and PNB corps member Miles Pertl, whose work has been seen at the company’s Next Step and PNB School performances. Stone’s work, “Foil,” will be set to music by female composers from centuries past (Nadia Boulanger, Elisabeth Jacquet de la Guerre, Fanny Mendelssohn and Clara Schumann); Byrd’s, called “Love and Loss,” is set to music by Emmanuel Witzthum, and Pertl’s (as yet untitled) is scored by Jherek Bischoff. Nov. 8-17; Marion Oliver McCaw Hall, 321 Mercer St., Seattle; tickets from $37; 206-441-2424, pnb.org — M.M.

Read more in The Seattle Times.

Broadway World: Anabelle Lopez Ochoa Presents the World Premiere Of TIBURONES As Ballet Hispánico Returns To The Apollo Theater

/0 Comments/in /by

18 September 2019

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, Anabelle Lopez Ochoa reimagines the world of the The Sharks (from the award-winning musical West Side Story) from a Latinx and gender fluid perspective. Ochoa will embrace non-gender specific roles while deconstructing stereotypes and giving new life to an ever-appropriated cultural icon.

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.

Con Brazos Abiertos (2017) is a fun and frank look at life caught between two cultures. Michelle Manzanales utilizes iconic Mexican symbols that she was reluctant to embrace as a Mexican-American child growing up in Texas, to speak to the immigrant experience. Intertwining folkloric representations with humor and music that ranges from Julio Iglesias to Rock en Español, the work brings life to a Latino dilemma.

Read the full article on Broadway World.

Dance Magazine Puts BalletX on Its Cover

/0 Comments/in /by

Dance Magazine: BalletX is Taking All the Right Risks

By Lauren Wingenwroth

In a sensual, troubled duet to the music of Amy Winehouse, dancers Chloe Perkes and Zachary Kapeluck channel the late singer’s fraught relationship with fame, performance and love. They embody the haunting gravity of her story—while wearing enormous pairs of bunny ears.

On paper, Trey McInytre’s Big Ones sounds like it shouldn’t work. But risky choices are par for the course at BalletX, and this risk pays off. Founded as a summertime pickup troupe in 2005 by Christine Cox and Matthew Neenan when they were dancers at Pennsylvania Ballet, BalletX is dedicated to performing new work—and lots of it. Its repertory boasts a whopping 76 world premieres in 14 years.

With just 10 dancers, it’s a model of what is possible for small contemporary ballet troupes—and it embodies many of the ideals that larger companies are striving for today. It commissions lots of women. Half of the company members are dancers of color. The work pushes ballet in new directions, whether through innovative story ballets or genre-bending collaborations. It’s deeply rooted in its Philadelphia community, and has fostered an open company culture rarely found in ballet.

And by embracing what Cox, the company’s artistic and executive director, calls “the good, the bad and the ugly” that comes with commissioning new work, BalletX has developed a daring, inventive repertory—and a national and international following.

Read the full article in Dance Magazine.

DDP Founder Liza Yntema helped underwrite BalletX’s latest world premiere, The Little Prince, choreographed by Annabelle Lopez Ochoa. Read Yntema’s interview with BalletX Artistic Director Christine Cox here!

DDP Takes Part in Consulting Projects Course of Berkeley Haas’ Center for Equity, Gender, and Leadership

/0 Comments/in , /by

Each semester, the Center for Equity, Gender, and Leadership (EGAL), at UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business, offers a Consulting Projects Course. This fall, DDP is one of the select organizations participating in this course in which students are presented with a company’s unique issue, problem, or decision that is critical to advancing that organization’s diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts. 

As DDP grows, we need help meeting demands for more data and insight into the roles gender equity plays in the dance community. Furthermore, our team is committed to benefiting from academic insight and learning the latest methods in data analysis and academic research.

We are pleased to announce that second-year MBA student Patrick Crocker will be working on our project in the EGAL course. Patrick’s expertise comes from 10 years on active duty in the U.S. Army as a Judge Advocate and heavy exposure to dance from growing up backstage at his aunt’s dance studio performances, to working as an accompanist for dance classes at Texas Christian University, and to collaborating with the University of Richmond dance department during law school. Patrick will consider two topics of interest, examining either major ballet venues or company-affiliated ballet schools in the United States, defining the scope of their market and revealing the gender distribution in leadership and programming. This project is tailored to develop a usable product of interest to both the dance world and leaders in gender equity, as well as to the general public.

The DDP team would like to thank Larissa Roesch, who introduced our founder, Liza, to this project and Jennifer Wells, Program Director of EGAL for making the collaboration possible. We look forward to sharing the results of this collaboration with our community in the coming months!

About Patrick

Patrick is currently a full-time MBA student at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley (class of 2020). Prior to Berkeley, Patrick spent a decade in the U.S. Army as a Judge Advocate, mostly practicing in the criminal, operational, and intelligence law fields. He is originally from Texas and has been involved with dance off and on throughout his life, including working as an accompanist for the dace department at Texas Christian University during undergrad and writing/performing music for the dance department at the University of Richmond during law school. He is thrilled to be able to contribute to the amazing work DDP is doing to support equity initiatives in classical ballet.

Learn more about Berkeley Haas’ Center for Equity, Gender, and Leadership here.

New York Times: Countable on One Hand: The Women Leading Power Five Athletic Departments

/0 Comments/in /by

By Alan Blinder

13 September 2019

PITTSBURGH — The first three games of Pittsburgh’s football season wouldn’t seem like an exhibit of social change: a conference game against Virginia, a home matchup with Ohio and the 100th round of a rivalry with Penn State.

But when Heather Lyke, Pitt’s athletic director, scrutinized the schedule, she noticed something beyond big matchups: The Panthers’ first three opponents were Division I universities where women were in charge of sports.

“That will probably never happen again in my career,” Lyke said in her office last month, her tone at once elated and a little longing.

The coincidental scheduling streak is a sign of the begrudging progress made in elevating women into the executive suites of American sports. Its rarity is also a reminder of a sustained disparity: Of the 65 colleges in the nation’s five wealthiest and most powerful sports conferences, only four have women leading the athletic department.

Read the full article in The New York Times.

Joyce Theater Director’s Wisdom Leads to More Female Work at The Joyce

/0 Comments/in /by

New York Times: At the Joyce, Embracing Tap and Awe

By Gia Kourlas

3 September 2019

When Aaron Mattocks became director of programming at the Joyce Theater in 2018, he didn’t have an agenda. He didn’t even have a list of artists he wanted to push. But he knew one thing: “I have no idea what this place needs except change,” he said. “I’m going to shut up and listen, and I’m going to shut up and watch.”

In retrospect, it was a good plan. A couple of weeks into his new job, Mr. Mattocks, 39, attended a discussion about decolonizing curatorial approaches. It was there that he saw, for the first time, the tap dancer Ayodele Casel. “She stood up and said, ‘I’m going to say this: Tap is a black form,’” Mr. Mattocks said. “I wrote down her name.”

Ms. Casel, who is African-American and Puerto Rican, spoke about how tap dancers were being displaced from performance and rehearsal spaces in New York City. “Obviously, I know that tap is open to everybody,” Ms. Casel, 44, said recently. “But I wanted to remind people that this is our tradition, and we shouldn’t be pushed out.”

Mr. Mattocks took note. Under his watch, Ms. Casel — a spectacular tap artist who has been working in the field for more than 20 years — finally has an evening of her own at the Joyce, the dance-dedicated theater that is one of the city’s most important spaces for the art form. In September, she will collaborate with Arturo O’Farrill on a program focusing on Afro-Latin jazz culture. To say that it’s about time is an understatement.

Read more in The New York Times.

More Female Work Coming to NYC This Fall

/0 Comments/in /by

New York Times: All the Ways to Fall for Dance This Autumn

By Gia Kourlas

12 September 2019

2019 CROSSING THE LINE FESTIVAL The French Institute Alliance Française’s annual festival — 11 performances, along with a gallery exhibition — embraces artists of different disciplines; this edition is the first programmed by Courtney Geraghty, who took over as the institute’s artistic director in 2018. Established artists, including Peter Brook and Germaine Acogny, will present new works, while Isabelle Adjani makes her New York theatrical debut in “Opening Night,” directed by Cyril Teste. Jérôme Bel returns to the festival with a commissioned portrait of Isadora Duncan in the form of a solo for Catherine Gallant, a New York dancer, historian and teacher who has long explored Duncan’s work. Stefanie Batten Bland modernizes Stanley Kramer’s 1967 film “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner” in “Look Who’s Coming to Dinner,” and François Chaignaud excavates the rituals of Western theater in “Думи мої — Dumy Moyi,” an intimate solo. Through Oct. 12; crossingtheline.org.

2019 WHITNEY BIENNIAL The biennial includes two dance performances: “Brendan Fernandes: The Master and Form” mixes ballet and S&M culture with a sculptural installation of five structures, including 10 hanging ropes and a cage. The props function as both a help and a hindrance to the performers, who hold positions as a test of endurance (Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays through September). And in “Madeline Hollander: Ouroboros: Gs,” Ms. Hollander creates a site-specific performance inspired by the Whitney’s flood mitigation system; her choreography mimics the path of the barrier (Sept. 19). whitney.org.

Read the full list in The New York Times.

New York Times: Martha Graham Dance’s Empowerment

/0 Comments/in /by

According to The New York Times, “Martha Graham choreographed the all-female ‘Chronicle’ in 1936, the same year she turned down the Nazis’ invitation to dance at the Olympic Games in Berlin and 16 years after women were granted the right to voted in the United States.”

Watch the speaking in dance video here.

Metrics Matter: How You Select Determines Outcome – Forbes Should Listen to Its Own Reporters

/0 Comments/in /by

UPWORTHY: Forbes’ 100 Most Innovative Leaders list includes 99 men. Here’s how their methodology was flawed

By Annie Reneau

12 September 2019

The fine folks at Forbes are currently falling all over themselves trying to clean up the mess they created by publishing their 2019 list of 100 Most Innovative Leaders.

via Twitter/Forbes

The problem: The list included 99 men and one woman. For those not so good with the math, that means according to Forbes, only 1% of the country’s most innovative leaders are female.

Have you ever watched a movie that’s so abysmally bad that you wonder how it ever even got made? Where you think, “Hundreds and hundreds of people had to have been directly involved in the production of this film. Did any of them ever think to say, ‘Hey, maybe we should just scrap this idea altogether?”

That’s how it feels to see a list like this. So how did Forbes come up with these results?

Let’s start with the description at the top of the published list, synopsizing who compiled the list and how:

“Business school professors Jeff Dyer, Nathan Furr and Mike Hendron teamed up with consultant Curtis Lefrandt to measure four essential leadership qualities of top founders and CEOs: media reputation for innovation, social connections, track record for value creation and investor expectations for value creation. The researchers then ranked these visionaries in a high-powered selection of 100 innovators at top U.S. companies.”

Read the full article on Upworthy.

DDP Gets a Feature on Forbes.com – The Gender Pay Gap Exists in Ballet, Too

/0 Comments/in , , /by

A Gender Gap In Ballet, Seriously?

By Kim Elsesser

12 September 2019

If there is one occupation in which it seems women should have an equal shot of making it to leadership roles, it is ballet. From a young age, far more girls than boys are interested in ballet, so much so that girls are estimated to outnumber boys 20-to-1 in ballet classes. Yet when it comes to leadership, there’s a shocking gender gap in favor of men. 

The Data Dance Project (DDP), an organization dedicated to promoting equity in classical ballet, examined leadership and salary data for artistic directors at the top 50 ballet companies in the United States—and their findings are pretty shocking. Artistic directors are often former dancers, and they have the final say on artistic decisions like how a step may be performed or how a show will transition from one piece to the next. According to DDP, a whopping 72% of ballet companies have a male artistic director. Those women who do get the title of artistic director earn only 68 cents for every dollar earned by their male counterparts.  Sadly, only one woman made it onto DDP’s top ten list of the highest paid artistic directors. 

The gender bias in choreography is even worse. DDP found that in the 2018-19 ballet season, men choreographed 81% of all works performed by the top 50 ballet companies. Of the 467 works announced for the 2019-20 season, 79% will be choreographed by men.

Read the full feature on Forbes.com.