The Washington Post: Ballet directors talk about ‘fitness.’ That’s still code for rail-thin dancers.
/0 Comments/in Pay Equity, Transparency and Safety/by Ellen FitzGerald07 April 2021
By Chloe Angyal
Today’s ballet teachers and company directors know that they can no longer simply instruct their dancers to lose weight. But that doesn’t mean they’ve relinquished their rigid, narrow vision of what a “good” ballet body looks like: They simply swathe that ideal in the gauzy, feel-good messaging of today’s fitness culture.
For decades, the prevailing attitude was to lose the weight, no matter how, says Harrison: “Lose it by ‘Nutcracker’ — and by the way it’s November 15 — and [do it] without getting injured and without passing out.” In her infamous memoir “Dancing on My Grave,” New York City Ballet principal dancer Gelsey Kirkland recounts an incident in the late 1960s when the company’s co-founder and de facto dictator, George Balanchine, stopped a class to examine Kirkland’s body and “rapped his knuckles” down her sternum. “Must see bones,” he told her. At the time, Kirkland weighed less than 100 pounds. “He did not merely say, ‘eat less,’ ” Kirkland remembered. “He repeatedly said, ‘eat nothing.’ ” Experiences like Kirkland’s (whose account has been corroborated by other company dancers) can be found throughout the ballet world. Balanchine’s preferred female body type — swan-necked, slim-hipped, long-legged, impossibly thin and capable of terrifically difficult footwork — became the enduring global standard for ballet companies and schools.
In the 1990s, ballet’s high-pressure and eating-disorder-friendly culture came in for some unwelcome attention. The press spread the word about anorexia and bulimia running rampant among teenage girls; gymnastics and figure skating also came under scrutiny. In books and press coverage, harrowing tales of dancers starving themselves, of smoking or snorting their appetites away, made for bad PR as the nation moved toward a new, tenuous “body positive” culture in which emaciation was no longer considered the height of feminine beauty.
The bad old days of American ballet teachers and company directors telling their dancers to eat nothing, or telling them exactly how many pounds they should lose, are largely over. The focus now is on optimum performance, on strength, on food as fuel. Companies encourage dancers to cross train at the gym, on top of their heavy rehearsal schedules and daily technique classes. They partner with nutritionists (Harrison, for example, was the in-house nutritionist at Atlanta Ballet for six years and now consults with the company) and team up with activewear brands to emphasize that their dancers are athletes as well as artists.
Company directors today commonly say they want “fit” dancers — provided that they also appear fit. That is, in addition to having the strength and stamina to dance a full ballet, they must adhere to the conventional understanding of what a fit person looks like. It’s not enough to lift your pas de deux partner over your head: You also need to have a six-pack while you’re doing it.
Read the full piece in The Washington Post here.
Note: Ms. Angyal was interviewed for DDP’s Global Conversations Round 3: The View from 30,000 Feet, which aired in the Fall of 2020. Her forthcoming book, Turning Pointe: How a New Generation of Dancers Is Saving Ballet From Itself, will be published May 4, 2021 and will feature DDP’s work.
The Lily: The pandemic set women’s equality back another generation, a new report says
/0 Comments/in #YesThisIsAnArtsStory/by dancedataThe New York Times In Her Words: Misogyny Fuels Violence Against Women. Should It Be a Hate Crime?
/0 Comments/in Pay Equity, Transparency and Safety/by dancedata25 March 2021
By Alisha Haridasani Gupta
“Men who kill women do not suddenly kill women, they work up to killing women.”
— Caroline Criado Perez, author of “Invisible Women: Exposing Data Bias in a World Designed for Men”
Sarah Everard in London. Soon Chung Park, Hyun Jung Grant, Suncha Kim, Yong Ae Yue, Delaina Ashley Yaun, Xiaojie Tan and Daoyou Feng in Atlanta.
Eight women, two continents apart, killed in the space of two weeks. The suspects in both cases are men.
In London, Ms. Everard disappeared while walking home from a friend’s house, and was found dead a week later. A police officer was charged with kidnapping and murdering her.
In Atlanta, a gunman stormed three massage parlors and shot and killed eight people — seven of them women, six of them Asian — raising speculation that the attack was racially motivated. A suspect was arrested that same evening.
While the details of the two cases differ significantly, experts suggest that the current available evidence points to a potential commonality: misogyny. And, in light of the two events, activists in Britain and in the United States have urged the authorities to treat misogyny as a greater threat to national security, even upgraded to the level of a hate crime.
In the days after Ms. Everard’s body was found and protests calling for deeper social change grew across the United Kingdom, the British government announced an experimental pilot program (though there is no fixed start date yet) that would categorize cases of gender-based violence and harassment motivated by misogyny as hate crimes.
“Across the country, women everywhere are looking to us not just to express sympathy with their concerns, but to act,” Baroness Helena Kennedy, a member of the House of Lords, the upper chamber of the British Parliament, said during a debate on the policy. “Stop telling them to stay at home and be careful, and start finding those responsible for the violence.”
To read the full article, click here. You can also get the In Her Words newsletter in your inbox, by signing up here.
Pointe: Ballet Co.Laboratory’s Unique Business Model Has Kept Its Dancers Securely Employed Throughout the Pandemic
/0 Comments/in Ballet Programming, Awards, and Season Announcements/by dancedata22 March 2021
By Kyra Laubaucher
In 2018, Zoé Emilie Henrot and eight other dancers suddenly found themselves unemployed when their Twin Cities–based company transitioned to a school-only model just weeks before their season was supposed to start. They had two options: go their separate ways or band together. Joining forces, they created Ballet Co.Laboratory, an artist-led company in St. Paul, Minnesota, with an inventive repertoire and an unconventional business structure. Since its founding, Ballet Co.Laboratory has presented original works like Nutcracker in Wonderland (a new spin on the holiday classic), The Snow Queen and Remembering the Little Prince, as well as premieres by emerging choreographers. The company’s dual-contract structure also provides its dancers with administrative employment, whether in management, communications, development or teaching—a framework that became especially useful in keeping the dancers employed during the pandemic.
Pointe sat down with Henrot, the company’s artistic director, to talk about Ballet Co.Laboratory, its recent Laboratory II performances, and how the company’s distinctive structure helped prepare its dancers to face pandemic challenges head-on.
To read the full interview, click here.
The New York Times In Her Words: In 25 Years, the Pay Gap Has Shrunk by Just 8 Cents
/0 Comments/in Pay Equity, Transparency and Safety/by dancedata24 March 2021
By Francesca Donner and Emma Goldberg
“One cannot simply outperform inequality.”
— Megan Rapinoe, a professional U.S. Soccer player
Megan Rapinoe is a two-time World Cup champion who has played to sold-out stadiums around the globe; what she has in common with nearly every American woman is that she’s underpaid.
On Wednesday, Ms. Rapinoe testified during a hearing held by Representative Carolyn B. Maloney to examine economic harm caused by gender inequalities, particularly for women of color.
Today is All Women’s Equal Pay Day, Ms. Maloney said. But it’s not Equal Pay Day for all women.
Black women would have to work until Aug. 3, 2021, to earn what men made in 2020. For Latina women, the date doesn’t come until Oct. 2.
“This is a disgrace,” Ms. Maloney said. “And it has long-term consequences for women and families.”
Wage discrimination isn’t limited to any one sector or income level.
Take Ms. Rapinoe, whose fight for equal pay has become something of a calling card for the U.S. women’s team, and who played a central role in the team’s lawsuit on unequal pay filed in 2019.
“One cannot simply outperform inequality,” she said. “Or be excellent enough to escape discrimination.”
If it can happen to me, she said, “it can — and it does — happen to every person marginalized by gender.”
In Her Words looked at the history of Equal Pay Day, the reasons for the wage gap and what can be done to close it.
To read the full article, click here.
QCityMetro.com: Charlotte Ballet’s Raven Barkley on the power of mentoring
/0 Comments/in Choreographer/Artist Profile/by dancedata23 March 2021
By Makhaila Anderson, Queens University News Service
As a dancer, Raven Barkley understands the power of gestures, symbols and movement. All literally guide her life’s journey. She says the poetry of Amanda Gorman and the election of Kamala Harris as vice president show young people of color — all people, really — that they can dream big.
“We still have a lot more work to do as a nation but this is definitely a start,” Barkley, who performs with the Charlotte Ballet, said in a recent interview. “I’ve seen a change in the confidence of our younger generation and how the stars in their eyes light up knowing that they can do that too. They can be in these leadership roles, they can sit at the table, they can discuss the topics that need to be discussed to make a change in our society.”
“I am a firm believer that representation matters,” she said. “If we don’t see women of color or even people of color in these positions, these leadership positions, then we don’t see what the possibility is.”
African-American mentors play a significant role in Barkley’s life. She trained at the Dance Theatre of Harlem in New York City, a company founded by Arthur Mitchell, the first Black principal dancer in the New York City Ballet. The Harlem company is the world’s first Black classical ballet company, and she credits its leaders, Andrea Long, Virginia Johnson, and Robert Garland, for their role in mentoring her.
Read the full article here.
Global Conversations Round 4 Announcement
/0 Comments/in News, DDP Announcements/by dancedataDance Data Project® (DDP) today announces the release of Global Conversations: From the Ground Up, the fourth round in a series of virtual interviews. Round 4 re-imagines a more sustainable and equitable system for teaching, marketing, and branding ballet and features 10 conversations with a roster of majority women leaders of national dance and presenting service organizations, as well as artistic and executive directors, dancers, and choreographers.
Yahoo! News: UN Women urges world to press gender equality post-pandemic
/0 Comments/in #YesThisIsAnArtsStory/by dancedataFemale Hip-Hop Pioneers
/0 Comments/in Other Arts & Related Fields/by dancedataFor Women’s History Month, Ladies of Hip Hop (LOHH) and Dance Data Project® (DDP) are coming together to highlight the contributions and lives of women in Hip Hop and ballet that are often overshadowed.