The New York Times: The Costly, Painful, Lonely Burden of Care
/0 Comments/in #YesThisIsAnArtsStory/by dancedataThe Hollywood Reporter: Hollywood Losing $10B in Potential Annual Revenue From Black Inequity, Says McKinsey Report
/0 Comments/in Other Arts & Related Fields/by dancedata11 March 2021
By Rebecca Sun
As Hollywood companies and affiliated organizations scramble to hire diversity experts and strategists as part of their public commitments to inclusion, management consulting powerhouse McKinsey & Co. has applied its analytic expertise to the industry as a whole in a report diagnosing the experience of Black professionals working in entertainment.
Penned by McKinsey partners Jonathan Dunn, Sheldon Lyn and Ammanuel Zegeye and consultant Nony Onyeador, Black Representation in Film and TV: The Challenges and Impact of Increasing Diversity declares that collective, system-wide action is imperative for reform. “In any given week, let alone an entire career,” the report’s authors write, “a professional working in Hollywood might have to traverse multiple separate entities — agencies, unions and guilds, studios, networks, production houses, financiers, festivals, critics and awards establishments.” Because of the industry’s unique structure of “tight-knit, interdependent networks,” “small and informal” work settings and “temporary and contract-based” work, “a single company’s efforts to change the racial dynamic inside its own four walls can do only so much for the entire ecosystem.”
The report comes eight months after McKinsey declared in July 2020 that it would devote $200 million in pro bono work to advancing racial equity and Black economic empowerment. The consulting firm, which last month published Race in the Workplace: The Black Experience in the U.S. Private Sector, set its sights on Hollywood after The Black List founder Franklin Leonard (a former McKinsey analyst) reached out to the company and put it in touch with the BlackLight Collective, an informal group of 90-plus Black entertainment industry leaders who have quietly been working behind the scenes to support the community and effect tangible reform.
“Major media companies pay McKinsey to help them navigate difficult business situations,” Leonard tells The Hollywood Reporter, adding that the significance of this report is McKinsey’s reputation as a corporate entity squarely focused on business efficiency. “So why not get the people that they normally pay to do this work, to tell everybody this is what the reality is, this is how much money you’re leaving on the table, and this is the way forward?”
Drawing from research both qualitative (more than 50 one-on-one interviews with Black and non-Black industry participants) and quantitative (a compilation of studies from UCLA, Nielsen, USC Annenberg Inclusion Initiative, Variety and more), the McKinsey report establishes a familiar statistical foundation that finds Black professionals proportionately underrepresented both on- and offscreen (the authors note that “the prominence of certain films and TV series with Black leads obscures [that] fact”).
However, one original finding is likely to have even the most jaded and change-resistant industry gatekeepers take notice: The McKinsey report estimates that the $148 billion film and TV industry is leaving more than $10 billion in annual revenue on the table by not resolving its inequity issues when it comes to Black inclusion — a potential loss of 7 percent. This estimate is based on the consulting firm’s projection of profits in a more equitable ecosystem, one that has “[closed] the representation deficit for Black off-screen talent, [achieved] production and marketing budget parity, and [given] Black-led properties equal international distribution.”
Read the full article here.
Glamour: This Nike Maternity Ad Featuring Pregnant and Breastfeeding Athletes Is So Empowering
/0 Comments/in Other Arts & Related Fields/by dancedata14 March 2021
By Whitney Perry
This new Nike maternity ad featuring pregnant and breastfeeding athletes just dropped—and you have to see it.
“Can you be an athlete? You, pregnant? You, a mother? That depends,” the short film titled “Toughest Athletes” begins. Posted on Nike Women’s Instagram page on March 14, the ad goes on to define the term as it cuts between a group of mothers in various stages of pregnancy and postpartum journeys, including Serena Williams and Olympia, USWNT soccer player Alex Morgan, and track stars Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce, Perri Shakes-Drayton, Nia Ali, and Bianca Williams.
“What is an athlete? Someone who moves? Sounds like you,” the narrator continues. “Someone who gets it done, no matter what? You do that. Someone who listens to her body. Also you. Someone who defies gravity. You. Someone who deals with the pain, hits her limit, and pushes past it. Pushing, pushing, pushing. Someone who earns every single win. You, you, you. So can you be an athlete? If you aren’t, no one is.”
Read the full article here.
King’s College London: Women losing out under furlough scheme
/0 Comments/in #YesThisIsAnArtsStory, Pay Equity, Transparency and Safety/by dancedataBroadway World: New England Ballet Theatre of Connecticut Presents BALLET SPEAKS: AGAINST DOMESTIC VIOLENCE
/0 Comments/in Ballet Programming, Awards, and Season Announcements, Pay Equity, Transparency and Safety/by dancedata11 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.
The New York Times: For Women in Music, Equality Remains Out of Reach
/0 Comments/in Other Arts & Related Fields/by dancedata8 March 2021
By Ben Sisario
The latest study by the Annenberg Inclusion Initiative at the University of Southern California found that women’s representation in music has not improved in the last decade.
Three years ago, an academic tallied up the performers, producers and songwriters behind hit songs, and found that women’s representation fell on a scale between, roughly, poor and abysmal.
The starkness of those findings shook the music industry and led to promises of change, like a pledge by record companies and artists to consider hiring more women in the studio.
But the latest edition of that study, released on Monday by Stacy L. Smith of the University of Southern California’s Annenberg Inclusion Initiative, has found that the numbers for women in music have mostly not improved, and in some ways even gotten worse.
Among the findings of the study, based on the credit information for songs on Billboard’s year-end Hot 100 chart for each year since 2012, is that last year women represented 20.2 percent of the performing artists of the year’s top songs — down from 22.5 percent in 2019, and slightly below the nine-year average of 21.6 percent.
Of the 1,797 artists behind the 900 songs on those charts — representing solo performers as well as members of duos and groups — there were 3.6 men to every woman, according to the study, which received funding from Spotify.
To read the full article, click here.
Datebook: Review: S.F. Ballet digitally delivers Art Deco glamour in a modern masterpiece
/0 Comments/in Ballet Programming, Awards, and Season Announcements, Choreographer/Artist Profile/by dancedata4 March 2021
By Rachel Howard
If a choreographer wants to make the most of this pandemic era, Sarah Van Patten is the woman to put on the screen. Van Patten, who joined the San Francisco Ballet in 2002, is the finest actress-dancer in the company, so it is good to have a beautifully directed record of her theatrical genius in Danielle Rowe’s new dance film, “Wooden Dimes,” the clever Art Deco centerpiece of the Ballet’s digital Program 3, which begins streaming Thursday, March 4.
Rowe, increasingly in demand to choreograph for regional companies and here making her first ensemble work for the Ballet, has carried out “Wooden Dimes” with a shrewd eye for spectacle and a mature choreographer’s skill. There are shiny prop-driven delights throughout the production, particularly a Ziegfield Follies-like sequence with fluffy feather fans shot from above and a clever group rendezvous with a massive table. But the real beauty of the film comes in two long pas de deux, simultaneously swirling and nuanced, for Van Patten and Luke Ingham. Between these little love poems our story, spare as it is, unfolds.
Read the full review of “Wooden Dimes” here.
The New York Times: What Is a Ballet Body?
/0 Comments/in Initiatives Worth Following, News/by dancedata3 March 2021
By Gia Kourlas
With performances on pause, many dancers are rethinking their relationship to weight.
Lovette also understands that she can help make ballet better. In the past few years, she has started making a name for herself as a choreographer. That puts her in a rare position to affect change.
“This is so why I wanted to be a choreographer,” she said. “The choreographer has even more power than anybody else because we get to choose who’s in the ballet. Most places I go, I can take anyone in the company. Maybe they’ll nudge and say: ‘Oh, no, no, no, you shouldn’t choose her. You should choose her. She’s better.’ But I can go, ‘No. I want her.’ Every time! And it’s so empowering.”
Read the full article here.