DDP Research
Boston Ballet in Tiler Peck’s “Point of Departure”
Photo by Rosalie O’Connor
February 7th: Movement Research Parent Residency, February 9th: NEA Arts Project Grant, February 9th: Pew Center for Arts & Heritage Grants & Fellowships, February 10th: MacDowell Colony Residency, February 15th: Princess Grace Awards Program, February 27th: Jacob's Pillow: Ann & Weston Hicks Choreography Fellows Program, March 1st: New England States Touring Grant, March 18th: BalletX Choreographic Fellowship, March 29th: USArtists International, April 14th: Arkansas Arts Council Individual Artist Fellowship, April 30th: Copenhagen International Choreography Competition, May 7th: Atlantic Center for the Arts Mentoring Artist-in-Residence Program, May 22nd: National Performance Network - Creation & Development Fund, May 31st: National Dance Project Travel Fund, June 1st: New York Choreographic Institute Residency, June 1st: Sadie-Rose Residency Program, June 12th: National Dance Project Production Grant - New England Foundation for the Arts, June 30th: South Arts Professional Development & Artistic Planning Grants
×As we expand our research and look into more and more spaces in which gender inequity persists in the dance industry, we want to share more information faster. To do that, our research team has developed Data Bytes, DDP’s “mini” reports designed to bring the latest customized metrics to our community through brief, easy-to-read formats. Happy reading!
Published on: 12/18/2022
The third annual Leadership Transitions Data Byte is a short form analysis that provides a detailed breakdown of role transitions for artistic directors, executive directors, associate artistic directors, and resident choreographers at dance venues, ballet companies, modern/contemporary companies, and prominent schools/conservatories which occurred in 2022 or have been announced for 2023 and later.
This report is an expansion from the Artistic Director Leadership Changes 2021+ Data Byte, which solely focused on artistic director transitions within dance companies. This year’s Data Byte also highlights directors who began as interim/acting directors and are now or will be promoted to a permanent leadership role between 2022 and 2024 (these directors are only counted once).
Published on: 11/14/2022
This Data Byte examines artistic & executive director reportable compensation increases (or decreases) in relation to the overall budget of the Largest 50 U.S. ballet and classically inspired companies. The COVID-19 pandemic greatly impacted the operations of many dance companies, and caused a wave of both cancellations and the furloughing of many dancers. This Data Byte takes an initial dive into the fiscal interactions between company budget and company leadership compensation from fiscal year 2016 to fiscal year 2020.
Published on: 5/1/2022
Connecting the Dots is an ongoing campaign by DDP to advocate for the acknowledgment of the pandemic’s effect on women in the arts by policy makers, journalists, and funding organizations. DDP’s April 2021 databyte sourced over 60 articles and studies to reflect the generational suffering of women at the expense of COVID 19’s global impact. This year’s Data Byte dives deeper into this narrative, highlighting the pandemic’s even stronger hold on women as men have now completely recouped all their workforce losses.
Published on: 1/25/2022
With this Data Byte, Dance Data Project® examines the role of resident choreographers at prominent dance companies for the third year annually. For the first time, this research analyzes 270 companies, a significant increase from the 143 companies previously studied.
Published on: 12/09/2021
This Data Byte details artistic director changes at ballet companies globally which occurred in 2021 or have been announced for 2022 and later. The highlighted rows indicate companies which have announced the departure of their artistic director but have not named a successor as of December 6, 2021.
Companies are grouped by year of leadership change and ordered categorically by size and then alphabetically by name.
A version of this Data Byte was also published as the Appendix in DDP’s Global Ballet Leadership Report. To learn more about the data and report methodology, view the Global Ballet Leadership Report.
Published on: 7/22/2021
Dance Data Project® (DDP) presents Data Byte: Artistic Director History, a mini-report providing a breakdown of the gender distribution in artistic leadership among the 50 companies who comprise DDP’s 2021 Largest 50 US Ballet Companies. The data for the mini-report was sourced from company websites, news articles, and press releases and is the first Report from DDP to examine gender distribution in US ballet companies as far back as company foundings.
Published 4/1/21
Connecting the Dots is an ongoing campaign by DDP to advocate for the acknowledgement of the pandemic’s effect on women in the arts by policy makers, journalists, and funding organizations. The campaign features over 60 articles and studies, reflecting the generational set-backs that women across the globe face as the COVID-19 pandemic continues. This Data Byte is a compilation of the most salient facts from the campaign, available for download and easy to read and share.
Published on: 3/2/2021
DDP’s annual Global Resident Choreographer Survey comes in the form of a mini-report this year. As always, our team has focused on the gender distribution resident choreographers at leading domestic and international ballet companies. This year, we examined 64 resident choreographer positions at 75 United States and 68 international ballet companies for a total of 143 companies. Want to see the year-to-year comparison? Download our Notes and Limitations document for some additional context and insight.
Please be advised that DDP reviewed the current status of some of the positions included in aggregate calculations following the publication of this report. The Data Byte and Notes and Limitations reflect the amended findings as of March 31, 2021.
Published on: 2/8/2021
How many students attend ballet school in the United States annually? At the ballet schools affiliated with the largest 50 ballet companies in the country, DDP estimates that 35,950 students are in attendance, vying for an ultra-competitive spot within leading company ranks.
This study breaks down DDP’s preliminary research on the 45 schools affiliated with these companies. The figures display the gender distribution of school directors as well as titled faculty and faculty without titles at these 45 schools. DDP also provides an analysis of the schools based on their size (largest to smallest annual expenses). DDP sources information from ballet school websites and publicly-released Forms 990 obtained via the ProPublica Nonprofit Explorer for this latest Data Byte.
Published on: 1/6/2021
While more data is needed to draw comprehensive conclusions about universal hiring practices in the industry, DDP’s inaugural Data Bytes report, 2020 Leadership Changes – Our End of the Year Mini Report on Comings and Goings in the Industry, provides a snapshot of the hiring trends among a cohort of dance organizations that have announced the departures or new appointments of leading staff in 2020.
Information in this document was sourced from Courtney Escoyne’s monthly articles for Dance Magazine entitled “News of Note: Everything You Might Have Missed in [Month, Year].” The articles include a section of announced Comings & Goings, which DDP recorded, verified, and aggregated to develop the metrics shared in our first Data Byte.
In late 2020, Dance Data Project® (DDP) joined a Consulting Projects Course for the Center for Equity, Gender, and Leadership (EGAL) at UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business. MBA Candidate James Allwein, Bing Gao, and Megan Reichert joined DDP in an examination of the career trajectories of men vs. women who have participated in prestigious choreographic fellowship programs.
Research indicates that due to the scarcity of men at the more junior levels of dance, men face less competition for lead roles and have more leeway to pursue the creative aspects of dance over the more technical aspects. The applicant pool of fellowships is not transparent to the general public and historical data on fellowship recipients was not readily available, therefore more research is needed to gather data and study the career “funnel” of ballet artists and choreographers. The team produced a final presentation of findings, available below.