The Telegraph: Tamara Rojo: Female choreographers lack confidence to say yes

By Hannah Furness

18 December 2015

A lack of female choreographers in dance is not down to simple discrimination but too much self-doubt among qualified women, the director of English National Ballet has suggested.

Tamara Rojo, a ballerina and artistic director, said she had sought female choreographers only for them to turn down opportunities wrongly believing they are not qualified.

Saying she has “never” heard the same doubts from a male choreographer, she admitted even she had hesitated to take senior roles for fear she did not know enough.

Rojo has recently commissioned a triple bill of works by three female choreographers, in a new programme entitled She Said.

In an interview with The Stage, Rojo disclosed she had come up with the idea four years ago, before the issue of women in dance became such a high-profile debate.

“My original motive was simple: I had never done a piece by a female choreographer,” she told the magazine. “In the theatre the dynamic of the piece is always from a male perspective.

Read the full article in The Telegraph.