Dancer Magazine
Jul 31, 2008 – By Mary Staub
In all likelihood, if you have ever taken a ballet class, about 85 percent of your fellow dancers were female. This tends to be true whether you are an eager 6-year-old conscientiously stretching your leg forth in tendu at the bar, a BFA student at the Ailey Studios in New York practicing a triple tour en l’air, or anywhere in between. Across all ages and state borders, in today’s field, the beauty of ballet still speaks more strongly to girls.
However, fast forward a few years, and look at who has gone on to choreograph, present on major stages, and run major companies, and the landscape looks dramatically different. Of 59 major ballet companies – those with budgets of more than $1 million – just 20 percent are run by women, according to data compiled by Dance/USA, a 26-year-old organization that serves as a national dance hub. The other 80 percent of our nation’s big ballet companies are run by men –look at San Francisco Ballet, Pennsylvania Ballet, Atlanta Ballet, American Ballet Theatre and New York City Ballet throughout its history, to name a few.
“There is a definite difference between different communities and different genres of how gender breaks down,” says John Munger, director of Research and Information at Dance/USA. “But looked at overall there is definitely a degree of gender bias, and it is clearest in ballet.”
Furthermore, of the twelve women who do run big-budget ballet companies, eleven were company founders, according to Munger. This means that just one woman, Victoria Morgan at Cincinnati Ballet, has been appointed. By comparison, of the 47 men at the helm of these major companies, 41 have been appointed.
“My hypothesis is that these large ballet companies are past their founding generation,” says Munger. “They are driven by a hiring process at the top, not by the dance field, but by a board of directors who are highly corporate and highly conservative.”
Down on the ground in Philadelphia, Christine Cox, a former dancer with the Pennsylvania Ballet, now co-runs and choreographs for her own small-budget contemporary ballet company, BalletX. Like many other former professional ballerinas, she has taken note of the imbalance on larger stages and has found her own way to respond – actively, engagingly, creatively.
“I’ve worked with lots of choreographers as a dancer and it stands out that throughout 20 years I can count on one hand the women,” Cox says with a tone of slight astonishment. “How is it that 90 percent in the studio are women and later you find so few women running companies? I’ve discussed this with others in the dance industry and it’s true on Broadway, everywhere. I thought it would be a compelling story to have an all-female choreographers program – and I’m not a woman activist trying to make a point here. This is just an observation.”
The female choreographers project also includes panel discussions with dancers, choreographers, researchers and audience members, who together will look for their own explanations for the imbalance. Similarly, Deborah Lohse in New York - who danced for Sacramento Ballet – has taken a proactive approach.
“I think I felt my observations gave me permission to be more aggressive,” Lohse said. “Creating my own company was the best way to address the imbalance.”
Lohse started choreographing and created her own contemporary ballet company, ad hoc Ballet, partly because she saw limited opportunities for ‘real women’ in most ballet companies. At 5’10,” she knew first-hand how difficult it could be to get jobs in ballet if you did not fit the physical ideal.
“I wanted to create works for women like those I know - not just those who can be cute, innocent, dainty - and give a female perspective on the female ballerina body,” Lohse says. “A lot of ballerinas still believe they need to be physically beautiful to get the job. I’m not interested in that, but want to tell stories about women who do not live up to the ideal, and show things that are seemingly ugly and show that they’re really quite beautiful.”
Lohse recently gained insight into certain discrepancies between how men and women seem to scout for students. On a recent arts exchange program at North Carolina School of the Arts, Lohse was the only female artistic director on a panel of directors and choreographers from across the country.
“Men and women do approach business differently,” Lohse says. “I watched how the others scouted for students and it was very different from how I was looking at students. They were looking more for technique and body type. I didn’t even know what I was looking for – I just knew I’d recognize it when I saw it.”
As much as people like to feign that in our 21st-century – supposedly progressive – society, gender equality is the norm, anyone with just a touch of truthfulness knows this is not so. Men and women are still met by different expectations and come upon different hurdles, this is as true in the wondrous world of ballet as amongst the corporate crowds of Wall Street.
“Our society is still more confident with men being in managerial positions – it’s our culture,” says Janis Brenner, a board member of the Gender Project, an eight-year study group that tried to get to the bottom of gender discrepancies in dance through interviews and surveys with dancers, choreographers, presenters and directors. “It’s a societal thing and the dance world is simply a micro-cosmos for the way the larger world works.”
The results of the Gender Project have brought no clear conclusions, but highlight multiple issues that factor into the overall equation. One is that men seem to ‘manage’ companies differently than women, and overall, their way of management is still seen as ‘better’ – more practical, less personal.
“Maybe men have more management skills and it is easier for them to manage 100 people as a choreographer,” says Annabelle Lopez Ochoa, one of the choreographers Cox is bringing to Philadelphia to create dances on BalletX for the all-female choreographers project. Ochoa, who danced with Rotterdam’s Scapino Ballet for seven years, is now a full-time freelance choreographer based in the Netherlands.
“What I notice as a choreographer when working with 100 people [is that] I am trying to make everyone happy. Men care that the business works well, not so much whether everyone is happy,” Ochoa said light-heartedly in a phone conversation from the Netherlands. “As long as the business is good and things look good, then for them things are good.”
Differential treatment of boys and girls in ballet starts at an early age and seems another reason men and women take on different roles later in life. BalletX’s Cox, like most women, realized this early on. She studied at the schools of the Joffrey Ballet, San Francisco Ballet, and Pennsylvania Ballet, and at all schools, as can be expected, most of her classmates were female.
“When I was training to be a dancer the men stood out because there were so few of them,” Cox says very matter-of-factly. “There’s so much competition with women that it requires perfection, intense focus and drive. With men you need maybe 50 percent of the talent that females have, and focus. This is just our culture.”
Unless thousands of little boys suddenly start yearning for ballet, the preconceptions and treatment are unlikely to change. Lay-people continue to view boys who lean towards ballet as un-manly, which continues to discourage interest. Within the ballet world, in contrast, men are relied upon greatly. They are continuously encouraged, pushed to develop bold stances and voices and move forward.
“In ballet classes young women are taught to be obedient, while men are taught to jump and be bold,” says JoAnna Mendl Shaw, a co-founder of the Gender Project and teacher in the Ailey/Fordham BFA program in New York City. “The subterranean message we get is that men are expected to be bold and courageous, and certainly in American culture that’s what advances – and as a choreographer, surely a bold voice is more likely to get noticed. Women are not brought up to fight for what they want.”
Cox’s initial tentative turn to choreography is thus archetypal.
“I started choreographing hesitantly,” Cox said “It’s strange that although I’m a very confident performer, there’s a high level of doubt in my choreography. But I would hate to give into my fears and doubts. If I did that I would never have built my company.”
Although there are numerous women choreographing works of contemporary ballet and running their own companies, it continues to be true that these companies are smaller, with smaller budgets, performing on smaller stages, to smaller audiences. Just browse the seasonal brochures of Jacob’s Pillow, the Brooklyn Academy of Music, or any other venue and you will soon see who is presenting whom where (or go to www.dancenyc.org and look at research/studies for a more detailed analysis).
Cox in Philadelphia, Lohse in New York, and Ochoa in the Netherlands – like many others - speak of these issues very matter-of-factly: a curiosity, not a complaint. Brenner and Shaw of the Gender Project point out that there is no easy ‘solution’ for the situation and that nobody in particular is at fault. There are too many factors: societal expectations of boys versus girls, reliance on male management, the lack of little boys in ballet, the fact that giving birth – at least temporarily – takes women out of dance, and so much more.
Cox, herself, expects to give birth to her first child just around the time of the female choreographers project in July and her life in dance is becoming more difficult as the time approaches.
“I am trying to choreograph and I’m seven months pregnant,” says Cox. “It’s difficult. I’m not in my body like I am used to and can’t do movement as I’m used to, and sometimes I don’t have the energy to improve and build material. I’m going to see what happens once I do have a child.”We can only hope that all these women continue to creatively confront the current status quo in their contemporary creations. Perhaps being aware of the obstacles female ballet choreographers face is the first step in preparing ourselves and our students, both male and female, to help create a more even field for dancing in.
Thursday, July 31, 2008
Monday, July 7, 2008
Finding Movement Across the Globe
New York Sun
By MARY STAUB July 7, 2008
DURHAM, N.C. — It may be called the American Dance Festival, but it is no longer strictly an American affair. In its first incarnation in 1934, more than 100 students flocked to the festival school to learn about a uniquely American art form known as modern dance from early icons such as Martha Graham, Doris Humphrey, and Charles Weidman. Since then, artists from countries including China, Egypt, Iraq, and Mozambique have become important building blocks.
"The challenge is how to keep the school present, growing, changing, open," the school's dean, Donna Faye Burchfield, said. "I want this to be a system that is flexible, that we can rethink, reimagine, redefine, and reinvent year after year."
Since 1984, the festival has hosted the International Choreographers Residency Program. Each year choreographers from diverse cultural backgrounds come to work on their own projects or, through an international commissioning program, create new works with ADF dancers. Many of these international artists take daily classes alongside younger students. Ms. Burchfield was one such young student more than 20 years ago and still remembers the impact of mingling with multiple cultures.
"After watching rehearsals or performances by people from 30 countries, you couldn't look at things the same way," Ms. Burchfield said. "Once you looked at those dances, you carried those experiences with you. The images became part of the conversation, and were in the visual, emotional, and kinesthetic landscape of the festival. They resonated into the evenings and back into the classrooms."
In addition to these activities in Durham, the ADF has taken its vision of dance abroad. International mini-ADFs and individual teaching engagements for ADF faculty have introduced young students in cities such as Moscow, Shanghai, and Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia, to a more American approach to movement. In these exchanges, cultures and customs inform one another.
"It was always very clear — and it was relief to know — that we were not going abroad with the idea that we had the truth and light and knowledge of what dance should be," a teacher at the ADF since 1981, Gerri Houlihan, said. Ms. Houlihan has taught in countries as diverse as Paraguay, Poland, Korea, and Mongolia. "We were interested in sharing. And we were also interested in their cultures, their dance, their music — and in maybe cross-pollinating."
Not surprisingly, these encounters are never delimited to dance alone, and teachers say they learn as much as they teach.
"Working in Korea with women in 1990 or '91, I felt their placement was slightly back and behind themselves," Ms. Houlihan said. "I kept trying to get them over their center. I'd get them up one day, and they'd fall back the next. I couldn't understand why, until I realized I was looking at hundreds of years of women walking behind their men, slightly subservient. I was trying to change the way these women thought about themselves in two weeks — it wasn't going to happen overnight."
An informal choreographers' showing this past Saturday displayed the diversity of this year's program. Three Argentinean women crossed paths in staccato steps to a nuevo tango by the Gotan Project. And Andrey Zakharov from Russia brought a seemingly detached, yet profoundly grounded sense of humor to the auditorium. He tweaked expectations, twisted spectators' heads, partnered the stage, feigned jumping rope through audience aisles, and marveled at the building's domed ceiling.
By MARY STAUB July 7, 2008
DURHAM, N.C. — It may be called the American Dance Festival, but it is no longer strictly an American affair. In its first incarnation in 1934, more than 100 students flocked to the festival school to learn about a uniquely American art form known as modern dance from early icons such as Martha Graham, Doris Humphrey, and Charles Weidman. Since then, artists from countries including China, Egypt, Iraq, and Mozambique have become important building blocks.
"The challenge is how to keep the school present, growing, changing, open," the school's dean, Donna Faye Burchfield, said. "I want this to be a system that is flexible, that we can rethink, reimagine, redefine, and reinvent year after year."
Since 1984, the festival has hosted the International Choreographers Residency Program. Each year choreographers from diverse cultural backgrounds come to work on their own projects or, through an international commissioning program, create new works with ADF dancers. Many of these international artists take daily classes alongside younger students. Ms. Burchfield was one such young student more than 20 years ago and still remembers the impact of mingling with multiple cultures.
"After watching rehearsals or performances by people from 30 countries, you couldn't look at things the same way," Ms. Burchfield said. "Once you looked at those dances, you carried those experiences with you. The images became part of the conversation, and were in the visual, emotional, and kinesthetic landscape of the festival. They resonated into the evenings and back into the classrooms."
In addition to these activities in Durham, the ADF has taken its vision of dance abroad. International mini-ADFs and individual teaching engagements for ADF faculty have introduced young students in cities such as Moscow, Shanghai, and Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia, to a more American approach to movement. In these exchanges, cultures and customs inform one another.
"It was always very clear — and it was relief to know — that we were not going abroad with the idea that we had the truth and light and knowledge of what dance should be," a teacher at the ADF since 1981, Gerri Houlihan, said. Ms. Houlihan has taught in countries as diverse as Paraguay, Poland, Korea, and Mongolia. "We were interested in sharing. And we were also interested in their cultures, their dance, their music — and in maybe cross-pollinating."
Not surprisingly, these encounters are never delimited to dance alone, and teachers say they learn as much as they teach.
"Working in Korea with women in 1990 or '91, I felt their placement was slightly back and behind themselves," Ms. Houlihan said. "I kept trying to get them over their center. I'd get them up one day, and they'd fall back the next. I couldn't understand why, until I realized I was looking at hundreds of years of women walking behind their men, slightly subservient. I was trying to change the way these women thought about themselves in two weeks — it wasn't going to happen overnight."
An informal choreographers' showing this past Saturday displayed the diversity of this year's program. Three Argentinean women crossed paths in staccato steps to a nuevo tango by the Gotan Project. And Andrey Zakharov from Russia brought a seemingly detached, yet profoundly grounded sense of humor to the auditorium. He tweaked expectations, twisted spectators' heads, partnered the stage, feigned jumping rope through audience aisles, and marveled at the building's domed ceiling.
Tuesday, July 1, 2008
At ADF's Ark Dance Studio, Not Your Average Student Dance
At the end of a week of all-day dancing, the students at the American Dance Festival need to express themselves and socialize. To do so, they don't go for drinks at a bar, or milk shakes at a diner. No — they improvise and dance some more.
New York Sun
By MARY STAUB July 1, 2008
The social magnet of Saturday nights at ADF is the Ark Dance Studio, a gabled old house, boarded with white, wooden planks. Students start to gather on the steps of this small, one-room, century-old building just as the sun is setting. The jam-packed weekly improvisation sessions have become one of the most popular weekend stops for many students, despite the sweltering heat and lack of air-conditioning.
"It's kind of like a social dance," a first-year ADF student from Virginia Beach, Aaron Burr Johnson, said. "What we do here is not meant to be performed — it's just for the participants, kind of like going to a club."
To watch the dancers in this high-ceilinged room is like watching a room full of ants, scurrying this way and that, telling personal stories that occasionally intersect. Almost every square foot appears in motion. In one corner a pianist, percussionist, and xylophonist jam alongside the dancers in a continuous wordless conversation.
"We're all feeding off each other," a 25-year-old dance teacher and ADF student, Alison Hart, said. "There are moments when you are totally internal. And sometimes you are absorbed partnering in a duet. Then suddenly you start moving across the whole floor with great strides and it's like the whole room is breathing together, using the same beat, the same rhythm."
These improvisational jams include a lot of contact, which becomes the starting point of other movement. The physical barriers here are lower than in most other social settings, and the intimacy among strangers fluctuates with every heartbeat — touching is okay; speaking is not.
"If somebody tries to make contact with you, there is a given understanding that you can either give into it or move away, and nobody's feelings will be hurt," Ms. Hart said. "When you do start partnering, it becomes very private and you're very vulnerable. You're sweaty, you smell, someone's head may suddenly be in your armpit, you put your weight on someone, and may find they let you fall to the ground."
It is precisely this unpredictability and the constantly shifting dynamics that attract so many students week after week. And it's not just students. Duke University faculty and dancers from some of ADF's performing companies are regulars, too — dancers from Shen Wei Dance Arts, Pilobolus Dance Theatre, and the Trisha Brown Dance Company have all made appearances this year. The language here is truly universal and resonates as much in Durham as in Buenos Aires, Eastern Europe, or beyond.
"Sometimes people come catapulting at your head; people can be reckless," Mr. Johnson said with amusement. "I've gotten mad sometimes, but not really vocally or physically. I probably just stomp loudly off the floor and am sure the other person doesn't even notice."
Such encounters can help dancers find their own voice. They explore motion and meaning in tandem with others. "I have fallen in love with improvisation because it allows me to form my own technique," Ms. Hart said. "Every feeling is a new and immediate feeling, and I can make my own decisions in the here and now. This is about as free as you can be in your body."
New York Sun
By MARY STAUB July 1, 2008
The social magnet of Saturday nights at ADF is the Ark Dance Studio, a gabled old house, boarded with white, wooden planks. Students start to gather on the steps of this small, one-room, century-old building just as the sun is setting. The jam-packed weekly improvisation sessions have become one of the most popular weekend stops for many students, despite the sweltering heat and lack of air-conditioning.
"It's kind of like a social dance," a first-year ADF student from Virginia Beach, Aaron Burr Johnson, said. "What we do here is not meant to be performed — it's just for the participants, kind of like going to a club."
To watch the dancers in this high-ceilinged room is like watching a room full of ants, scurrying this way and that, telling personal stories that occasionally intersect. Almost every square foot appears in motion. In one corner a pianist, percussionist, and xylophonist jam alongside the dancers in a continuous wordless conversation.
"We're all feeding off each other," a 25-year-old dance teacher and ADF student, Alison Hart, said. "There are moments when you are totally internal. And sometimes you are absorbed partnering in a duet. Then suddenly you start moving across the whole floor with great strides and it's like the whole room is breathing together, using the same beat, the same rhythm."
These improvisational jams include a lot of contact, which becomes the starting point of other movement. The physical barriers here are lower than in most other social settings, and the intimacy among strangers fluctuates with every heartbeat — touching is okay; speaking is not.
"If somebody tries to make contact with you, there is a given understanding that you can either give into it or move away, and nobody's feelings will be hurt," Ms. Hart said. "When you do start partnering, it becomes very private and you're very vulnerable. You're sweaty, you smell, someone's head may suddenly be in your armpit, you put your weight on someone, and may find they let you fall to the ground."
It is precisely this unpredictability and the constantly shifting dynamics that attract so many students week after week. And it's not just students. Duke University faculty and dancers from some of ADF's performing companies are regulars, too — dancers from Shen Wei Dance Arts, Pilobolus Dance Theatre, and the Trisha Brown Dance Company have all made appearances this year. The language here is truly universal and resonates as much in Durham as in Buenos Aires, Eastern Europe, or beyond.
"Sometimes people come catapulting at your head; people can be reckless," Mr. Johnson said with amusement. "I've gotten mad sometimes, but not really vocally or physically. I probably just stomp loudly off the floor and am sure the other person doesn't even notice."
Such encounters can help dancers find their own voice. They explore motion and meaning in tandem with others. "I have fallen in love with improvisation because it allows me to form my own technique," Ms. Hart said. "Every feeling is a new and immediate feeling, and I can make my own decisions in the here and now. This is about as free as you can be in your body."
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