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Gomes and ABT


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5 minutes ago, vipa said:

I'm stunned by this of course. It is an incident from 8 years ago apparently. I am conflicted. On one hand a criminal or immoral act is what it is and should not be excused. On the other hand I cringe at the Idea of defining a person by the worst thing they've ever done in their life.

Except that we literally do not know what happened. 

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12 minutes ago, canbelto said:

I;m still in shock. I can't believe this would be the last time I'd ever see him on the Met stage:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=epy1Cy5Ri78&t=125s

I feel the same way, canbelto. He’s been such a joy in my ballet-going life that it has been difficult to process all of this. Such a warm, giving, humble artist onstage.

If it turns out that the alleged actions are not totally egregious, I hope he can move past this. Certainly there are few artists who could count on as much support from colleagues and fans as he. But until the story becomes clearer, there’s going to be a cloud hanging over him. 

Edited by fondoffouettes
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The documentary about Gomes has recently been making the rounds. Madison Keesler of SFB recently posted a nice tribute to Gomes on Instagram:

madisonkeesler  • M a r c e l o . G o m e s •
A few weeks ago @Marcelua came to San Francisco to present “Marcelo Gomes: Anatomy of a Male Ballet Dancer” as part of the @sfdancefilmfest.
.
The documentary about Marcelo, from David Barba and James Pellerito, presented this beautiful artist in such a wonderful way. I highly recommend it!
.
The first time I met Marcelo was during a summer program when I was only 13. Since then, I have been enamored with this incredible artist. Whenever our paths have crossed over the years, I am always blown away by how kind, humble, and passionate he is as both a dancer and as a person.
 

I'm sure there are many, many people who are quite taken aback by this turn of events.

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6 hours ago, nanushka said:

Two simple points:

(1)  "Sexual misconduct" (what Gomes has been accused of) does not necessarily entail a physical threat.

(2)  There are plenty of male-male pairings that, if they involved the threat or occurrence of physical violence, would also involve "an imbalanced set of forces."

These points seem so evident to me that I wonder if I've misread the above-quoted post. My apologies if I have.

Oh, I agree with you. "Sexual missconduct" can be applied now in every situation where a sexual advance is met with a negative response.  When the first agressive move is not met with reciprocation, it goes to "sexual missconduct".  If said first, unnanounced move is met with pleasure, then it is a happy story, and Nanushka...let me tell you.  The gay world is, as we might imagine, full of males, and men persue, and if men don't persue, men don't mate. Row..? Maybe. Truth..? DEFINITELY.

Now, if every single person who has had an agressive persuing male on his/her behind, even without any rape/non consensual sex/repeatedly unwanted approaches etc etc will use the mere approach as the basis to jump into the "sexual missconduct" wagon, then God protect us all males.  

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49 minutes ago, cubanmiamiboy said:

Oh, I agree with you. "Sexual missconduct" can be applied now in every situation where a sexual advance is met with a negative response.  When the first agressive move is not met with reciprocation, it goes to "sexual missconduct".  If said first, unnanounced move is met with pleasure, then it is a happy story, and Nanushka...let me tell you.  The gay world is, as we might imagine, full of males, and men persue, and if men don't persue, men don't mate. Row..? Maybe. Truth..? DEFINITELY.

The term "sexual misconduct" can also be applied in cases when the victim is unable to consent.

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1 hour ago, cubanmiamiboy said:

Oh, I agree with you. "Sexual missconduct" can be applied now in every situation where a sexual advance is met with a negative response.  When the first agressive move is not met with reciprocation, it goes to "sexual missconduct".  If said first, unnanounced move is met with pleasure, then it is a happy story, and Nanushka...let me tell you.  The gay world is, as we might imagine, full of males, and men persue, and if men don't persue, men don't mate. Row..? Maybe. Truth..? DEFINITELY.

Now, if every single person who has had an agressive persuing male on his/her behind, even without any rape/non consensual sex/repeatedly unwanted approaches etc etc will use the mere approach as the basis to jump into the "sexual missconduct" wagon, then God protect us all males.  

To be fair, there have always been females who pursue, and are 'grabby'. Though it's been a much smaller percentage of females who've shown this kind of behavior. With males, aggressive traits have been encouraged for centuries.

Edited by pherank
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6 hours ago, cubanmiamiboy said:

"Sexual missconduct" can be applied now in every situation where a sexual advance is met with a negative response.  When the first agressive move is not met with reciprocation, it goes to "sexual missconduct".  If said first, unnanounced move is met with pleasure, then it is a happy story...

If you're talking legally, this is flatly untrue.

If you're not talking legally, I wonder if you could point to some cases, of the many that have recently been in the news, in which a single "sexual advance" (by which I assume you mean one that's delivered in anything like a reasonable manner — even men are not beasts, after all) has been "met with a negative response" and has subsequently been labelled "sexual misconduct"?

Edited to add:  On second reading, I see now that you are not in fact really talking about "every situation where a sexual advance is met with a negative response." Rather, you're talking about when someone has "an aggressive[ly] pursuing male on his/her behind."

Any man (or woman) who finds that getting sex or a date is impossible without aggressively pursuing someone's behind needs to take a deep, hard look at himself, his attributes, his behaviors, and his preferred objects of desire, and consider whether there might be something wrong there.

Edited by nanushka
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1 hour ago, nanushka said:

 

Any man...who finds that getting sex or a date is impossible without aggressively pursuing someone's behind needs to take a deep, hard look at himself, his attributes, his behaviors, and his preferred objects of desire, and consider whether there might be something wrong there.

Anybody who think that male-male pairing can be detached from agressive sexual persuing hasn't gotten around the gay "dating" scene of 2017.

Edited to add: "dating", with intentional quote marks. 

Edited by cubanmiamiboy
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21 minutes ago, cubanmiamiboy said:

Anybody who think that male-male pairing can be detached from agressive sexual persuing hasn't gotten around the gay "dating" scene of 2017.

Edited to add: "dating", with intentional quote marks. 

There's aggressive sexual pursuit that is welcome, and there's aggressive sexual pursuit that is unwelcome. It's generally pretty easy to tell the difference. The former can be lots of fun; the latter, not so much. And the latter, in the gay "dating" scene of 2017 or any other year, has rightly been labelled with terms much less mild than "sexual misconduct."

My point, though, was about your claim:

Quote

"Sexual missconduct" can be applied now in every situation where a sexual advance is met with a negative response.  When the first agressive move is not met with reciprocation, it goes to "sexual missconduct".  

I am not aware of any cases recently in the news that involve a one-time sexual advance not met with reciprocation (assuming it's not in direct breach of official workplace policy) being labelled and punished as "sexual misconduct."

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11 hours ago, aurora said:

You ignored all the following more specific accounts of abuse by Martins.

What was described was the Companies' reactions to the original allegations.  Both company's actions have been similar:  someone informed the organization of inappropriate sexual behavior.  The organization(s)  began an investigation.  Gomes resigned in response to the investigation, while Martins took a leave of absence.  At least so far in face of the ongoing investigations at NYC and SAB, Martins hasn't resigned.

The accounts of physical abuse didn't instigate the investigation.  Nor, does it seem, that Edwards' formal complaint did in 1993.  

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19 hours ago, abatt said:

This is horrible.  I have no idea what Marcelo did that led to this result.  However, if someone does something bad that has nothing to do with his employment or any former or present employee of the company, why does ABT feel that it needs to be the enforcer of Marcelo's punishment for this purported bad act.  If there was criminality, then the criminal justice system should be utilized.  If it was a civil wrong, then the person(s_ involved should bring a civil suit against him.   Who appointed ABT judge and jury of wrongs unrelated to his employment?

 

All we know is that ABT was investigating a claim of misconduct and that Gomes tendered his resignation as a result of the investigation. I don't think it's been established that ABT forced Gomes' resignation or that it decided to act as an enforcer.

ABT as an employer has both the right and the obligation to ensure that its employees feel that they are both safe and treated fairly in the workplace. Let's leave Gomes aside, since we know nothing about the accusation itself or whether he is in fact guilty of misconduct. Suppose it was brought to ABT's attention that one of its employees (it could be a dancer, it could be a stagehand, whatever), prior to being employed by ABT, may have physically assaulted a colleague or close associate and caused bodily harm. I think ABT would be well advised to investigate the claim to determine a) if it was true, b) if true, whether there were other instances of similar behavior — i.e., if it was part of a pattern, c) if there was a risk that the behavior would be repeated at ABT,  d) what impact knowledge of the behavior — or, if the claim was unfounded, the accusation — would have in its own workplace if and when the word got out and e) how they were going to handle the situation. 

What would the workplace be like if ABT's employees learned that a colleague had beaten someone up at a previous job? What action could or should the company take to assure them that they were not themselves at risk of physical assault? What would it be like if they learned that a colleague had beaten someone up, that ABT had been informed of the incident, and chose to do nothing?  

After the investigation the company might decide that the employee, for any number of reasons, posed no current threat, needn't be dismissed, and that it could satisfactorily explain its decision to the rest of its employees and assure them that they were not at risk. Or, it might decide that the employee had to go and that it could explain that decision too. But if they don't investigate the claim, they can't manage the situation.

Edited by Kathleen O'Connell
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Why couldn't ABT just announce that Marcelo had resigned, and leave it at that.  By adding all of this additional, info to the press release, they damaged Marcelo's reputation for no apparent reason.  Since ABT became "aware" of the incident on Saturday and Marcelo resigned on Thursday, I doubt the investigation had barely begun.  This is political correctness and cover your a-s overkill to the extreme on the part of ABT.  Disgusting. 

 

Additionally, unless Marcelo had done something questionable/criminal/offensive  at work or there was a  complaint of another employee of ABT against Marcelo,  ABT had no duty to investigate Marcelo.  This is political correctness run amuck.

Edited by abatt
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I pretty much agree with Abatt. We know nothing about the underlying "misconduct". And ABT has rights and duties as an employer. But the vagueness on the one hand, and the specificity on the other, compounded by the distancing from Gomes' alleged conduct in vociferous terms, is really close to a smear. It has to be one of the oddest press releases. Generally speaking I have not found ABT management to be all that together. 

 

Edited by Olga
Typo
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12 hours ago, fondoffouettes said:

First response I’ve come across on social media, from Murphy.

 

Do take time to read all the comments on this and the following Instagram - several famous names on there, although I don't know for sure that they are all official, so I won't quote them here. 

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19 minutes ago, abatt said:

Why couldn't ABT just announce that Marcelo had resigned, and leave it at that.  By adding all of this additional, info to the press release, they damaged Marcelo's reputation for no apparent reason.  Since ABT became "aware" of the incident on Saturday and Marcelo resigned on Thursday, I doubt the investigation had barely begun.  This is political correctness and cover your a-s overkill to the extreme on the part of ABT.  Disgusting. 

 

Additionally, unless Marcelo had done something questionable/criminal/offensive  at work or there was a  complaint of another employee of ABT against Marcelo,  ABT had no duty to investigate Marcelo.  This is political correctness run amuck.

But we have no idea what the details are...ABT apparently does.  

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1 hour ago, abatt said:

Why couldn't ABT just announce that Marcelo had resigned, and leave it at that.  By adding all of this additional, info to the press release, they damaged Marcelo's reputation for no apparent reason.  Since ABT became "aware" of the incident on Saturday and Marcelo resigned on Thursday, I doubt the investigation had barely begun.  This is political correctness and cover your a-s overkill to the extreme on the part of ABT.  Disgusting. 

Additionally, unless Marcelo had done something questionable/criminal/offensive  at work or there was a  complaint of another employee of ABT against Marcelo,  ABT had no duty to investigate Marcelo.  This is political correctness run amuck.

I don't think it's reasonable to think ABT could issue a press release stating one of its star dancers has stepped down and give absolutely no explanation. Transparency with regard to sexual misconduct is crucial these days.

We don't have enough information at this point to know whether this is political correctness or not. If Gomes did something egregious -- something that could pose a threat to ABT company members -- then ABT was smart to launch an investigation. I agree with what Kathleen O'Connell has written above on this matter. To put it in an entirely non-dance context -- would a school not fire a teacher if they learned he/she had slept with students at a previous place of employment? Just because Gomes' actions, whatever they were, didn't directly impact ABT staff, doesn't mean the company can just look the other way. 

Edited by fondoffouettes
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19 hours ago, Drew said:

Putting Gomes to the side for a moment: what seems certainly to be "ridiculous" and "bottomless" is all of the unspoken norms and, in some cases, hypocrisies that led to the #metoo movement emerging. I can say that I know directly of problems in my work 'world' -- not the ballet world -- with, in some cases, perpetrators getting kicked not to the curb, but upstairs, effectively being financially rewarded for what they had done.  Truthfully, the problems I know about directly mostly involve heterosexual men and their treatment of women; and there is a range in these behaviors, and my own view is that not all such sexual relations (even when fraught power relationships are involved) can simply be coded as exploitative or harmful.  But still, all too often,  "ridiculous" is what HAS been going on un-talked about and unaddressed to the harm of more people than I think people outside such circuits of corruption may imagine...

Gomes? We just know too little to understand why/how this happened. It may be ridiculous. It may not be. ABT may have been overly cautious in launching an investigation. They may not have. I do think ABT knows as well as anyone posting here just how important he is to them.   (I rather suspect that if no more information comes out, then Gomes is going to have no problem finding dancing opportunities elsewhere.)

Yes to all of the above.

As for the suggestion made elsewhere on this thread that youths and young men are somehow less vulnerable in the face of such misconduct............I really don't know what to say.

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Like all of you I'm heartsick over what has transpired. It simply doesn't make sense. I have tickets for the January showing of Marcelo's documentary at Film Forum. If it is not cancelled, I will be watching with tears in my eyes. Marcelo was supposed to do Q&As at some of the showings. Obviously that won't happen now.

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There have been a few cases recently in which someone has been fired and details have not been made public – the ones I know of, apart from Gomes, are those of Ryan Lizza of The New Yorker, Tavis Smiley, and Garrison Keillor. All of them have protested their dismissals publicly.  

I presume ABT didn’t do this lightly. It doesn’t look as if we’re going to hear anything further from Gomes or ABT on the subject.

Quote

 

It's also not hard to imagine that he was given an ultimatum to resign with his full pension and benefits unharmed, or be terminated with all the risks that might entail for his earnings and reputation. 

Or by resigning now,  possibly Gomes cuts short the ongoing investigation and narrows the risk of details being made public.

The New York Times just reinstated a suspended reporter, saying his offenses didn’t justify firing him. It may well be that at some point an employer will overreach out of PR concerns or someone will be unjustly accused.  However, as far as we know that hasn’t happened yet, and the stories we have learned so far are truly just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to exposure of sexual harassment in the workplace. (News media are only just now starting to focus on the stories of working class women facing harassment by men who aren’t boldface names, for example.) 

I hope Julie Kent knows what she’s doing.

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