Tapfan

The Studio Company is indeed, loaded with talent .  They don't get the credit they deserve for the exceptional promise displayed by their dancers nor the inventiveness of some of the  choreography performed. 

Has no one taken a look at the present  Studio Company?  They are drowning in talent. It's possibly the strongest group since Sasha took the reins. They all look to have principal potential. 

8 minutes ago, volcanohunter said:

This sort of marketing seems to be a one-shot deal. I remember how after their promotion to principal, Dvorovenko and Beloserkovsky appeared on the cover of Dance Magazine and got a feature in People, but after that it ceased to be a marketing tool. In her reviews Anna Kisselgoff routinely mentioned that they were real-life spouses, but that was about it.

 

That can backfire if  you market the dancers as couples  then they break up. Look at all the couples at NYCB who were publicized by the company who are no longer together. 

ABT's Studio company is packed with strong, versatile, dancers. 

On 3/2/2022 at 8:05 PM, cubanmiamiboy said:

You're reading between the lines. Pandora's box refers to the fact that if Misty's promotion happened due to the suspected-(by me)- reasons it happened, the potential for replicas is real.

Of course, my comment doesn't necessarily have to make sense for you.

So we have to respectfully agree to disagree then,

 

The fact that your assertion doesn't make sense unless you are making a blanket negative assessment of the abilities of black female dancers you haven't seen and don't know, isn't a belief that is unique to me.

(See other comments on this thread.)

Nor does the fact that I take issue with your statements, mean that I don't understand what you are saying. I simply disagree with you.

Some elite schools and second companies  have made real, good-faith efforts to increase the number of black females in their ranks and based on the few  journalists who bother to report on such things, it seems to be paying off. (See the ABT studio company that presently has 3 black women, ALL of whom are exceptionally talented. Bravo Sasha Redetsky who  unlike many heads of companies and schools, seemed to have no trouble finding these women.) And mind you, this inclusion is being done without relaxing standards, unless you count having white skin as a standard. 

I don't  nor have I ever felt that the tiny numbers of black female dancers in top companies and schools was orchestrated, at least not in the last 30 years or so.   But I do think that for the longest, the low numbers weren't seen as a problem.  So corps filled with nothing but white and fair-skinned East Asian women continued to be all that  was accepted and expected.

And too many people who should have known better, engaged  too many old tropes and bad-faith arguments as why this was so. All black women get fat or are too muscular like Simone Biles, a fiction that even many black people perpetuate.  All black women have flat feet and can't do pointe work. All black women are too athletic and can't control their power.  No black women get good training. No black women come from families that can afford good training. No black women are passionate about ballet. Why don't the black women who want to dance ballet go to DTH? Why don't black women switch to modern or go to Broadway? Black women stick out too much in lines of swans, shades and sylphs. Such idiocy goes on and on. 

Folks even quote people like Virginia Johnson out-of-context to support the lie that ballet is just something black women can't do. The great Carlos Acosta who stands to gain absolutely nothing by speaking out on this matter, has called such arguments total bs that does much to undermine ballet as an art form. 

It's understandable that bad dancing from anyone  is offensive to all that love ballet. But to those folks so concerned that predominately white ballet companies are going to be inundated with hoards of  bad,  black, female dancers because the "woke mob" is going after AD's all across the ballet world, well,  get a grip folks. That's a paranoid fantasy of the crazy right. 

Of the handful of black and black/mixed-race- identifying black women principles in majority white companies - outside of the much reviled MC - none can even remotely be called incompetent, or even average.  Nikisha Fogo, Chyrstyn Fentroy, Katlyn Addison, Franchessca Hayward, Celine Gittens, Dayana Hardy, Claudia Monja, Nayara Lopez and Tina Pereiria are all exceptionally talented, well-respected classical artists with the reviews to back it up. No standards needed to be or were lowered for these women.

And there are many talented  black women in the pipeline in second companies and schools. As Virginia Johnson has said about black female dancers, "Just open the door and they'll walk right in. 

On 2/18/2022 at 1:40 AM, cubanmiamiboy said:

Pandora's box was opened with the example given-(MC).  It has vastly discussed  how undeserved it was. 

The implication of your remark is that EVERY hire and/or promotion of a black woman is and will be undeserved. The phrase "opening of a pandora's box" indicates that one action leads to another. Therefore,  knowing your opinion of Misty Copeland,  you evidently are implying that the hiring and promotion of a black woman to principal  who isn't up to snuff,  will automatically lead to the hiring of more undeserving black women.   Otherwise, your comment makes no sense. 

Chyrstyn Fentroy has been promoted to principal at Boston Ballet. Good for her and good for them. She is a gorgeous dancer with exceptional musicality.  It shouldn't be, but unfortunately such occurrences are  still news. 

On 4/18/2021 at 9:39 PM, cubanmiamiboy said:

Got a little lost here. Sorry, Helene.😆

Nursing is a black and white thing. Hospitals don't hire new grads. They don't want newbies in a code blue. So that's why I wonder if things are getting more....relaxed, now that there's pressure from all types of new diversity boards or diversity managers.

As per ballet, well.... Swan Lake is not a code blue, and nobody's gonna die after seeing Misty and her 12 traveling fouettes. But hey....they definitely opened a whole Pandora's box.

It's only a Pandora's box if you assume that everyone agrees that every promotion or hire of a black person is  undeserved.

Katlyn Addison and Hadriel Diniz will become principal artists for the 2021-2022 season.

https://www.sltrib.com/artsliving/2021/04/08/ballet-west-promotes-its/

Misty is by far, more famous to the general public. In fact, one  reason that so many balletomanes feel so much  resentment towards  her, is that they believe her fame far exceeds her talent. 

The acting isn't the best, but at least they hired trained dancers.   Baby steps.  I thought  body doubles  was what really irked ballet people. Also, would balletomanes be more receptive if the film wasn't about ballet but maybe about a protagonist who happened to be a ballet dancer?

If a ballet film or ANY film for that matter,  had documentary levels of accuracy, it'd be unwatchable as a drama. Who wants to see a film where EVERYONE is a dedicated, mentally brilliant, hardworking, goody-goody and there are NEVER any artistic differences, petty resentments, people with bad body images,  bad teachers, no budding sexuality or  teacher's pets, no overbearing stage parents, personality conflicts or racial bias?   

Classical dancers as a group may want to be seen that way, which group doesn't?  But NO collective is filled with only perfect people doing perfect things. 

9 hours ago, balletforme said:

That artistic director tends to heavily favor a very thin dancer. It's well known.  

Then why was Kathryn hired in the first place?  

The former City Ballet dancer becomes the first Black female member of the School of American Ballet’s permanent faculty. Yes, it’s a big deal according to the New York Times. 

It's about time.

53 minutes ago, On Pointe said:

Alexandra Waterbury and her supporters have tried to "cancel" NYCB in particular and ballet overall,  and have managed to generate high profile negative discussion in the NY Times,  the Washington Post and even Law and Order SVU.  If the Corona virus hadn't shut down Broadway and ballet,  they might still be demonstrating in the street.  (Although it's likely that her mostly teenage supporters would have moved on by now.)  Ballet has a PR deficiency.  Right now companies are just preaching to the choir instead of reaching out to the public.

I forgot about the Waterbury protests. From my vantage point, they seemed to be sort of puny.  But of course, I wasn't on site to observe the number of participants nor the length of time they demonstrated.

But yes, yes, yes. Ballet has a massive PR problem that the art's gatekeepers seem at best, unable to tackle and at worst, seem indifferent to. The Russian  guardianship seems to be particularly static and proud of it. 

On 6/25/2020 at 4:15 PM, On Pointe said:

Latino and Spanish dancers are well represented in American ballet,  possibly over-represented in some companies.  When Ballet Theatre (precursor to ABT) was founded,  it was even planned to have a Latin American wing.  Lincoln Kirstein had intended for Ballet Society,  later NYCB,  to have equal numbers of black and white dancers,  but that idea fell by the wayside.

The descriptor Latinx is tricky to define even by members of  the community itself.  But doesn't it generally refer to an ethnicity or culture  more than a race?  After all, many Latin dancers look and self-identify as white.

I'm happy to see so many black students - especially females - in the upper levels of SAB.  But I'll believe real change has come when substantial numbers actually get hired by the company and aren't just used in photos for the school's brochure.  

Such a pity that American National Ballet theater went down in flames. It would have been nice to see a company built specifically with diversity in mind.  

5 hours ago, cubanmiamiboy said:

I truly hope a wave of cancel culture doesn't start for ballet companies...

I doubt that ballet has a high enough  profile for most people to bother. I'm constantly surprised by the number of people who one would consider to be culturally expansive and sophisticated in their knowledge of art, who don't give a flying fig about ballet. 

I suspect this may be because classical dance in even its more esoteric forms isn't totally inaccessible.  But the culture surrounding ballet frequently is. 

I knew Tanya Howard was mixed-race but I had no idea that Jordana Daumec was biracial until she showed up at Theresa Howard's Mobballet symposium in Philadelphia. I thought Jordana was a curly-haired Caucasian. Serves me right for being so smug about what I thought was very accurate racial radar. 

Anyway, NBC is like most ballet companies, not so much racist as culturally myopic and indifferent to social changes because few things can pierce the bubble of classical dance.  Someone always has to show out to get their attention.    This is so weird and self-defeating when you  consider the fact that the ballet establishment is always saying it wants to expand it's audience.

I suspect that most people in positions of power simply don't see lack of representation as a problem, especially since they can always double down on the lie that no qualified black people are out there.  

And THAT is the problem. As has been said before on this very forum, AD's don't have to justify their preferences which frequently exclude black dancers. 

Although it's gotten better, ballet was and continues to be a very conservative and insular world.  Some of the art form's gatekeepers, taste-makers  and biggest supporters like it for those very reasons.  

The fastest way to make people lose their minds when speaking about classical dance,  is to mention race and representation - especially black female representation. According to the powers that be,  predominately white companies in the West are always justified in their lack of black  women because  black women are always too something. Too muscular, too lacking in refinement and talent,  too under-trained or too distracting in white ballets like Giselle. Of course, prominent black ballet talents tend to strongly disagree. 

And the current national mood sees black ballet folks emboldened to speak openly about a system that they feel is sorely in need of major change. They've had it with self-congratulatory baby steps at schools that  lead nowhere or with endless excuses about the supposedly limited talent pool.  They see it as so much bull excrement. 

On 4/22/2020 at 5:30 PM, pherank said:

Anyone familiar with Nikisha Fogo?

She's a huge favorite at Theresa Ruth Howard's Mobballet Instagram site.  She's so beloved there that they have something going called "Fogo Fridays" where they post videos of her dancing almost every Friday. She's  has killer technique, superb musicality and is hella charismatic.   I'm betting that Manuel Legris hates losing her. 

Also, she becomes just the 2nd woman with black ancestry to make it to the rank of  principle in one of America's "big three" companies.   She should be a major draw for black audience members. 

On 1/18/2020 at 5:18 AM, Mashinka said:

Seeing how fakir behaviour includes meditating in the open air in all weathers, a weather beaten look is appropriate in comparison with the other characters.  Kind of permanent first degree burn.  I once watched a performance of Swan Lake in Marbella, a lot of the dancers had clearly taken advantage of the sun.  No uniformity that night.  Some had a fabulous tan, some had turned red, while the ones that had eschewed the beach looked pasty by comparison.   

If authenticity is so vital, why dance La Bayadere at all?  Most dancers in Russian companies aren't South Asian.  Doesn't that make their portrayals inaccurate? But they allow themselves that amount of artistic license. 

They should take a cue from film director Mike Leigh who knew better than to make up his white actors as Asian when they were performing the Mikado in the film Topsy Turvy.  Yellow face  would have been a historically accurate  theatrical practice during the film's setting but was NOT used. The N-word was also omitted from one of the Gilbert and Sullivan tunes performed.  Yet doing so didn't affect the verisimilitude of the story at all.  

15 hours ago, Balletwannabe said:

She posted the girls IG name, along with a re-post of the original text, including 6 other Russian girls IG's, 5/6 which are now "not found".  When you re-post, it is not necessary to post the text/names.  You can easily just post the picture.  It shows up on their end when their name is tagged.  Misty knows that.  And yet still, after all of the bullying, she doesn't delete the text and names?  She could leave her original message and picture and delete their identities.  Any reasonable person would do so upon hearing that children are getting death threats. 

She said this on Twitter: "But until we can call people out and make people uncomfortable, change can't happen".  

But I digress.  This is the reality of social media.

I don't take that to mean that she is sanctioning picking on teens. I took it to mean that the Bolshoi has retrograde racist attitudes that they excuse by calling it tradition. 

I hate I brought this up because I truly thought this would be a non-controversial topic on which even the most conservative and traditionalist of ballet fans would agree. But the topic seems to have been hijacked to focus on the topic of online bullying.

Bullying is wrong. The people who bullied those teens are wrong. I even agree that PERHAPS Copeland should have been more careful not to make it easy or easier for  SOME of her fans to harass teens. 

BUT  the issue of blackface WAS pushed aside. 

12 hours ago, On Pointe said:

I'm curious - what did Michaela DePrince say about racism?  Her life story is so unique I'm not sure that anything she has to say applies to anyone but herself.  (African Americans generally dislike being conflated with recent African immigrants.  It has become something of a hot button issue.)

I'd heard about it,  but that photo made me sick to my stomach.

You seem to be implying that Misty Copeland is the one acting with malign intent,  and that she intentionally wanted to make those girls' lives hell.  I believe that a principal dancer has more important things to do.

Michaela DePrince doesn't speak constantly about racism. No black classical dancer does, not even Misty, although many of her critics may think otherwise.

But Michaela has spoken about race from time to time.   She said she was told by a teacher that they don't spend much time on the "black girls" (ballet students) because they end up getting fat.  She also said that after graduating from JKO, she secured an audition sight unseen - at a ballet company on the west coast but was denied entry to the audition when she showed up even though she had I.D.

Precious Adams has also spoken  about racial issues in the classical dance world. But she has indicated that she  is reluctant to do so because her feelings are evolving, there is a downside to being outspoken and because  she isn't as brave as Misty.  She recently  commented on the Bolshoi blackface issue on her instagram account. 

My point is that many black female dancers - especially those with darker skin - have experienced additional hurdles that have nothing to do with their ability or work ethic. And yes, things are changing for the better.