Kathleen O'Connell

I don't think partnering is necessarily the issue. I don't even think being a woman is the issue. If a company member knowingly shares explicit photos of another company member without consent, I think it is reasonable for anyone else in the company — man or woman — to believe that it is a violation of trust and community standards.

I don't know if this is still the case, but back in the day I believe a senior soloist might have earned nearly as much as some of the principals. I think Merrill Ashley may have been one of them - I'd have to pull her book "Dancing for Balanchine" off the shelf to confirm this, however. ETA: That being said, the current AGMA agreement may be structured so as to limit a company's ability to cast principal roles with soloists and corps members as a tactic for keeping pay low. (And AGMA would be in the right here, of course.)

The list of NYCB soloists who have danced above their pay grade is long and distinguished. The current roster includes more than a few ...

I don't think "liking" or "not liking" is the issue here. I wouldn't be surprised in the least if some of the people who believe it is appropriate for NYCB to fire Ramasar and Catazaro also happen to like them. They may genuinely respect them as artists and may have had nothing but positive personal and professional interactions with them and still believe it would not be right for the company to continue to employ them.

My thoughts exactly. I'd like to see the Taylor company hang onto its March Theater-Formerly-Known-as-State season, though — especially now that it's presenting revivals of important modern dance works by other choreographers.

Although I'd like to see ABT find a permanent NYC home that's more congenial than the Met, a two or three week run in the winter might not be a bad thing. However, the Met's stated reason for shutting the house down in February does give me pause: The following year [2021], the Met will make another radical change in its schedule: It will take a midwinter break in February, when ticket sales are generally at their lowest, and add performances in the late spring, moving the end of the opera season to early June from May. [emphasis mine] Now it may be that there's just so much opera on offer during the Met's gargantuan seven month season that its audience wearies of the surfeit and collectively decides to take a mid-winter break and that ABT wouldn't necessarily suffer from the same February doldrums. NYCB will be in the thick of their winter season right across the plaza, however, so it's not as if the audience will be starved for dance and ready to turn up for anything that happens to be in toe shoes.

Indeed! Nor need Manhattan be the only metro destination for one of America's premier performing arts organizations. Not every person in the NY Metropolitan area wants to trek into Manhattan to see a show. Nor should they have to. There's NJ PAC. There's BAM.

The Perelman Center will be one of those "flexible" venues that can (allegedly) be reconfigured to accommodate a variety of staging options and audience sizes. Maximum capacity when all of its spaces are combined is 1200. I don't know if the center will have the kind of backstage space that a large theatrical production might require or if it can provide an orchestra pit, however. Jazz at Lincoln Center's Rose Theater can seat about 1200 as well. I have attended dance performances there, and the revived NYC Opera performs there as well. The theater can be reconfigured to provide both a proscenium and an orchestra pit. It's a lovely venue and would be ideal for smaller-scaled works - i.e., I wouldn't do Swan Lake there, but some of ABT's triple-bill works would probably look great there. Would either venue really be big enough? By way of comparison, City Center seats about 2250. (But the sight lines are so awful - even after the big renovation - that only about half of them count, if that many.)

If this video is any evidence, Allegra Kent didn't.

This is why there isn't as much money in my bank account as there should be. Sometimes you just have to choose them all. 😉

Yup, yup, and yup.

I like Phelan a lot, but at the moment I don't think she has the kind of distinct and wholly individual style that the really big roles require. I think she just needs a little time and space to develop one — outside of the bright glare of Diamonds, for instance.

I am a huge Hyltin fangirl* and would have crawled over broken glass to see her in the Bizet 2nd Movement had I been in town. But I can understand why the role might not have been right for her: although she counts versatility, charm, stage smarts, musicality, and a strong technique among her many gifts, she's not quite a ballerina in the grand manner in the way that Kowroski, Mearns, and Reichlen are. I too would like to see LaFreniere in the role when she's ready, but also Emilie Gerrity, who has been very impressive in some of Mearns' roles (Sanguinic and Namouna), and Ashley Laracey, who isn't quite in the grand ballerina mold either, but who could be very special in the role nonetheless. She was just a dream in Divertimento No. 15. ETA: * Given a choice between Hyltin and Peck in Sleeping Beauty,Coppelia, or the Midsummer Night's Dream Divertissement, I will choose Hyltin every time.

Eh. I'm fine with a female ballet dancer referring to herself as a ballerina when someone asks her what she does for a living, or on her social media profiles, or in a resume, or on an application, or wherever. To the general public it's as generic, descriptive, and succint as "soldier." As a balletomane, I like to reserve capital-B Ballerina for actual capital-B Ballerinas, but the number of people of my acquaintance who understand the distinction is vanishingly small — and I see no real need to bore them with it.

I say this every chance I get: Best Rubies Tall Girl Ever. But I can understand the company wanting to give others a shot at the role. They are rich in Glamazons.

Since the School of American Ballet, Inc. and New York City Ballet Inc. are separate and distinct legal entities with their own Boards of Directors, staffs, financial statements, and regulatory filings, I don't think the suit of necessity targets both the company and the school.

To be clear, I was certainly not my intention to suggest that there shouldn't be consequences for wrongdoing, nor that an apology was somehow enough by way of retribution and redress. An apology is necessary, but it's not sufficient. I stated that sharing explicit photos without consent is a firing offense, full stop. If the company decides it wants to re-admit a dancer it has dismissed, however, I think a sincere apology is a required part of the package. That was my only point. Here, I must respectfully disagree. A sincere apology is sincere because the person making means it. It doesn't matter whether the person who was wronged decides to extend forgiveness or not. It's not a negotiation: the apology shouldn't be contingent on forgiveness nor should a wronged person feel compelled to offer forgiveness in return. The apology is in a real sense its own reward.

I worked at a company that had mandatory diversity training that included a unit on sexual harassment. We had something even more valuable, though: men who were willing to call out other men when they engaged in behavior that demeaned and degraded women.

As far as I'm concerned, sharing explicit photos of anyone — company member or no, woman or man — without their express and freely-given consent is a firing offense. I'm not suggesting for a moment that the company should actively police its employees' private communications for infractions. Should it be presented with incontrovertible evidence that infractions have occurred, however, then yes, immediate dismissal is appropriate. And speaking as a member of the audience: if that means that the company has to reach down into the pe-professional program at the Dolly Dinkle Academy of Dance to cast the next three seasons, that's fine with me. As Charles De Gaulle pointed out, the graveyards are full of of indispensable men. If the company decides that it can and should re-admit an offender back into its ranks, it shouldn't do so unless there's been an open, explicit apology. A good apology is more than the usual, tepid "I'm sorry if anyone was offended." Skidmore sociology professor David Karp has laid out five criteria for evaluating celebrity apologies. An apology should include an explanation of the harm done to the person or people receiving the apology. It should include an admission of the perpetrator’s role in causing that harm, an “acknowledgment of personal responsibility and avoidance of denials or minimizing.” Perpetrators should express remorse. They should explain which behaviors they are committed to stopping now that they understand the harm they’ve caused. Finally, they should explain what they will do to make amends. These are taken from a Dec 5, 2017 Vox article by Anna North entitled "How to apologize for sexual harassment." Vox's Today Explained podcast for Aug 30, 2018 also featured a good discussion of this issue with an actual example of a well-done apology. You can listen here. I also highly recommend a Sep 10, 2018 Vox article by David Roberts entitled "What so many men are missing about #MeToo." Roberts points out that "The fate of abusers ought to be the least of our worries," but that alas, it isn't. Finally, "freely-given consent" is more than just saying "Yes." I means without coercion, which can include explicit or implicit threats of harm, be it physical, emotional, or social.

Thank you for posting this, Sappho. I would only add that dance companies — like nearly every collective enterprise, be it artistic, commercial, or charitable — is also a community. As such, it will have norms in addition to rules. Good communities have the kind of norms that foster things like fairness, reciprocity, tolerance, mutual regard, empathy, openness, and emergent leadership. What good communities don't require is a daddy. ETA: I added "tolerance" to the list, although one would hope it would be obvious.

School of American Ballet, Inc. and New York City Ballet, Inc. are in fact separate legal entities. They file separate IRS 990s, have different EINs (Federal tax ID numbers), file separate CHAR 500s with the New York State Charities Bureau, have different New York State registration numbers, and prepare separate financial statements. They each have their own Boards of Directors, corporate officers, and administrative and professional staffs. They have separate endowments and do not have any material assets in common. They are each separate constituents of Lincoln Center. They do share an Administrative Director, but that AD is employed and compensated separately by each organization; they could have separate ADs if they wished, and someday might. The two organizations are obviously closely affiliated, but an SAB student is NOT "a student at New York City Ballet, Inc." Ms. Waterbury's lawyer needs to sharpen his pencil. For EINs, search here: https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/ For NYS Charities Bureau filings, search here: https://www.charitiesnys.com/RegistrySearch/search_charities.jsp For SAB financial statements, go here: https://www.sab.org/school/financials/ For NYCB financial statements, go here: https://www.nycballet.com/About/Annual-Reports.aspx

Nanny cams are cheap and easy to use. Just type “nanny cam” into the Amazon search bar and you’ll find over a dozen to choose from, including one that looks like a clock radio. I’m not saying Finlay set up a nanny cam, just that one doesn’t have to be a an AV wizard to film someone on the sly.

[Admin note: this post was in response to a post that was deleted among about a half dozen in response to a post that was so over the line, I decided I couldn't let stand, but couldn't edit to make the discussion coherent, and threw out the baby with the bathwater. The original fork noted silence among dancers in the Company.] In addition, I suspect many of them may still be grappling with their own conflicting thoughts and emotions. It's easy to express disgust at something in the abstract, or at things that have taken place somewhere else involving no one that you know. It's quite a different matter when you learn that a friend, colleague, or loved one has done something reprehensible. In that situation, one's anger and disgust is doing battle with one's loyalty and affection. (Trust me, I've been there.) I think we can and should grant the dancers some space to come to grips with the situation, sort out their own feelings — which may be some complicated tangle of anger, shock, sorrow, resentment, self-reproach, denial, and even forgiveness — and decide what they need to do as individuals, a community, and a company. ETA: and the same goes for all of the other people who work at NYCB, e.g., the musicians, the technical staff, the backstage crew, the costume shop, whoever. Company leadership of course needs to speak out publicly and clearly.

Got it! I actually don't think the ballet (or arts) workspace is all that radically different from many more work-a-day enterprises. I'm not sure how many of those Paglia has actually experienced. 😉

What are "regular workplace rules"? Where I've worked the only the formal rules 1) strictly enjoined romantic or sexual relationships when there was also a reporting relationship and 2) forbade coercion and harassment in any form. There were informal rules, of course: 1) keep it to yourselves, 2) don't let it interfere with work, and 3) don't exploit whatever power you might have. And I absolutely agree that power imbalances, peer pressure, and even subtle coercion have no place in any workplace, whether the arts happen there or not.