On Pointe

Nothing I've read about Johnsey indicates that he suffers from gender dysphoria, or that he desires to transition. He simply wants to perform onstage in women's roles. In that regard, he is similar to Alex Newell, a male singer who often presents himself onstage as a woman. (He is currently performing a lead female role in the Broadway revival of Once On This Island.) Years ago, the late Robert Blankshine performed with the Radio City Ballet Company, dancing on pointe in a tutu. With his slim torso, strong turnout and fantastic feet, Blankshine had a far better "female" presentation than Johnsey. (Even so, there was something of the Uncanny Valley about him as a ballerina. It didn't help that despite the high standard of his dancing, the women in the corps visibly rolled their eyes and snickered in contempt.) Does anyone honestly believe that Tamara Rojo would hire a thirty-two year old female dancer with Johnsey's body, legs and feet? If Johnsey wants to perform as a woman, he should be judged by the same criteria that actual women are judged by. "Gender fluidity" is the flavor of the moment. But as someone commented in the NY Times, the bottom line is this - a job that should have gone to a woman went to a less-qualified man. But it does make for good trendy publicity for ENB and Rojo, who could use a little deflection about now.

I don't agree with any of that. If you are abused, harassed or mistreated in any way by a supervisor or colleague, you should document the instances and take every step to seek justice. But anonymous claims of improper behavior, without specific names or dates, should not trigger an investigation. There was tons of contemporaneous evidence against Weinstein, Lauer, Dutoit, Rose, Spacey and others. Martins is definitely not a perfect person, but the case against him reeked of sour grapes and score settling.

Is there anything to be learned from this? Besides the obvious - launching and publicizing an investigation against a person in a position of power, based upon an anonymous accusation, is probably not a good idea. Peter Martins is not really exonerated, as his past bad behavior has been brought to public attention once again. Darci Kistler has been humiliated through no fault of her own, while having to deal with her daughter's serious substance abuse problem. Dancers who were secure in their career arcs have to start over with "the devil they don't know". And the NYCB board has the unenviable task of finding a new AD who won't be run out of the city on a rail by the critics and the fans. As the current tenant in the White House would put it - sad.

I never really "got" Tharp's choreography for ballet companies. It seemed to me that she was making fun of ballet and didn't respect its conventions, for instance her tendency to have a fantastic turner like Baryshnikov deliberately fall out of pirouettes. But like Madonna, the woman is a marketing and organizational genius. I especially admire how she paid her company year round in the days when NYCB and ABT dancers were subject to long layoffs every year. Whoever takes over for Martins would be wise to consult Tharp, if she would allow it.

Thanks for the shout out to Charles Ward. I worked with him, and besides being a very handsome tall partner, and very talented dancer in solos, he was an immensely kind and humble human being. Definitely one of the good guys.

It's unfortunate that in many of her recorded performances, Kirkland does not look healthy. She is thin and underpowered in the Don Quixote pas de deux with Baryshnikov, which is otherwise well filmed. In the Nutcracker she is additionally burdened with a horribly unsuitable costume, a narrow nightgown that obscures her line. But I know of young students who watch her T and V obsessively, so there is a younger generation familiar with her work, but blessedly, not her troubles. They don't impress kids who watch reality television and tabloid TV anyway. What was shocking in the 70s and 80s is small potatoes today.

To be clear, in the interview I attended, Heather Watts had nothing but good things to say about Kirkland's dancing, which struck me as very generous at the time. She didn't have to say anything. But she did seem to feel that Kirkland was unappreciative of the opportunities she had been given, that she wasn't very nice, and that if she disliked Balanchine and NYCB so much, she should just go perform Giselle for the rest of her career. She did not go into their personal beef. I remember the book as a juicy read, with all kinds of people who had zero interest in ballet buying it for the sexy parts. At that time, lots of people thought of female ballet dancers as almost nun-like, and assumed that all male dancers were gay. That dancers were just as prone to messy love affairs as anyone else was a revelation. I don't recall anyone I knew in the dance world being particularly outraged by it.

I should have written that Harding was banned from any figure skating that mattered, to be more accurate. Unable to skate for a living, she became a boxer and raced cars.

Tonya Harding was legally barred from any activity having to do with figure skating, for life. That to my mind is a backlash with teeth, and while some people think it was excessive, many figure skaters have been quite vocal about their disdain for her to this day. People didn't like what Kirkland said, but she wasn't arrested for it, and no court ruled that she couldn't ever dance or teach or coach ballet because she ruffled some feathers. I don't think she was ever sued civilly either. There's a whole generation of dancers who are not even aware of what happened with Kirkland, and likely wouldn't care much if they did know. (By the way I, Tonya is a great film.)

Is disagreement, even vehement disagreement, a "backlash", or just a difference in opinion? To me a backlash has to have some teeth in it to meet the definition. Someone speaking out against an accuser may just be defending themselves. Kirkland was not fired or barred from the stage because of her book that I am aware of. (Although she may have lost engagements because of her admitted drug use. It would be a major liability to a company to put a known cocaine addict on stage.) She got a 60 Minutes interview and lots of sympathetic articles written about her as I recall. But no doubt she burned some bridges.

AGMA is the union for musical artists, like opera and concert singers. They have also represented ballet dancers for decades. Musicians are represented by the American Federation of Musicians.

Watts was portrayed quite negatively in Kirkland's book, on a personal level. At the interview, Watts was actually very complimentary about Kirkland as a dancer. But besides being ballerinas, these were two young women who were sexually involved with the same man. The "ballet world" was just the backdrop. Some of the greatest artists in history, some of the greatest writers and scientists, have gotten into feuds and squabbles that are clashes of personality, not reflections on their work, for example Mary McCarthy and Lillian Hellman. It's just human nature.

Sorry, I don't remember where I first heard the story. But Watts was very open and entertaining in that interview. She talked about the dilemma she and other students were in as to whether they should go to class or demonstrate against the war, and she indicated that Erik Bruhn, whom she knew primarily as a friend of Martins, had a crush on her. She also had a few dignified, but choice words about Gelsey Kirkland.

That's just nonsense. I've heard about Louis CK's little masturbation habit for years. It was no secret. However he did it in his hotel room, not at the FX studio, so maybe he got off on a technicality (no pun intended!). He even admitted that he had "problem". I don't get it.

Watts exasperated the administrators at SAB with her wild ways, like the time she marched around the studio naked, which Balanchine loved, as to him it indicated a tempestuous artistic spirit. Many years ago, I attended a live interview with Watts where she said she was threatened with expulsion many times, and that the school would sometimes call Balanchine himself to deal with her.

Frankfurt makes claims that should be verifiable, or challenged, and which raise questions of their own. She says that Martins' girlfriend (presumably Watts) was constantly covered with bruises because of his beatings. Surely if she saw them, plenty of other people did, too. They would be hard to hide in a ballet setting. Frankfurt also says that during a performance, apparently of Stars and Stripes, Martins pulled her into his dressing room and exposed himself to her, and that she slipped away because she had to do the finale. She says that at a party at Martins' house, her (Frankfurt's) father was so outraged at Martins for beating his girlfriend, he punched him and knocked him out, leaving him sprawled on the ground outside. She also alludes to some incident that was so terrible, she couldn't bring herself to describe it. Pretty explosive stuff. One has to wonder, if Watts was getting beaten up on the regular, why didn't any teacher at SAB, any ballet master, or Frankfurt herself call or even send an anonymous letter to her parents to let them know how their daughter was being brutalized? If anyone did, and they took no action, shame on them. Are the dressing rooms at the (then) State Theater so close to the stage that a dancer who should be waiting in the wings for her next entrance could be pulled into one? Maybe they are. Male dancers are so "exposed" in their everyday attire flashing someone almost seems superfluous. Getting knocked out is a serious neurological event. Did anyone take Martins to the hospital or otherwise tend to him? Hard to believe that no one else saw or noticed this. Someone should ask the others who were at that party. Frankfurt seemed nervous, which is understandable, even though the interviewer is her son's fiancée and presumably not intimidating to her. She makes a couple of mistakes, like calling Balanchine the "greatest living choreographer", and referring to AGMA as a musicians' union. To me her general affect was a bit odd, but maybe she's like that all the time.

Whether Balanchine punished Mejia by not casting him is in dispute, if you believe that an AD has the right to make those decisions. No doubt, the optics are not good.

It was not my intent to derail the discussion. In Parliamentary terms, I rose to a point of personal privilege. My apologies.

I am not right wing, but I am anti-trans and I make no apologies for it. I will not refer to a man as "she" just because he wears a dress and pearls. Your mileage may vary. I don't care.

It took several months after McCallum's bail was set at $350,000 for him to leave Twitter. He had multiple issues, including alcohol abuse, that could have impacted his leaving. Considering the nature of the charges, one would think that dismissal would have been swift, but it wasn't, if it ever took place at all. He may have quit on his own. I was writing in response to Helene's post, where she suggested that she believed that Martins' supporters should not speak up. If I have mischaracterized her post, I'm sure she can speak for herself.

At no time have the dancers who support Martins discounted or disparaged anyone else's account of their experiences with him. They have simply espressed that their experiences were good. Are you suggesting, as Flack is, that they don't have the same right to "speak their truth" as the accusers? Silicon Valley is the "outside world" and a staggering number of executives there charged with sexual abuse have kept their jobs, including a transgender engineer who beat and raped his estranged wife while claiming to be a feminist and advocate for womens' rights. This, along with the rampant sexual harassment the STEM field is notorious for, doesn't excuse Martins' actions one bit. But he isn't the first exec to get a pass for his actions and he's hardly the worst.

If you don't get a position, promotion, role that you wanted, is that professional punishment? Supervisors use their discretion to make business decisions, especially in the arts. Married couples working in the same company can be walking a minefield. There are several prominent media couples who had to split up professionally when they married, as per their companies' policies. (That would really be hard on ballet dancers as there are not nearly as many positions for dancers as for news reporters.) There are at least two sides to every ballet story. One of my teachers was a soloist at NYCB during the Farrell years, and I heard first hand how many company members resented Farrell's power and influence over Balanchine. His favoritism was blatant. She could have had any role she wanted, but she overplayed her hand when she made a demand on her husband's behalf.

Flack, and those of us who post here, are all entitled to our opinions. But she's the one who has been given the platform of an open letter in Dance Magazine. She's the one publicly telling other dancers that their feelings don't matter. Would you feel the same if she had come out against Martins' accusers?