Tuesday, September 29, 2015
The Gender Divide in Ballet Leadership and Choreography
In 1963, the Ford Foundation used the power of its grants to help create eight ballet companies across the U.S. Most of these companies were founded and cultivated by leading female artistic directors. Today, all of these companies are headed by men. Additionally, men also head the choreography.
According to a recent article on NPR, many of the current female leaders in the arts, and in ballet, seem to share similar perspectives. According to scholar Lynn Garafola, “The more professional a company becomes, in my observation, the more likely women are going to disappear from the leadership positions, and they’re going to be replaced by men. I think this is very typical of organizations when they get larger, when they get more important.”
The Wallace Foundation has produced a number of reports over the past few years on ideas for building audience in the arts. As discussed often, the arts world knows that in order to exist in the future, it needs to broaden its offerings, cultivate its audience, and deepen the audience relationship. Perhaps these two dilemmas are related. Increasing diversity of choreographers by gender, as well as ethnicity and age, could become part of an audience-building strategy....