Breaking the Glass Slipper: Where Are the Female Choreographers?

Let's add Jessica Lang. She has created works on the Birmingham Royal Ballet, National Ballet of Japan, the Joffrey Ballet, American Ballet Theater to name only a few. Stunning work and important choreographer!

Please add Sara Pearson of Pearson and Widrig Company,
to your list of notable female choreographers. Decades of inventive dance vocabulary, vast international performing schedules, started in 1979s/80s? , NYC with Alwin Nikolais and Murray Lewis, now in residence , on faculty in a college in ...Maryland.(I think).

Don't forget Sara Pearson!

I'd like to add that the four female choreographers who set new original work on St. Paul Ballet in February were: Diane Coburn Bruning, Sally Rousse, Jamie Johnson and Zoé Emilie Henrot. St. Paul Ballet also has an initiative called Take Back the Tutu which addresses empowering dancers of all body types in classical ballet.

Cincinnati Ballet, under the direction of Victoria Morgan, presented a program of choreography by women this past spring, attempting to address this very issue. CB is, by the way, a gem of a company.

It is obvious, as usual, that you cannot look above the 49th Parallel!! Just look at the state of dancein Canada!!! LOOK AT the women choreographers and heads of Capanies!!! Open your eyes, New York!!!

Cultural/Political discourse these days seems to center on endless variations of who can be considered the most victimized, a very dispiriting attitude that I believe never leads to any sort of true self-empowerment.
I was a professional dancer in New York and San Francisco for 15 years. Most of the work I did was choreographed by women in companies run by women. It never occurred to me that there was anything unusual and/or special about the situation. I cared about the artistic quality and integrity of the work, not about the gender of the creator. Was I a freak living in a bubble? I don't think so. More likely, it's our ever disintegrating culture that seems intent on falling further and further into this morass of self-pity, the place where all art goes to die.

So, women's books aren't reviewed as much as men's, women's plays are not produced as much as men's, women's art is not displayed as much as men's, women are not chosen to direct movies, females appear much, much less in movies and in TV roles, and, surprise, surprise, female choreographers are overlooked...we do have a patriarchal culture, don't we?

Thank you for this article, but it doesn't address the real-world problems of women's absence in the top tiers of dance management and directing. Here they are:
1) Sexism, pure and simple. Men usually prefer to mentor other men and leadership in the dance world is still an "apprentice" program in which leaders take up youngsters for inclusion. Without a highly self-conscious program of mentorship of women, this will persist.
2) Men usually come to dance later in their youth and the competition is nothing like that for women, so they often are better educated and have more opportunities for making different life choices. When men retire, they have fewer remediations they need to do in order to gain those upper echelons; women are not encouraged to get the training needed.
3) Life stages: when women retire from performing they are often confronted with the choice of either starting a family--often later in life--or gaining the professional training necessary to re-tool into another career. Men don't have to make these choices and ballet companies are usually run by people who don't recognize that women can have babies and be professionals at the same time.

Kansas City Ballet typically presents one or two pieces by female choreographers a season (the splendid Helen Pickett most recently) but the management is overwhelmingly male, even though the founder was Tatiana Dokoudovska. The instructional staff is largely female--and women get stuck in those positions. KCB is typical.

Making this a men vs. women discussion is too simplistic. First think of the qualities of a choreographer vs. those of a dancer - the artist who sees dance as overall theatrical expression over personal performance involvement. Even though 95% of ballet dancers are female, the vast majority of female dancers want to BE the ballerina, and are satisfied with a performing experience. Very few are so attracted to choreographic creativity over performance that they bypass the dancer experience. Think of de Mille, Tharp, etc - all very individualistic women dedicated to the choreographic path, not satisfied with wearing the tiara. On the other hand, although 5% of ballet dancers are male, probably 80% of those male dancers are gay. The gay male dancer often possesses a heightened creativity (in particular about working with the female form) along with a more bold desire to express that creativity through choreography. The more bold qualities of maleness mixed with a higher sense of creativity brings about a creative dance person who is more inclined to take charge, step out of the dancer role, and make a dance event happen. This male assertion, coupled with the primary female ballet dancer quality of dedication to the ballerina ideal, leads in my mind to a disproportionate ratio of male to female ballet choreographers. Now, as to why company directors choose male choreographers over female choreographers...you'd have to probe the mind of each director.

Thank you for this article. Very valuable. One small correction: It hasn't "become" a rarity for ballet companies to present works by women choreographers; that would mistakenly suggest that it was once fashionable or more common an occurrence. The correct word choice here -- the one that accurately reflects the gender imbalance in dance choreography -- is "remains". Funny enough, that's the word used in the second paragraph, but not in the sub-head to the piece.

It's sort of All-the-Above: art developed by men; girls attracted to the art; subordinated role of women; busier that male dancers; some great role models but not enough. Like other aspects of affirmative action, requires affirmative action: access, recruitment, opportunities, mentoring.

This topic almost -- though not quite -- as compelling as "where are the dancers of color in the great companies?" However much I love NYCB and ABT, the extent of Lily-Whiteness is embarrassing every time I see the stage filled with all those beautiful bodies.

I have wondered longtime how the Ailey company, let alone DTH, become quite the magnets for talented AA dancers. Self-segregation a la TBCs?

Affirmative action has to be strenuous for both problems.

Jessica Lang at the Joyce a few weeks ago - ballet choreographer, excellent, interesting, developing work...why no mention?

One thing that is worth pointing out about that list of male choreographers is that almost every one of them started getting commissions while they were still dancing for their respective companies. Justin Peck is still a soloist with NYCB, Myles Thatcher is still in the corpse (!) of SFB, and so on. They usually start out making pieces for the student showcases and then move on up to bigger projects for the company. If so many of these new works are being commissioned in-house, then it would seem like the opportunities for female company members should be right there as well. Since that isn't happening it is worth, as someone said below, to talk explicitly about the sexism inherent not only within these companies but also in our society at large. To say that commissions are about the "right fit... whether by male or female" is the same sort of statement that is made when talking about why Misty Copeland is the only black principal dancer in a major company today. "We take dancers that are the right fit.. whether they're black or white." Skirting around the issue doesn't help anyone; these deeply-rooted disparities must be addressed blatantly and with more of a resolve to change them.

In the past year Hubbard Street Dance Chicago has presented an antire evening of female choreographers--Crystal Pite, Penny Saunders, Robyn Mineko Williams, and in the past five years have presented over 20 works from female choreographers. There are world renowned companies, Hubbard Street, that have placed an emphasis on diversity in choreography in addition to excellence in choreography--it would be great if you looked outside New York--its awesome out here!

Here in Colorado, I have started a workshop to support female choreographers in ballet and contemporary dance, for this very reason.

My experience is that women are often not encouraged to step out and have their own voice, it is encouraged to obey, to be good, to do what you are told to do, even if it is humiliating or damaging.

For example, a recent well known company I recently saw in Denver, had numerous "crotch shots", of the female dancers being lifted with legs open towards the audience, and men looking up their skirts. The women dancers in Colorado vie to be part of this company, and yet, the choreography by men is often about manipulating and humiliating them.

The culture needs to change from those of us who are teaching and dancing in regional places. I know of many talented dancers who quit because of the negative experiences in ballet companies which are abusive. I am attempting to turn this around the other way.

I will be writing a blog response about this article this week, to cover this idea in more detail.

Thank you for the article.

Ruthanna Boris, Graham dancer brought to NYC Ballet the Graham arm that moves from the upper rims of the pelvis, as a boxer's punch, a horse's foreleg. She slipped on a puddle and fell so beautifully and gracefully while Balachine was choreographing Serenade that he added the fall.

In her dance history classes she taught that ballet started from the fencing masters who took sailors' folk dances learned in the Carribean, straightened the back for fencing, and so ballet had much of its movement from African line dancing and agility war dances.

Ms Boris choreographed 55 dances that other companies chose to perform. She especially loved to choreograph Scott Joplin's music and to use the long, long hands and feet of black students in her ballet.

(Her father started the first radio station for Harlem and edited the first Encyclopedia of Colored People.)

If you don't expect to see her you probably won't. Change in exposure will come because we expect it from the new appointments such as Kent in D.C. Bonnefoux' replacement in Charlotte. Jen Homans at NYU Center for Ballet and the Arts has named lady choreographers Fellows recently. They should be enthusiastically reviewed.

What about Nina Bausch, the very famous german choreographer?

My daughter and I recently saw a performance of Ballet BC at the Joyce. The three pieces performed were each choreographed by women and I read a review by Gia Kourlas in the NYT the day before we went. Kourlas absolutely trashed the the works calling one of them"cliche ridden" and offered ample insults to the other pieces as well. She claimed the works were not adequate examples of choreography by women. I didn't have the heart to tell my daughter about the review before the show -- but in fact, it was GREAT. Of course some parts were better than others, but as we all know, THAT never happens in any of the gazillion shows choreographed completely by men, right? What is it that causes a female dance critic to be so dismissive of very credible work by women? I will never understand the lack of support when it is so sorely needed for the work of women to thrive and get the attention it clearly deserves.

One successful female choreographer is Bridget Breiner, the American director of Ballet im Revier in Gelsenkirchen, Germany. She has won the national Faust Prize twice in the past three years. http://www.derwesten.de/staedte/gelsenkirchen/bridget-breiner-erhaelt-zu... She is also our daughter.

I am thrilled to see this article appear, but I am disheartened that Mr. Cooper does not mention some of the greatest choreographers making new ballets. A short list would include Lucinda Childs, Helen Pickett, Marie Chouinard, and Karole Armitage. And while we have many women as artistic directors of ballet companies, the boards of those companies still frown on important women and prevent those directors from presenting works by women choreographers (as much as I hate that title, I just call them choreographers). Boston Ballet has been more of a pioneer in this regard; with Mikko Nissinen as director the company performed in recent years not only Nijinska's masterpiece Les Noces, but also commissioned and premiered significant works by Childs and Pickett. A few years ago Houston Ballet presented a program unfortunately titled Women@art, featuring works by Julia Adam, Aszure Barton and Twyla Tharp. The problem, of course, is that "women" ballets are often sequestered in all-women programs. The ballets need to be incorporated into the repertories of U.S. companies and performed more regularly. Most of them suffer "premiere syndrome" and then are quietly ignored. Also, it should be mentioned that Twyla Tharp often prevents the staging of her works at major companies by keeping her fees insanely high. I've heard this from several artistic directors.

I went to a dance conference in October that was about 99% women. The few men who were there received about 50% of the awards handed out. Go figure.

The answer to the question would seem quite obvious if the author had only given the introductory quote in its entirety: "The ballet is a purely female thing; it is a woman, a garden of beautiful flowers, and man is the gardener." Tiptoeing around the problem of the power of male choreographers over female dancers and blind hero worship of the founding "father" of American ballet is not going to get us anywhere. To tackle sexism in ballet, we have to ask ourselves why in this country ballet dancing is only for girls, while boys are expected to play sports. We need to remind ourselves that originally only men were allowed to dance in ballets, and then break the idea that ballet is "pink" or any other single color.

You left out Anna Sperber. And no, I am not Anna Sperber nor do I know her personally.

Brilliant, edgy, adventurous female choreographer.