Yes, Gender Inequity Exists in Ballet. Here's Why It Matters.
Would you be surprised if I told you there is systematic gender inequity in ballet? For most people, I find, the answer is yes.
photo credit: Michael Afonso, via Unsplash
After all, according to a 2015 article for the Washington Post, two-thirds of ballet’s audience is female. Anecdotal evidence suggests that 70% of the art’s donor base is also female. As is often cited in articles discussing gender equity in ballet, George Balanchine famously said, “Ballet is woman.” Even ballet’s name is synonymous with traditionally female symbols: tutus, ballerinas, pointe shoes, and the color pink.
The incongruous reality, however, is this: in the last two seasons of performances by ballet companies in the U.S., approximately 80% of ballets were choreographed by men. Only eight ballet companies employ exclusively female resident choreographers among a sample of 37 that offer this rare, secure position for artists. Only one woman is among the artistic leaders of the 10 domestic companies with the largest budgets, and that woman is the highest-paid female artistic director in America, having made $325,000 in 2017. The most recently reported salary for the highest paid male artistic director was nearly $600,000 more than her salary, and he was forced to resign following allegations of sexual harassment and violence in 2018. On average, women made 62 cents and 68 cents for every dollar men made as artistic director in 2016 and 2017, respectively, and all of this is before considering women of color and other minorities.
Prior to Dance Data Project®’s (DDP) launch in 2019, anecdotal evidence of this gender imbalance had been brought up a number of times by the New York Times, the Guardian, and others, but women, particularly women choreographers, had little ammunition with which to go to battle.
David Datuna’s banana art sold for $120,000 at Art Basel. Photo credit: Jason Woodhead [CC BY 2.0], via Flickr.
One of the more alarming stories I’ve heard surrounding this issue was told to me by DDP’s founder, Liza Yntema. She asked a male artistic director, “Where are the women choreographers?” and he unabashedly replied, “There are no good women choreographers.” This reaction is an abysmal example of what it means to be a leader in 21st century art. Long gone are the days of creative expression being black and white. Art’s evolution has shaped each of its forms to embrace rule-breaking and surpass initial definitions of right and wrong, reality and abstract. These are the years of the Art Basel Banana, Hamilton, and Big Little Lies. People want to see themselves reflected in their art, and this perhaps fuels even greater need for parity.
Moreover, the public’s awareness of gender inequity stems in large part from its persistence in the arts. The Time’s Up and #MeToo movements in particular have highlighted the issue in Hollywood, and from there — with social media and a society fascinated with celebrity, talk of pay inequity, harassment, and abuse — a score of related issues has developed. The most forward-thinking and accepting fields have become the face of this issue, revealing it to be something that transcends party lines and creeps into even the most well-intentioned environments.
Which brings me back to ballet.
If you are the average person, you don’t care about ballet. You don’t love classical music. You don’t want to pay the steep price to watch a two-hour program when you can stream a new show right from your home. You probably don’t want to hear about the inequity (and allegations of sexual abuse) in opera, either. But, you should care.
The stories and lessons shared in ballet, opera, theater, and visual art find themselves adapted into film, television, books, and more. There is a common thread in all art, and its overarching narrative shapes our culture. When the source of this narrative is conceived by the male perspective, selected by a male programmer, or shaped by music written exclusively by men, over half of the story is missing. Let’s not leave the show at intermission. Equipped with this burgeoning dialogue, we are poised to make the second act a hell of a lot better than the first.
Isabelle Vail has been the Director of Research and unofficial jack of all trades for Dance Data Project® (DDP) since 2018. Beginning as an intern for the project, she has seen DDP grow from a simple database of women choreographers into an official 501(c)(3) over her three years on its team. Isabelle was a Presidential Scholar in Dance at Wake Forest University, where she studied Psychology and French, before teaching English in Normandy, France, for a year. In May 2019, she moved to Manhattan and became DDP's first full-time team member. In her free time, she continues her practice of ballet and enjoys weekly Shake Shack, exploring, laughing, and dog-watching.