Margaret Fuhrer:
Hi everyone. Just a warning before we get started that this episode will include a discussion of sexual abuse in dance education that could be upsetting or triggering. That portion of the conversation goes from around the 11-minute mark to just about the 16-minute mark, in case you’d like to skip it.

[theme song]

Margaret Fuhrer:
Hi dance friends, and welcome to the 100th episode of The Dance Edit Podcast. I’m Margaret Fuhrer.

Courtney Escoyne:
Woo! And I’m Courtney Escoyne.

Margaret Fuhrer:
I know, it is crazy. How has it been 100 episodes?

Courtney Escoyne:
I don’t understand.

Margaret Fuhrer:
We are editors at Dance Media. And today we will be discussing the growing group of dancers who are speaking out about the expectation that dance artists will perform for free at the Super Bowl halftime show. We will talk about the extraordinarily wide-ranging lawsuit against the University of North Carolina School of the Arts, which accuses dozens of the school’s teachers and administrators of sexual abuse, and will talk more broadly about the problem of abuse in dance education. And then finally, we will be joined by our fellow podcasters, Lydia Murray and Amy Brandt, for a special mini celebration looking back on 100 episodes of The Dance Edit Podcast—which, again, feels impossible, and yet here we are.

Before all of that though, let’s kick things off with our usual dance headline rundown, which is mostly happy news this week, blessedly.

Courtney Escoyne:
What a nice change. So the 2022 NAACP Image Award nominations include nods to some familiar names. Ariana DeBose is up for outstanding breakthrough performance in a motion picture for her portrayal of Anita in West Side Story. Misty Copeland’s book Black Ballerinas: My Journey to Our Legacy is nominated in the outstanding literary work in the children’s category. And in the non-fiction category, the book Dance Theatre of Harlem: A History, A Movement, A Celebration is also under consideration. Some well deserved nods.

Margaret Fuhrer:
Yeah, that’s so fantastic. Big congrats to everybody. And more congratulations are in order over at New York City Ballet. Last weekend, the company promoted seven corps de ballet dancers to soloist. The new soloists are Preston Chamblee, Ashley Hod, Emily Kikta, Isabella LaFreniere, Miriam Miller, Mira Nadon, and Emma von Enck. That is a pretty fantastic group. And then there’s also some bittersweet news from City Ballet: principal Teresa Reichlen just announced today, the day we’re recording, that she will retire next month. She’s giving her last performance in Swan Lake. She’s an utterly singular ballerina—I’ll really miss her on that stage.

Courtney Escoyne:
Yeah. I’m going to miss seeing Tess so much. And I mean, just all the roster shifts and retirements that are happening right now—we’re really seeing a bit of a generational shift at New York City Ballet.

Margaret Fuhrer:
It’s going to be a totally new company.

Courtney Escoyne:
Totally. And I also think it’s funny though, because all the names who are getting called up now are like—called that a couple years ago! They’re all fantastic. Cannot wait to see them in action.

Meanwhile in Chicago, Hubbard Street Dance Chicago finally has a new home at Water Tower Place, a mall on Chicago’s Magnificent Mile. Company dancers started rehearsing there at the beginning of the month in preparation for their upcoming March concert at the Museum of Contemporary Arts. It’s definitely good to see them moving into a new space after the frankly concerning news of the company selling its headquarters, and the subsequent closure of Lou Conte Dance Studios in the early days of the pandemic.

Margaret Fuhrer:
Yeah, hopefully a happy ending after a long period of uncertainty.

It’s a big week for Chicago dance news. The city’s department of cultural affairs and special events has announced that 2022 will be the Year of Chicago Dance. And this is part of the city’s “year of” initiatives, which started in 2017 with the year of public art, and then there were years dedicated to creative youth, and theater, and music. So the Year of Chicago Dance will include both new dance programming and increased support for existing dance infrastructure. Very cool.

Courtney Escoyne:
And I think there’s a lot of hope that this will also lead to longer-term conversations about how the city can better support Chicago dance artists at all levels.

The Kennedy Center’s Next 50, a list of 50 forward-thinking cultural leaders who will work with the organization during its 50th anniversary season, includes a whole bunch of dance artists and organizations: Kyle Abraham, Chloe and Maud Arnold, Camille A. Brown, Tony Duncan, Mj Rodriguez, Final Bow for Yellowface, Kinetic Light, and Gregg Mozgala. A big congrats to all of them for the well deserved recognition. I’m very curious to see what comes of this.

Margaret Fuhrer:
Yeah. Same. I mean, it’s such a fantastic list. And there are a lot of friends of the pod on there—good to see that.

Over in the Broadway world, the Tony Awards announced that beginning this season, its voters will be required to complete unconscious bias training in order to vote in any categories. This comes, of course, after widespread calls for greater diversity and inclusion on Broadway generally, and also after Slave Play did not win a single Tony despite being up for 12 of them last year. So, no word yet on when exactly this year’s Tony’s ceremony will be, but voters have to complete the bias training by March 1st. And we’ll see how that affects the ceremony.

Courtney Escoyne:
Yeah. We’ll see what happens—hopefully good developments.

A new film inspired by Akira Armstrong and her Pretty Big Movement dance company is in the works at HBO Max. The film will follow a fictionalized version of Armstrong as she founds her own body-inclusive company after being rejected from other troops unwilling to hire a plus sized dancer. Tina Mabry, who has directed a number of episodes of “Pose” among many other credits, is attached to direct and will also co-write the screenplay.

Margaret Fuhrer:
We’re ending the headline roundup on a sad note: French couturier Thierry Mugler has died. The envelope-pushing artist actually started out as a dancer, and loved everything theatrical. He designed for dance and theater. He actually even helped direct the Cirque Du Soleil show Zumanity. Mugler was 73.

All right. So in our first longer discussion segment today, we want to talk about the Super Bowl controversy that’s made a whole bunch of mainstream headlines over the past few days. Last week, dancer and activist Taja Riley did a post on Instagram revealing that a dance agency had been putting out calls for professional dance artists to volunteer to perform at the Super Bowl halftime show. And these are unpaid jobs that would require 72 hours of rehearsal over the course of nine days, so, quite a lot of work. In her post and in some subsequent interviews, Riley addressed choreographer Fatima Robinson directly, asking her to speak up on behalf of the dancers. Robinson responded both on Instagram and in an interview with the Los Angeles Times, and pointed out that in fact, the production is employing 115 paid dancers, and these calls were for supplemental field performers. Then yesterday, SAG-AFTRA said it had reached an agreement with the producers of the halftime show in which no professional dancers will be asked to work for free. However, non-professional dancers can still be asked to volunteer.

So, the outrage here is very real. The fact that this event, which makes so much money for so many people, is asking anybody to work for free—and especially dancers, who honestly might be doing as much physically as any of the players on the field—it does boggle the mind. But there’s more to unpack here too. It’s not quite as simple as some of the less subtle headlines have made it seem.

Courtney Escoyne:
Yeah. And I think the SAG-AFTRA development kind of just highlighting one of the nuances and slight dissonances that have come out around people talking about this. As the folks who are behind the Super Bowl show have clarified, the “400 volunteers” who are not paid, they’ve clarified that they’re not being asked to do choreography. The rehearsal is to make sure they know where the cables are, the cameras are, how to get on and off the field safely, don’t run into any pyrotechnics. And as has been pointed out, there are 115 professional dancers who are contracted being paid, et cetera.

Where things get murky is that allegedly there was emails sent out to people who are contracted by this talent agency, asking if these dancers who were contracted knew of any volunteers who would be open to the opportunity or experience, specifying that the casting wanted “predominantly African American movers,” which—during Black History Month, for an unpaid gig, during a global pandemic, raises some questions.

Margaret Fuhrer:
Yeah, that’s definitely murky. I’ve seen a lot of people responding to this saying, the big headlining acts also don’t get paid for the Super Bowl halftime show. But first of all, the NFL does cover all their production costs, which can run into the millions of dollars. And also those artists get huge bumps in streaming revenue among with many other benefits from this show. Not to mention that they’re coming from a very different place financially than these dancers are.

Courtney Escoyne:
Yeah. And this is one of those rare cases where saying they’re getting paid in exposure, it does actually mean something because they are already known names with a lot of success and largely financial backing on their own.

Margaret Fuhrer:
These big musical artists. Yeah.

Courtney Escoyne:
Yeah. It’s not the same thing as telling dancers they’re getting paid in exposure.

Margaret Fuhrer:
Sure. Especially if they’re one of 400 people on the field. Yeah. I think this all ties into this much larger problem in the entertainment industry—and I mean throughout the entertainment industry, whether we’re talking about big broadcast performances like this or music videos or films or to some extent TV. This is an industry that’s never given dance artists what they’re worth in terms of credit, in terms of award recognition, but especially in terms of money. And dancers are always at the absolute bottom of the pile. Choreographers, too are almost never paid in a way that reflects the value of their contributions to these projects. We’ve talked before about JaQuel Knight’s efforts to copyright commercial choreography for that very reason, to shout out Dance Magazine‘s current cover star—yay JaqQuel.

Bravo to Taja, and to the other dance artists who’ve had the courage to come forward and identify this problem, because it does take some courage. I guess the question now is how to fix it. And I’m actually very excited to see what kinds of conversations in that vein might get jumpstarted by this big moment of really negative press. That’s a lot of pressure. And we already saw, with the SAG-AFTRA agreement, that it has had some effect. Hopefully that keeps happening.

Courtney Escoyne:
Yeah. At the end of the day, in terms of the decision-making—the dancers and choreographers are not the ones who have the majority of the financial power and decision making power here. So hopefully we can all work together and try to make changes up top.

Margaret Fuhrer:
And get them some more power. Yeah. We’ve included a link to the LA Times coverage of all this in the show notes, so you can read a little bit more.

So next up today, we have another story that’s made prominent headlines recently. We’ve talked already on the podcast about the lawsuit against the University of North Carolina School of the Arts. There are now 56 plaintiffs alleging sexual and emotional abuse by former members of the school’s faculty and administration. And over the past week, both Dance Magazine and the New York Times ran features about the case. So we want to, first of all, discuss what we know about it so far.

Courtney Escoyne:
OK, deep breaths. So as Margaret noted, there are 56 plaintiffs, not just within the department of dance, but stretching across UNCSA. The majority of the accusations happened between the seventies, eighties, and nineties, although there is a more recent accusation from 2008, regarding a former ballet instructor there sexually assaulting a student in his office and a subsequent lack of response by the administration. Many of the claims have to do specifically with modern dance instructors Richard Kuch and Richard Gain, in the seventies, eighties and nineties—male students accusing them of sexual assault, female and male students accusing them of inappropriate sexual touching during classes, and that they regularly intimidated, manipulated, and humiliated underage students of all genders in a sexual manner. There are more details. It’s all horrifying.

The majority of these cases would typically fall under statute of limitations and not be triable in court. But this was filed just underneath a provision to that is allowing the waving of statute of limitations for a couple of years to retroactively look at some of these cases in the wake of the Me Too movement.

Margaret Fuhrer:
I mean, the sheer scale of this thing is staggering. The quote from the Times piece that really got me came from Christopher Alloways-Ramsey, one of the plaintiffs, who I actually danced with for a brief moment in time. He said, “It’s a very hard thing to explain. You’re 16 years old, and you really desperately want a career in ballet. The person you idolize is telling you, ‘I can give you that.’ The underlying subtext is that there will be something in exchange.”

And that is unfortunately a dynamic that exists all over dance education. This problem goes well beyond UNCSA. And this is a topic that we’ve talked about at some length on the podcast, but we wanted to point you to some specific stories and resources that might be helpful.

Courtney Escoyne:
Yeah. The one that immediately comes to mind for me is, Chanel DaSilva, who is herself a brilliant dance educator and advocate in her own right, very bravely came forward in early 2021 and told the story of her own experiences with grooming and sexual abuse at the hands of one of her teachers, essentially calling for more transparency, and calling for more training in order to create environments where that sort of thing is an allowed to happen. Pointe recently did a story about grooming in the ballet world specifically, and there are attached to all these stories a lot of different suggestions about, okay, what can we do to change this? Because the culture of dance education, oftentimes as a culture permits and allows this to fly under the radar for a lot of people.

Margaret Fuhrer:
So we have links to those stories plus a few other stories in the show notes. We also have some other resources for both dancers and teachers, including the websites for Youth Protection Advocates in Dance, the Dance Education Equity Association, and The Dance Safe, all of which are doing really important work on this front.

It’s so hard to see these kinds of stories in the news over and over again. But the fact that dance’s issue with abuse is now out in the open, that it’s getting the sunlight that will hopefully eventually act as the disinfectant—that at least is some cause for optimism.

Courtney Escoyne:
Yeah. That’s the thing, it starts with all of us creating a culture that doesn’t allow this and creating systems for reporting when stuff like this is suspected or actually happens. Culture around open communication in the studio, practices of consent—there’s a lot that we can do that will also just generally make the dance world better. And I think make us all better collaborators, learners, teachers.

Margaret Fuhrer:
Right. We’re not powerless in the face of this. Thank you, Courtney, for reminding us that.

Okay. We got to take a deep breath, we’ve got to decompress for a second. That was a very heavy first two thirds of an episode. Now we are going to totally change gears. We’re doing a complete tonal 180.

It’s time for our special 100th episode anniversary segment. And I would like to welcome Lydia Murray and Amy Brandt to the pod. Hi, Lydia and Amy!

Courtney Escoyne:
Yay, fresh air!

Margaret Fuhrer:
Seriously.

Lydia Murray:
Hey!

Amy Brandt:
Hey Margaret!

Courtney Escoyne:
Hey, friends.

Margaret Fuhrer:
So, because nothing says festive like a pop quiz, we are going to mark 100 episodes of The Dance Edit Podcast with a little history test. I’m going to ask each of you two trivia questions that concern some aspect of our first 100 episodes. If you’re stumped, then the other hosts will get a chance to chime in and help you out. You’d better believe that I have, like, buzzer and ding, ding, ding sounds ready to add in post—I’m going to go nuts. But I promise the questions are not that bad. Are you ready?

Courtney Escoyne:
Why am I so nervous?

Lydia Murray:
Right? Like I’m on a game show. [laughter]

Margaret Fuhrer:
Alrighty, we’re going to do this in two rounds. So each of you will get your first question and then each of you will get a second question. And Lydia, you’re up first because I say so. Okay. First question: how many episodes of the podcast did we record in person, in that horrendous all-glass WeWork conference room, before the first round of pandemic shutdowns began?

Lydia Murray:
The one with the foam setup. Let’s see. I feel like it was about two, but I don’t know. It was about maybe two or three.

Margaret Fuhrer:
Don’t second guess yourself! You were correct. It was exactly two.

Lydia Murray:
Okay! Yeah.

Courtney Escoyne:
Not including our pilot episodes that no one will ever hear ever.

Margaret Fuhrer:
Yes, thank goodness. Of which there were umpteen. But no, the rest of this podcast has been recorded remotely, which is sad because I miss seeing you all in person, but it has been good for our sound quality, I will say that.

Courtney Escoyne:
Because we did all only have one mic for that, those first two episodes.

Margaret Fuhrer:
The good old days. All right, Courtney, you’re up next. When did we begin offering complete transcripts of our podcast episodes? I am looking for a month and a year. And, hint: it was connected to a specific guest’s appearance on the podcast. It was prompted by that appearance.

Courtney Escoyne:
Okay. So it would’ve been, I’m going to guess here, whenever Alice Sheppard was a guest on the pod.

Margaret Fuhrer:
Correct.

Courtney Escoyne:
Absolute queen Alice Sheppard, we love everything she does. However, the last two years of my life are a miasma and a blur. So I have almost no recollection of when that actually would’ve been. I am going to broadly guess summer 2020.

Margaret Fuhrer:
I’m going to give it to you because you got Alice’s name. I feel like that’s the heart of the matter. It was December, 2020. But yeah…

Courtney Escoyne:
I told you it’s a blur, it’s all a blur.

Margaret Fuhrer:
…a condition of Alice’s appearance on the podcast was that we offer transcripts, and we then pledged to do that from there on.

All right. Amy, you’re up. And I know you do not have the same breath of Dance Edit history knowledge, since you joined a little later in the game.

Amy Brandt:
I know, I am a bit of a newbie.

Margaret Fuhrer:
Well, your questions are written with that in mind. Actually, your first question is: when did you join the Dance Edit Podcast family? And again, I’m looking for a month and a year for your first episode.

Amy Brandt:
Oh! June, 2021.

Margaret Fuhrer:
You are correct. June 10th, 2021 was your first time on the mic.

Amy Brandt:
Yay!

Margaret Fuhrer:
Bonus question: Can you name any of the topics we talked about in that first episode?

Amy Brandt:
Oh…we talked about queer flamenco in Spain!

Margaret Fuhrer:
Absolutely right! Yes, Manuel Liñán and queer flamenco.

Amy Brandt:
Because I remember being a little panicked and having to do a lot of research, because I’m just not up on my flamenco.

Margaret Fuhrer:
So it’s seared in your memory.

Amy Brandt:
Yeah.

Margaret Fuhrer:
Okay. Everyone’s doing pretty well so far! Lydia, here is your second question. How many voice memos—not interviews, but voice memos, those little messages in the bottle that dancers recorded on their own in the first part of the pandemic—how many of those voice memos did we air? And this is a little tricky, so I’m going to ask you for a range. Was it 10 to 20 of them, 20 to 30, or 30 to 40 memos?

Lydia Murray:
I will say… I’ll say 10 to 20.

Margaret Fuhrer:
It was actually 28, 20 to 30, believe it or not.

Lydia Murray:
That was my second guess!

Courtney Escoyne:
In my head, it was like a dozen, but…

Margaret Fuhrer:
That time is so compressed.

Lydia Murray:
Yeah, because we did them when the pandemic started, and people were talking about their reactions to the pandemic, and how they were coping and that kind of thing. For the first few months it was like a new phenomenon, and then after a while it was like, oh, we’re going to be here for a while. So, that makes sense.

Margaret Fuhrer:
Yep. Those are still great time capsules, by the way. You should go back and listen to those, because people had really, really powerful things to say. Oh bonus question: Do you remember who did our first voice memo? Anybody can jump in here.

Lydia Murray:
Was it Harper?

Margaret Fuhrer:
It sure was. It sure was Harper Watters. That was a great way to start.

All right, Courtney, back to you. Eventually we stopped doing those voice memos and we started doing longer form interviews. And then more recently we expanded those interviews into The Dance Edit Extra, which we’ve told you listeners all about. So the question here is, how many interviews have we aired on both this podcast and The Dance Edit Extra, the combined total? And like Lydia, you get to choose a range here. So is it 20 to 30, 30 to 40, or 40 to 50?

Courtney Escoyne:
All right. I’m going to some mental math here. If we did 28 voice memo episodes, that would’ve been seven months, which would’ve gotten us from… Probably started doing those in like April, May. So then that probably would’ve gotten us towards the end of the year.

Margaret Fuhrer:
Carry the one…

Courtney Escoyne:
But definitely by December 2020, we were talking to Alice Sheppard, so… Okay. I’m going to go 40 to 50.

Margaret Fuhrer:
You are correct. We’ve done 41, 41 interviews, 42 as of next Saturday. Another bonus question, who did our first longer format interview? Hint: it was someone who was guest editing Dance Magazine at the time.

Lydia Murray:
Oh…Kyle Abraham?

Courtney Escoyne:
Kyle?

Margaret Fuhrer:
Kyle Abraham! Yeah. That was such a good one.

Courtney Escoyne:
Aww, we love Kyle.

Margaret Fuhrer:
All right, Amy, here’s your second question. Name the two dance things you said you were grateful for during our Thanksgiving episode last fall. Rapid fire! Go.

Amy Brandt:
I believe one of them was that I could take in person dance class again.

Margaret Fuhrer:
Correct.

Amy Brandt:
Right?

Margaret Fuhrer:
Yep.

Amy Brandt:
Okay. And the other was…that I could go to live performances again?

Margaret Fuhrer:
Well, you did mention that sort of in conjunction with the live classes.

Amy Brandt:
Wait, hang on. No. What the heck did I say?

Margaret Fuhrer:
It would’ve made Kathleen McGuire Gaines very happy.

Amy Brandt:
Oh. That we’re talking seriously about mental health and dance?

Margaret Fuhrer:
That’s correct. I’m giving it to you.

Amy Brandt:
Yay! That was a very helpful hint.

Margaret Fuhrer:
All right. We actually now have a surprise lightning round bonus question for all three of you. Cue the crazy alarm sound, which I definitely already have on file.

Courtney Escoyne:
Oh great.

Amy Brandt:
Margaret!

Margaret Fuhrer:
Since December 2020, which is when we started doing transcripts—because I did not have the time to go back and listen to all these episodes, I’m very much using a search function here—since December 2020, how many episodes have featured at least one use of the word retweet? Closest without going over wins. Here’s your hint: there have been 60 episodes since then. So out of those 60 episodes, how many do you think have featured the word retweet?

Courtney Escoyne:
I do feel like we laid off of it as 2020 went on…

Lydia Murray:
We made a concerted effort to say it less often…

Margaret Fuhrer:
I mean, speak for yourself.

Lydia Murray:
…beginning about a few months into the podcast. And then I think we kind of embraced our corniness and we just kind of rolled with it.

Margaret Fuhrer:
All right. Give me some numbers.

Lydia Murray:
I want to say around five to 10. I don’t think that’s correct.

Courtney Escoyne:
Okay. Okay. I’m picking a number at random: 27. I don’t know.

Amy Brandt:
I’ll go with 40.

Margaret Fuhrer:
Lydia, you’re right. It’s just nine episodes. Only nine episodes. We really did cut back. We really tried. Or rather you all tried, I did not try—almost all of those uses came from me. [laughter]

Well, congratulations—you all survived this pop quiz! This is going to be so ridiculous once I edit in all the sound effects, I can’t wait. [laughter]

All right. That is it for us this week. Thanks everyone for joining us. We will be back next week for more discussion of the news that’s moving the dance world. Keep learning, keep advocating and keep dancing.

Courtney Escoyne:
Mind how you go, friends.

Lydia Murray:
Bye everyone.

Amy Brandt:
Bye everybody.