Margaret Fuhrer:
Hi, dance friends, and welcome to The Dance Edit Podcast. I’m Margaret Fuhrer.

Lydia Murray:
And I’m Lydia Murray.

Margaret Fuhrer:
We are editors at Dance Media, and in today’s episode, we will discuss the broken ballet job market, and how principles of market design could help fix it. We will look at the state of immersive theater, that especially un-pandemic friendly art, as the trailblazing immersive show Sleep No More reopens. And we will talk about the lost sport of ballet skiing, because the story of its rise and fall raises some familiar questions about the relationship between athleticism and artistry.

Before we get into all of that, though, a reminder that there is a new episode of The Dance Edit Extra, our premium audio interview series, coming out this Saturday, February 19th. This is our 13th Edit Extra installment, and this time we’ve got the just wonderful Francesca Harper, who became the director of Ailey II last fall. She has this stacked resume that includes leading her own company for more than 15 years, but she’s also an Ailey baby. She grew up studying at The Ailey School while her mother, Denise Jefferson, was directing it, so this job is a homecoming as well as a new adventure. I really hope you have a chance to check out Francesca’s episode. Again, it’s out this Saturday the 19th, and you can find it by searching for Dance Edit Extra on Apple Podcasts, or by following the direct link, which we have in the show notes.

Alrighty, now it’s time for our dance headline rundown. Here we go.

Lydia Murray:
Artists in New York can apply for a monthly stipend of $1,000 through the Creatives Rebuild New York program. The support will be granted to 2,400 artists in New York state for 18 months with no strings attached, to help them spend more time on creative projects. The program also offers a $65,000 a year job with a community based organization or a municipality to 300 artists. Applications are open through March 25th.

Margaret Fuhrer:
That has been a long time in the works. Really exciting that now applications are open. We have a link to the application page in the show notes.

Washington, DC’s Kirov Academy, which has been a ballet training hub for more than three decades, will close this May, with leaders of the school citing financial issues as the reason for the closure. The Kirov Academy has this labyrinthine history. It was founded by Reverend Sun Myung Moon, the leader of the Unification Church. It used to welcome guest performers from St. Petersburg’s Mariinsky Ballet, formerly known as the Kirov Ballet, although the school and the company no longer have a relationship. The closure comes less than a year after Sophia Kim, a former bookkeeper at the Kirov, was sent to prison after being charged with embezzling more than $1.5 million from the school. There’s so many twists and turns in this story. Rebecca Ritzel did a great piece for the New York Times that sort of explains all the details, and we have that in the show notes for you.

Lydia Murray:
Truly the end of an era.

Margaret Fuhrer:
Yeah.

Lydia Murray:
The Brooklyn Academy of Music has a new president after the position was left vacant for a year. The new leader will be Gina Duncan, who was previously the producing director of the Sundance Institute. Prior to that, she was BAM’s first vice president of film and strategic programming.

Margaret Fuhrer:
A man has been charged in the killing of renowned Chicago dance coach,Verndell Smith, who was shot not far from his dance studio last May. Surveillance footage helped detectives track and identify alleged gunman Diontay Kimberly, although motives for the shooting remain unclear.

Lydia Murray:
I can’t get over how heartbreaking that situation is. It’s just absolutely tragic.

Margaret Fuhrer:
It’s really devastating, yeah.

Lydia Murray:
Dance Data Project has released its collegiate dance program faculty and administration report for 2022. One finding from the report is that 66% of collegiate dance department deans are men, and only 12% of deans who preside over dance departments have a dance background.

Margaret Fuhrer:
Yeah, sort of, I think, confirming what we all already knew, but still disheartening. I hope you can read the full report, which we’ve linked for you, because there’s a lot in there, a lot of useful information.

There are more moves happening in the ballet world. Ballet West stars and real life couple Beckanne Sisk and Chase O’Connell are joining Houston Ballet as principal dancers. Beckanne has spent 12 years and Chase has spent 10 years with Ballet West, so this is a significant change. Do you remember when we saw the very beginnings of their story on the reality show “Breaking Pointe”? And can you believe “Breaking Pointe” was 10 years ago?

Lydia Murray:
No, it wasn’t!

Margaret Fuhrer:
I was just looking that up today.

Lydia Murray:
Wow.

Margaret Fuhrer:
It’s unbelievable. Yep.

Lydia Murray:
Wow. Well, they’ve certainly had a great career at Ballet West and I know they’ll be fantastic at Houston Ballet, so merde to them.

And some more—well, I would say good news, but it’s not that new, but we will always take an opportunity to celebrate some amazing figure skating. Nathan Chen has won the Olympic gold medal in men’s figure skating. Final Bow for Yellowface reposted a video from Ballet West of Chen during his time as a student at Ballet West Academy. Part of the caption read, “This is now a Nathan Chen fan account.” And I think this entire podcast team feels the same.

Margaret Fuhrer:
Yes, we are a Nathan Chen fan podcast. 100%. You need to watch that clip if you have not already seen it floating around the internet. He’s just so undeniably a star, even as a little nine year old or however old he was. He’s got it. He’s always had it.

Lydia Murray:
Such a standout.

Margaret Fuhrer:
So, we’re ending the headline rundown today with two obituaries. The first is for Henry Danton, who’s a former soldier who in the 1940s performed with the Sadler’s Wells Ballet, now the Royal Ballet, and originated a role in Frederick Ashton’s iconic ballet, Symphonic Variations. Danton was 102.

The second is for Stephanie Selby, who as a child was the subject of the 1976 book A Very Young Dancer, which followed her through a year at the School of American Ballet, and inspired a whole generation of dancers. I loved that book so much as a student. Selby was 56.

So, in our first longer discussion segment today, we want to get into an excellent article that just ran in Dance Magazine about the profoundly broken ballet job market. And it was written by Olivia Hartzell, who, as a former professional dancer and now a PhD student in economics, has a very well informed perspective on the problem. She explains that the ballet company job market is a “matching market,” meaning that you can’t just choose where you go, you also have to be chosen. It’s like most professional athletic markets that way. But in ballet, that matching process is really messy and inefficient for several reasons. So she proposes that we look to the field of market design for economic engineering ideas that might make this process better for both dancers and directors. Market designers have already had an impact on processes like the hiring of new doctors and school choice programs, even the kidney exchange. So we want to talk about what exactly is wrong with the way the ballet job market currently works, how market design could potentially help, and then also how this kind of thinking could benefit other dance world markets, too.

Lydia Murray:
First of all, in terms of what exactly is wrong with the way the ballet job market currently works, something unusual about the dance world relative to most professional athletic markets is that director’s preferences for dancers tend to vary widely, and few are willing or able to compete for workers on the basis of salary. So dancers instead choose the companies that best suit them artistically, and they’re often willing to work for less than they’re worth, which I’m sure we all know.

Hartzell goes on to explain some significant failures that make the current matching system inefficient. For one, hiring is minimally regulated. There are no standardized deadlines across the industry for auditions or for the renewal or cancellation of contracts, despite the fact that most top ballet companies in the US are under AGMA. The resulting problem is that dancers will hit the audition market at different times, which ultimately hinders dancers from finding the right jobs for them, and hurts company’s chances of hiring the right dancers.

Part of the issue is also that dancers who leave for other companies generally don’t announce their departure until new positions have been confirmed, of course, and directors at companies that are full can’t make new job offers without knowing who is actually leaving, which Hartzell refers to as “hold up.”

So, Hartzell argues that centralizing industrywide contract renewal dates and audition timeframes would enable companies to avoid coordination failures and keep dancers from feeling anxious about not knowing when they might receive an offer and when to accept one. What she has designed is a variant of the top trading cycles algorithm, which is used to trade indivisible items. Other variants of this have been used for kidney exchanges and the other examples that you started off with, Margaret. So in this instance, after all of the company departures have been announced and all of the auditions have been held, dancers and directors would submit their preferences to a centralized algorithm that would determine final assignments based on those preferences.

Margaret Fuhrer:
Yeah. And so as she says, if everybody consents to do this, the results of that process would then be guaranteed to be efficient—both sides would get their best shots at their preferred choices. And it would also encourage dancers, in particular, to be honest about their company preferences rather than trying to navigate, like, okay, I’d really like to join this company, but I don’t know if they can guarantee me a job, so should I go to this company that I like less, but has a spot open now? It just sort of eliminates all of that uncertainty. It would make the process much less fraught for dancers. Because, I mean, realistically, a company will always find a dancer for an open spot, but dancers are pretty much never guaranteed anything, so they’re much more likely to take less appealing offers, and this would help counteract that.

Lydia Murray:
Absolutely. Dancers are typically in a more vulnerable position. I think this would help both parties.

Margaret Fuhrer:
Yeah, I think, and Hartzell mentioned this, that one of the biggest hurdles to this model would be getting directors to agree to give up that much control. And she says that logically, they should be willing to do that, since the gains here significantly outweigh the losses on their side, too. Cynically, I don’t know. [laughter] We’ve seen how slow the ballet world generally is to change. But I guess there is a new generation of directors coming in who might be more open to these kinds of ideas.

Lydia Murray:
Hopefully. I don’t want to sound too cynical, but yeah, I think that that’s possible.

Margaret Fuhrer:
Could this be useful elsewhere in the dance world, too? Like, I was thinking about, what about using this kind of system for college dance department or conservatory admissions, for example. And I’m getting out of my depth here, because I’m far from an expert on those admissions processes, but it seems like there are a few other analogous markets in the dance world that could benefit from this kind of thinking.

Lydia Murray:
Right. I mean, it’s sort of similar to how it’s being used with medical residents. So I’m sure within dance departments, there are those sub issues or those other kind of matching markets within the greater one, so I think that would make sense. But again, yeah, I too, of course, am not an expert in this.

Margaret Fuhrer:
There’s lots to consider here. We hope you’ll read the whole story, because it is by an expert who really knows what she’s talking about. That is linked in the show notes.

Next up today, we have a story that ran in the New York Times recently about the reopening of Sleep No More, the show that pioneered a whole new kind of immersive dance theater when it first premiered more than a decade ago. Like pretty much all immersive theater, Sleep No More relies on intimate proximity. that’s key to its appeal, which is why unsurprisingly it closed early in the pandemic. Now it’s back, and it’s somewhat altered. So first of all, what has changed and why, and how will being part of this show feel now for performers and audiences who’ve been through two years of COVID? And then also, not all such shows were as lucky. For example, Then She Fell, another very successful dance-driven immersive production in New York—that closed permanently during COVID. So, what is the state of immersive theater beyond mega hits like Sleep No More at this strange point in the pandemic?

Lydia Murray:
Sleep No More has redesigned some experiences that no longer fit pandemic life, but the show’s team has worked hard to keep the intimacy and the intricacy of the story and the almost game like elements that keep fans so enthralled. I think one thing about it is…the show kind of has some darker themes. The Times article mentions that the audience will chase Lady Macbeth down a dark hallway at one point, for example. The article says that those kind of darker themes probably won’t deter New Yorkers. But I think experiencing something that’s kind of dark in some sense after or during difficult times might be cathartic or offer kind of a sense of control, which could be part of the appeal of immersion right now. And also I think some of this goes back to other conversations we’ve had just about the physical closeness and the artistic impact of theater being healing in a way right now.

Margaret Fuhrer:
Yeah. I know it’s interesting, after this long period where we’ve been conditioned not to go near each other, not to touch each other, to think that being close to other people is unsafe—is that going to make audiences less inclined to go to an immersive production? Or, as you’re suggesting Lydia, are they going to be so hungry for that kind of total immersion and touch and closeness that they’re flocking to immersive productions? I know that I personally have been to a bunch of standard proscenium theater shows since reopening started, but, I’ve been to Sleep No More, and I don’t know if I’d be ready for that experience again right now. I think that would still kind of give me the heebie-jeebies. But I’m sure there are tons of people who are banging down the door saying, “We need to get back. This is what we want now.” It’ll be interesting to see how that plays out.

Lydia Murray:
Right. And Sleep No More has such a dedicated fan base already from before the pandemic. And it was interesting to read about some of the changes that have been made. One is that there are fewer one on ones, which is where actors perform a scene just for one audience member. That’s kind of one element of the show that audience members have found really engaging. Attendees used to kind of almost compete to stand in places where they’d be well positioned to get one and kind of try to sort of collect these, which kind of goes back to that almost game like approach to experiencing a show like this.

Margaret Fuhrer:
Yeah. The idea of “winning” Sleep No More.

Lydia Murray:
Yeah. I thought that was interesting. I also wonder how much that might change or vary across cultures, since the show is international, I believe. Kind of reminded me of that part where that it also said, yeah, American attendees had a tendency to kind of ransack the set.

Margaret Fuhrer:
To steal things? Yeah. [laughter]

Lydia Murray:
Yeah.

Margaret Fuhrer:
I have to say I was very relieved to hear that the pandemic has prompted more changes to protect performers. Like, the story mentioned, back in 2018, there was a Buzzfeed report that featured several cast members saying they’ve been assaulted, they’ve been groped by audience members. And the show had put some protocols in place to stop that prior to the shutdown. But then before this reopening, Sleep No More started working with an intimacy director who helps the performers interact with each other and also helps them figure out how to handle interactions with audience members in a safe way. And I mean, even small things, like the entrance speech now, instead of saying “fortune favors the bold,” tells audience members to keep a respectful distance. That kind of approach, I think—I hope anyway—will be a crucial part of immersive theater going forward, making sure that all of the intimacy that makes the form what it is, is done in a safe and consensual way for all parties involved.

Lydia Murray:
Yeah.

Margaret Fuhrer:
I mean a lot hangs in the balance here, because these kinds of shows have become really good, steady jobs for a lot of dance performers. They’re kind of an important part of the professional landscape in that way. So their survival is important for multiple reasons. But in the show notes we have both the New York Times story about Sleep No More, and then also a Dance Magazine essay from last year by a former Then She Fell performer that wonders what the post-COVID future of immersive theater might be. It’s really interesting.

So last up today, we want to talk about ballet skiing, which is an obsession of mine and also an obsession of the internet’s. For the uninitiated, ballet skiing, which is also called ski ballet a lot, it was a freestyle discipline from the early ’70s until just about 2000 when it basically disappeared from competition. It involved choreographed ski runs set to music that included jumps and turns and pole flips as well as some dance elements. And it actually made it to the Olympics as a demonstration sport in 1988, and then again in 1992.

Interest in ballet skiing has grown recently thanks to social media, where clips from those Olympic showings in particular have fascinated and also kind of bewildered people, like, what are we looking at? There have been several articles written about ballet skiing over the past few years. The most recent is one that I just did for the Times. And I think the story of this sport speaks to people partly because it’s so curious—I mean, like, an Olympic sport that then totally vanished—what? That doesn’t happen. But also because ballet skiing could not figure out how to balance technique and artistry. And that is a problem that dance folks think about a lot.

Lydia Murray:
Yeah. The relationship between sport and art was central to your piece and it was so interesting to see how that unfolded in this sport. I mean, there was tension between the two, as there often is with similar activities, but the stars of that sport played with it in a way that was beautiful and that helped push skiing forward, even if that particular discipline died in the process. In terms of the history that’s in that piece, ballet skiing used to be part of freestyle skiing along with mogul and aerial skiing, which have survived. And by the way, it kind of boggles my mind that freestylers were expected to do all three, for one thing.

Margaret Fuhrer:
To do all three—in a single run, at the beginning, and men and women competing against each other. Yeah, it was wild.

Lydia Murray:
So interesting. Some of the history of kind of how it became an Olympic sport—freestyle skiing had originally been primarily done professionally, correct?

Margaret Fuhrer:
Yes.

Lydia Murray:
And in order to become eligible for the Olympics, the leaders of the movement agreed to make it an amateur sport.

Margaret Fuhrer:
Yeah. It was interesting and unusual in that it began as a professional sport, almost from the first days, there were prizes.

Lydia Murray:
Yeah. But ballet skiing kind of became the least popular of those freestyle disciplines because people were kind of more drawn toward the speed and the risk and the entertainment value of the others, and of snowboarding and maybe some other snow sports. And it was also a fusion of… Because it was a fusion of sport and art, that kind of made it difficult to judge, similar to the way that figure skating is. And also, as skateboarding grew in popularity, there started to be overlap between that community and snowboarding, and then that kind of spilled over into skiing, but more toward the freestyle and that didn’t include ballet skiing.

Margaret Fuhrer:
Yeah. It was evolving in one direction while the rest of the skiing world was going in a different direction. I think it was actually a very conflicted sport. From the people that I talked to, it went through all these complicated years of evolution under judging systems that were, frankly, kind of a mess, because the competitors involved in ballet skiing throughout had so many different interests and strengths. You were really trying to compare trickster athletes to these dancers on skis. And how do you do that under a numerical judging system in a meaningful way?

And this happens all the time in sports that include some element of artistry, and sometimes that evolution is more successful than it is other times. But it’s interesting, because we talk a lot about how dancers are athletes, I think that’s a relatively uncontroversial statement at this point, but there’s so much more gray area when we’re talking about athletes who are also artistic. Not all athletes are artists, not all want to be, but some athletes’ artistry is undeniable. How do you measure that in any kind of objective way?

Lydia Murray:
Right.

Margaret Fuhrer:
One of the things I found most interesting when writing this was discovering the people who thought ballet skiing never should have been a competitive sport, that it should have evolved into a performance art, pure and simple. Michael Russell, who started out as a really talented competitive freestyle skier, he left competition entirely because he was just so fed up with the idea of…the direction that it was goin, it seemed like it was becoming this form where tricks and sort of throwaway dance moves was going to be the norm. And that’s what you see in actually a lot of the Olympic clips, which is part of why people are confused by them, I think, because it had evolved to this place where it was kind of stilted. But, so, instead he founded a snow dance company that wanted to present ballet skiing as a performance art. And he actually had this beautiful feature in the 1980 issue of Dance Magazine. Talking to him, he said he felt the dance world just understood him much better than the skiing world ever did. There were just more values in alignment there.

Lydia Murray:
I can’t imagine what it must be like to succeed in a sport that just kind of disappears. It also just must be so frustrating artistically when you are one of those skiers who really leaned into that kind of creative and artistic element of it, and to see that just kind of get undervalued and then sort of, again, disappear. Because that’s how you express yourself. That’s something that you put your time into. That’s something that you develop and want to put out into the world. And even if you take that same creative spirit and whatever lessons you learned along the way and channel them into something else, I’d imagine there’d still be that part of you that feels maybe a little bit heartbroken or kind of like, what if? Or why did it have to end that way? So it’s interesting that it seems like they’re kind of split into those two camps of people who kind of maybe feel a little bit like that. And then also people who feel like, well, it ended when it should have.

Margaret Fuhrer:
I think often those same emotions are in the same people, too. There’s definitely a lot of heartbreak among these former, or some of them still current, skiers. To a person, everybody that I talked to is still so passionate about this art form. I mean, in a way I’m glad ballet skiing has become an internet curiosity, that that’s some renewed interest in it, but there’s so much more to the story than that, too. And I hope people start to get a sense of that from hearing from these artists of the form.

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

Lydia Murray:
Bye, everyone.