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 here with another headline rundown episode. So, as usual, we’ll get started with a collection of news items spanning the past two weeks, which have been rather busy on the dance news front. And then, we’ll have a longer discussion segment about how the pandemic has profoundly altered the dance audition process, probably for good, and in ways both positive and negative. Because ’tis the season for audition talk.

But first, I have to give a shout-out to our next interview episode, which is coming out on Thursday, February 16th. Our guest is the just unbelievably prolific choreographer and educator Sidra Bell. She is absolutely everywhere right now. And we had a great conversation about her new work for Nevada Ballet Theatre, and how she thinks of teaching as a form of circular mentorship, and how thoughtful artistic practice can offer a model for how we want the wider world to be.

Sidra is a word person, a language person, so it was especially exciting to hear her put beautiful language around these big, foundational, artistic concepts. So, be sure not to miss that episode. That, again, will be out next Thursday.

Okay, and now it’s time for our headline rundown, beginning with some difficult news out of Iran.

Lydia Murray:

An Iranian couple has been jailed after they were filmed dancing in front of Tehran’s Azadi Tower, or Freedom Tower, which is one of Tehran’s main landmarks. The couple each received sentences of more than 10 years.

Margaret Fuhrer:

We’ve linked to some coverage of that story that contextualizes just how severely Iranian authorities have been clamping down on anything perceived as dissent. Pointe magazine also recently profiled Iranian American dancer and activist Tara Ghassemieh, who is using dance to protest the current Iranian regime, and we’ve linked to that too.

Lydia Murray:

I was fortunate enough to be able to edit that piece, and it was just so moving to read about what she’s doing, and it’s definitely an important piece.

Margaret Fuhrer:

She’s pretty extraordinary.

Hubbard Street Dance Chicago has named Aszure Barton its next resident artist. The acclaimed choreographer will occupy that position for the next three years. And she’s only the third choreographer ever to have a multi-year residency with the company, the other two being Alejandro Cerrudo, who was there from 2008 to 2018, and then Twyla Tharp back in 1990. So, congrats to Aszure—Hubbard Street already has some of her work in its repertory, and it’ll be really interesting to see those dancers get to dig into her style.

Lydia Murray:

The 2023 Grammy Awards happened last weekend, and they were, as usual, full of memorable dance moments. The show started with Bad Bunny, who kicked things off with a large, high-energy group of dancers performing along to his song, “Después de la Playa.” Harry Styles’ performance was…not “the same as it was” in rehearsal. [laughter] I couldn’t help it. Some of his dancers later reported that the disc-like stage they’d performed on actually rotated in the wrong direction, which forced them to reverse their choreography and improvise. Hats off to dancers making it work.

But ending on a happier note, Beyoncé’s Renaissance won the award for Best Dance/Electronic music album, making her the most decorated artist in Grammys history with a total of 32 victories.

Margaret Fuhrer:

Yes, Beyoncé! Sorry, I can’t stop thinking about that Harry Styles turntable, I feel I have had that exact incredibly specific nightmare…

Lydia Murray:

I was going to say…

Margaret Fuhrer:

…of trying to dance and literally going backwards, oh my goodness.

Lydia Murray:

…rhat’s one of those dancer nightmares, and you wake up, and you’re so thankful that it didn’t happen. And I really admire them for pulling that off the way they did.

Margaret Fuhrer:

Dancers are amazing. Okay, more winners to celebrate today. The prestigious Prix de Lausanne ballet competition concluded this past weekend. 11 competitors out of the original lineup of 87 were named prize winners, and they include Julie Joyner and Aleisha Walker from the United States. So, in the show notes, we’ve got a Pointe story that includes the full list. Congratulations to all these incredibly talented young artists.

Lydia Murray:

Congrats indeed. And the six-time Oscar-winning film La La Land is becoming a Broadway musical. The play will be directed by Bartlett Sher, based on a book written by Ayad Akhtar and Matthew Decker. Justin Hurwitz, who composed the film score, will also take on the music for the show, with lyrics by Benj Pasek and Justin Paul.

Margaret Fuhrer:

They have not announced a choreographer yet, and I just want to say, isn’t it about time that Mandy Moore, who worked on the film, had a Broadway credit to her name? I think so.

Lydia Murray:

Fingers crossed.

Margaret Fuhrer:

More musical theater news: Disney on Broadway is planning a stage musical adaptation of the 2017 Pixar film Coco, with songs from the composer/lyricist team Robert Lopez and Kristen Anderson-Lopez, best known for Frozen. That’s interesting because Coco is not actually a musical film, people don’t break into song in the movie, but it was originally supposed to be. Back when the movie was first released, Lopez and Anderson-Lopez said they had in fact written a whole musical treatment for the film. So, maybe now we’ll get to hear some of that. No news yet on the timeframe or the choreographer for this new project, so, stay tuned.

Lydia Murray:

Keeping it going with musical theater news: A Wonderful World, a new musical about the life and loves of Louis Armstrong, is set to play runs that will be billed as pre-Broadway in New Orleans and Chicago this fall. The show was created by Christopher Renshaw and Andrew Delaplaine. The leading role of Louis Armstrong will be played by James Monroe Iglehart.

Margaret Fuhrer:

And I think Rickey Tripp is doing choreography, is that right? I think he’s been Camille A. Brown’s associate choreographer on a few different projects, so I’m very eager to hear more about that one.

Spoleto Festival USA has announced its 2023 season, running May 26th to June 11th in Charleston, South Carolina. The dance lineup features Dada Masilo’s The Sacrifice, Ayodele Casel’s Chasing Magic, and Scottish Ballet in Helen Pickett’s The Crucible. It’s worth noting that every piece on that lineup is choreographed by a woman. Bravo, Spoleto.

Lydia Murray:

And Martha Graham Dance Company will return to the Joyce Theater April 18th through 30th. On the docket this season are world premieres by Baye & Asa and Annie Rigney, Hofesh Shechter’s Cave, and Canticle for Innocent Comedians, which is a multi choreographer work directed by Sonya Tayeh featuring an original score by Jason Moran. The company will also perform the masterworks Cave of the Heart and Embattled Garden, Every Soul Is a Circus, and Dark Meadow Suite.

Margaret Fuhrer:

Birmingham Royal Ballet has announced the launch of its new second company, BRB2. The company will begin its inaugural UK tour in April, and for the first year, six of the company will be current Birmingham Royal Ballet Dancers and six more will form the founding group of BRB2. It’s an interesting startup model.

Lydia Murray:

Yes. And after 33 years, the Royal Opera House has ended its sponsorship relationship with the oil and gas company BP. The Opera House follows several other arts organizations that have terminated their relationships with oil and gas companies, including Scottish Ballet, which ended its sponsorship with BP after the dance company faced pressure from climate activists in November 2021.

Margaret Fuhrer:

Here is some ballet baby news: Ballerina Maria Kochetkova is pregnant. The international guest star made the announcement on Instagram with one of the chicest bump photos I’ve ever seen, which feels absolutely correct. She captioned the photo, “It’s been so special dancing with you for the past six months.” So, big congratulations to Maria.

Lydia Murray:

Congratulations. And the ballet world recently said goodbye to John White Jr., a former soloist with the Ballet Nacional de Cuba and co-founder and director of the Pennsylvania Academy of Ballet. White was also a novelist, and his book titled, Operation Venceremos: Undercover in Cuba was published last year. He passed away on December 28th, 2022.

Margaret Fuhrer:

So, that’s the end of our headline rundown this episode. But please don’t forget to check out the Dance Media Events Calendar, because it has lots more information about all kinds of dance world events, including auditions—which, as we’ve said already, it’s audition season, this is the time. So to see the full list and to add your own events to it, head to dancemediacalendar.com.

All right, so for our discussion segment today, we’d like to talk not about specific auditions, but about how the dance audition landscape looks more broadly. Dance Magazine recently ran an article titled, “Has the Pandemic Changed Auditions Forever?” And the short answer to that question as laid out in the story appears to be, yes, yes it has. Before the pandemic, most dance auditions were held in person; videos or online options were seen as less than ideal. And then, during COVID shutdowns, that whole process was flipped. In-person anything was too dangerous, so video submissions became the norm. Now, in-person calls are back, but they don’t look quite the way they used to. And auditions via video or Zoom have not gone away, and in fact have become the preferred audition method for some dancers.

So, there are pros and cons to all of these formats. They involve questions of access and of pandemic safety too, since, no, the pandemic is not over yet. Dance Magazine also ran a related story about how dancers are increasingly relying on online job boards and social media to find work. That’s a trend that predates the pandemic, but that the pandemic has certainly accelerated. So, let’s get into all of it.

Lydia Murray:

It is an interesting development. There are pros and cons to being able to audition on video more commonly. Some of the benefits are increased access. Also, I think it’s a little bit easier now to find opportunities, kind of going back to that article about job boards and how now dancers can use so many different forms of social media, DMs, different job boards, also things like Backstage and also other resources that can help you to find day jobs and that kind of thing too. So, that’s an interesting change—or maybe not really a change since that was already happening pre-pandemic, but things have kind of shifted even more in that direction now.

It was interesting to hear from the dancer Joey Kipp, who had mainly been a concert dancer and he had achieved his goal of signing with a manager and kind of starting to pursue more commercial work right before the pandemic. And he had gotten into the habit of filming himself dancing during the pandemic. So that helped him to be ready for that self-taping process, and I think a lot of dancers are probably in a similar position, especially if they got into that practice of self-taping and posting their content online during the pandemic. And now, that’s so much more a part of the standard process.

But he also mentioned that there are certain obstacles to this new world, I guess. One thing you have to find and rent an affordable space, if you don’t really have access to one already. It can be harder to get a true sense of a project without auditioning in person. And he also kind of mentioned how in-person auditions are becoming more common again, but there’s sort of a hybrid model that’s taking place where a lot of directors are asking dancers to submit their materials ahead of time, and that way they can sort of narrow down that applicant pool in-person. And he mentioned, actually, preferring that hybrid model, which is interesting.

Margaret Fuhrer:

Yeah. There was one sentence about in-person auditions in the Dance Magazine article that sort of stopped me in my tracks: “It’s one thing to risk getting sick at work; it’s quite another to risk getting sick just for the possibility of work.” Which I think gets at some of the conflicted feelings that dancers might be having about returning to open calls. This isn’t your typical job interview, this is a close-quarters physical contact- and energy-oriented situation that is both especially high risk and that also, if you’re not there in person with somebody, it does lose something. So, the stakes feel especially high in this specific job search process.

Lydia Murray:

Right. There is a lot more at stake, or a sense of a lot more being at stake. And yeah, dancers often don’t have healthcare, or healthcare is challenging, I’ll put it that way.

And also, combination auditions for multiple companies are interesting, where you basically go to one audition and you can audition for multiple companies in one go. Financially, it helps to solve the problem of needing to spend lots of money to be seen in person, which really makes a difference. Seeing someone dance in person can be markedly different from watching them on video. Although the piece also mentioned that even though the cost is lower than funding your own audition tour, which can cost thousands of dollars, there’s still a participation fee which can be cost-prohibitive to lower income dancers. And they also mentioned that investing in these sorts of models would help with diversity.

And diversity aside, or at least ethnic diversity aside, dance is tough to make a living at for most dancers, and things like combination auditions can be an excellent step in the right direction, I think. But once those lower-income dancers get professional opportunities, how do you make dance a more financially sustainable career? What will be the effect of, for example, future technological advancements? Will further developments to things like AI eventually drive down wages for certain dancer side hustles like administrative work? So, I think it’s possible for some creative solutions to help even further support answers.

Margaret Fuhrer:

Yeah, auditions are just one part of a much larger picture for sure. To come back to combination auditions for a second, I had not thought about the COVID angle there. Yeah, typically people argue for them by saying they’re a great way to help dancers save some money, they’re just less expensive than putting on an audition tour. But yeah, they do, of course, also minimize the dancer’s chances of getting COVID, just by reducing travel and therefore reducing potential exposure. I hadn’t even thought about that.

Lydia Murray:

COVID risk is so frightening to think about. It’s like we’re in this—well, I don’t know, I don’t want to speak for everyone, especially since I know so many companies have different COVID protocols and that sort of thing, but just kind of where we are broadly as a society here in the States, we’re kind of in this place where we’re trying not to think too much about COVID, because a lot of us feel somewhat powerless, I think. And I think that also extends to dance culture. It’s like, there is still a risk, and sort of weighing that as an interesting ongoing proposition, I guess.

Margaret Fuhrer:

Yeah, it’s endlessly complicated. I guess I’m most interested in the compromises that are either already happening or have been proposed in terms of auditions between in-person and online. Because the seemingly natural thing to do would be to offer both, whenever possible, which would be the most inclusive, which would also give choreographers and casting teams the widest pool of artists to pull from. But of course, offering both options cost more money, which I’m very sure is part of the calculus here.

Lydia Murray:

Yeah, just also seeing it sort of made so plain that it makes a difference to audition in-person and that it can give you a leg up, just made me think about the options available to disabled dancers who can’t be seen in person. Making sure that auditions can remain accessible…

Margaret Fuhrer:

…should always be a consideration and has not always been a consideration.

Lydia Murray:

Agreed.

Margaret Fuhrer:

The in-person versus virtual audition question is clearly very far from being settled. We have linked to those two Dance Magazine articles we mentioned before in the show notes, because they do a great job laying out all the complexities of dancers’ different views on these issues.

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

Lydia Murray:

See you next time, everyone.