Margaret Fuhrer:
Hi, dance friends and welcome to The Dance Edit podcast. I’m Margaret Fuhrer.
Amy Brandt:
And I’m Amy Brandt.
Margaret Fuhrer:
We are editors at Dance Media, here with our biweekly headline rundown episode. So we will first run through a rather long list of dance news stories running the gamut from Oregon Ballet Theatre’s new artistic director to Rihanna’s Super Bowl halftime performance. And then we’ll have a longer discussion segment on what is unfortunately the dance news story of the month and probably the year, choreographer Marco Goecke’s attack on critic Wiebke Hüster and what the various responses to that attack have revealed. It’s truly a surreal situation on multiple fronts.
Amy Brandt:
Yes.
Margaret Fuhrer:
First though, just a little call-out for next week’s interview episode. We’ll have a return guest, a friend of the pod, choreographer and director Francesca Harper. And she’ll talk about the new film and performance work she’s created for filmmaker Ava DuVernay’s Law Enforcement Accountability project. Harper’s piece responds to a Detroit police officer’s murder of seven year old Aiyana Mo’Nay Stanley-Jones. It’s a work of art that’s also a work of activism. And Francesca talked with characteristic thoughtfulness about how she chose to approach a tragedy of this magnitude and about why dance storytelling is especially powerful in this context. So I hope you can tune in for that episode. That’ll be out next Thursday, March 2nd.
Amy Brandt:
Oh, I can’t wait to listen to that one.
Margaret Fuhrer:
Okay. Now it’s time for our headline rundown, beginning with yet another ballet director announcement.
Amy Brandt:
Yes. Oregon Ballet Theatre has announced that choreographer Dani Rowe will become the company’s next artistic director, effective February 27th, so just in a few days here. Rowe has had quite the career. She was a principal dancer with both the Australian Ballet and Houston Ballet. Then took her career in a new direction by joining Nederlands Dans Theater. And then since retiring from the stage, she’s become quite the in-demand choreographer. I recently saw her world premiere MADCAP at San Francisco Ballet and everyone was talking about it. It was a really interesting ballet. Anyway, she steps in after an 18-month search for a new artistic director at OBT, and this will be her first directorship, although she’s served as associate artistic director at SF Dance Works. But yeah, this will be her first full-time artistic directorship position. So, very excited for her.
Margaret Fuhrer:
Yeah. Big congrats to Dani. Amy, you and Pointe did this great interview with her.
Amy Brandt:
We did.
Margaret Fuhrer:
And it sounds like she’s really invested in the idea of new, full-length ballets, which sounds super intriguing.
Amy Brandt:
Yeah. We had a great conversation over lunch in San Francisco. And yeah, she talked about commissioning newer, full-length ballets that are steeped in classical technique. That was one thing she really wanted to point out that she thinks might be missing from newer narrative ballets, that could help their appeal a little more. But she was also just really wanting to get her bearings in Portland, it’s like a total changing of the guard. Not only is Dani coming in as new artistic director, there’s a new executive director and a new school director. So it’s like a total fresh start for OBT.
Margaret Fuhrer:
Yeah. We have that interview linked in the show notes; I hope you can give it a read.
In a totally different corner of the dance universe—or rather the sports universe, really: Earlier this month, Rihanna gave her first live performance in seven years. And in very Rihanna fashion, the comeback show was at the Super Bowl. The star’s halftime show—which doubled as a pregnancy announcement, congratulations to Rihanna—was choreographed by go-to collaborator Parris Goebel, the dance mastermind behind the Savage x Fenty shows. It filled both the field and the sky with dozens of dancers.
One section of the choreography in particular, to “Rude Boy,” has gone just crazy viral on TikTok and other social platforms, as have videos of Goebel rehearsing for the show with members of her Royal Family crew. There was a glorious moment, maybe 10 days ago, where I found myself on Rihanna dancer TikTok—my whole For You Page was videos of these dancers, who were still wearing those white Fenty puffers that they wore on the field, days later, either talking about what it was like at the Super Bowl or recreating the choreography. It was just the happiest corner of the internet for a while.
Amy Brandt:
I was really impressed with that performance. I don’t know, between all the dancers on those different levels in the sky going up and down and just the unison and just the entire big picture look of it.
Margaret Fuhrer:
Super impressive. Yeah.
Amy Brandt:
So looking ahead to this summer, Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival has announced their 2023 lineup and it is quite spectacular. Mark Morris Dance Group will be performing its Bacharach inspired Look of Love. Dutch National Ballet will be making its festival debut, including performances by former Bolshoi star Olga Smirnova. So that should be exciting. And there’s also the US premiere of Irish choreographer Oona Doherty’s Navy Blue. The festival will also celebrate the 50th anniversary of hip hop, with works by Rennie Harris’s Puremovement, American Street Dance Theater, Ladies of Hip Hop and a new festival commission by Rockafella and Quickstep, a duet.
Margaret Fuhrer:
Lots to look forward to as always.
The 2023 class of Doris Duke artists was revealed earlier this month. It includes dance artists Ayodele Casel and Rosy Simas. Congratulations to both of them.
Amy Brandt:
Yay!
Margaret Fuhrer:
And the Doris Duke was actually already the largest cash award for individual performing artists, but this year the prize doubled. Each honoree will receive $550,000. Very real money.
Amy Brandt:
Yeah. You can do a lot with that.
American post-modern dancer, multimedia artist and choreographer, Simone Forti has been awarded The Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement at this year’s Venice Biennale. TAO Dance Theater, which was founded by Tao Ye, Duan Ni and Wang Hao in Beijing in 2008 have been awarded the Silver Lion, an award that recognizes promising young artists in dance. So sort of the two ends of the spectrum there. They will be conferred at this year’s 17th International Festival of Dance in July.
Margaret Fuhrer:
More congrats. Lots of dance folks to congratulate today. Also, Simone Forti gave just the most Simone Forti quote ever to the Times about receiving the Golden Lion. It was something like, “I didn’t know what this award was, but if somebody’s got to get it, I’ll be happy to hold it on behalf of the dance community.” She’s just the most unbothered, I love it so much.
The Library of Congress recently announced that it had acquired a collection documenting choreographer Garth Fagan’s work. The Jamaican-born Fagan, who founded Garth Fagan Dance back in 1970, is also the longest running Black choreographer in Broadway history thanks to his work on The Lion King for which he won a Tony in 1998. The archive includes more than 30 years worth of footage and rehearsal notes and programs and posters and letters and audio recordings. So, a really rich collection.
Amy Brandt:
The ballet stage is about to get turned up to 11. Carlos Acosta has announced that his Birmingham Royal Ballet will perform an original three act ballet to the music of heavy metal band Black Sabbath this September. The conceptual ballet will feature some of the band’s biggest hits, including “Iron Man,” “War Pigs” and “Paranoid,” re-orchestrated for the Royal Symphonic Orchestra. The band is one of Birmingham’s most famous exports, and so this project is part of Acosta’s larger vision to really honor the city’s local culture. And the band is apparently quite excited for this collaboration, which I think is amazing. I don’t know, I think I would totally see this. I’m curious.
Margaret Fuhrer:
Yeah. No, definitely.
Amy Brandt:
And also just remember what Wayne McGregor did with the White Stripes music. So I’m really interested to hear Black Sabbath on an orchestra.
Margaret Fuhrer:
Definitely. I was intrigued to hear that Christopher Austin, who orchestrated the White Stripes songs for Chroma, for Wayne McGregor is also working on this Black Sabbath ballet. So maybe that gives us a sense of what it might sound like. And also, Black Sabbath’s guitarist might make a cameo? The whole thing is just… Yeah, I’m endlessly intrigued.
Amy Brandt:
Oh my god. Wow.
Margaret Fuhrer:
In Broadway news: Jujamcyn Theater, which is one of Broadway’s biggest landlords, is combining operations with the parent company of the Ambassador Theater Group, which is a major player internationally and especially in London’s West End. So Jujamcyn currently owns five Broadway theaters and ATG owns or operates two of them. We don’t know much more yet about this deal, but Jujamcyn has traditionally opted for American plays and musicals rather than the big British exports. So there’s been speculation that maybe that will change. Stay tuned.
Amy Brandt:
Christopher Wheeldon has been tapped to choreograph the upcoming Fred and Ginger feature film, which follows the untold love story of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers. Astaire, just to remind everyone, will be played by Jamie Bell of Billy Elliot fame, while Margaret Qualley will be portraying the luminous Ginger Rogers. The film begins production later this year. And this is not to be confused with the other Fred Astaire biopic starring Tom Holland, who starred in the Billy Elliot stage production, coincidentally enough.
Margaret Fuhrer:
These two dueling Astaire biopics, that’s so wild.
Amy Brandt:
I love it.
Margaret Fuhrer:
And we have not heard yet who will be choreographing the Tom Holland project, so keeping our eyes on that.
In glitch in the Matrix news, or what feels like it: Boop: The Betty Boop Musical will have a pre Broadway engagement beginning this November in Chicago. Actually, I’m just kidding, maybe it’ll be great. It has director and choreographer Jerry Mitchell on board, that bodes well. I think we’re all just a little curious about what story this show will tell, exactly.
Amy Brandt:
Yeah. I have thoughts.
If you’re planning a trip to Paris, you may want to check out Airbnb’s newest offering: a Phantom of the Opera-themed night at the Palais Garnier. Yes, the theater where the Paris Opera Ballet performs. According to People magazine, guests will sleep in the box of honor, which is the main king’s box or something on the mezzanine, which will be transformed into a luxurious bedroom. You’ll get a free tour of the theater, including the lake that’s in the basement of the theater. Which it’s not really a lake, I don’t know if you’ve ever been there, but there’s a trap door that opens and there is a water system that I think helps with flooding and all of that. And there is a lonely little fish that lives down there. I was just in Paris in May, and they lifted up this door and they turned on the light and this little fish came and poked his head and they were telling us that, “Oh yeah, he’s the lone occupant of this underwater system they have.”
Margaret Fuhrer:
I so appreciate that color, Amy. [laughter]
Amy Brandt:
You will also get an exclusive recital of the Paris Opéra Ballet School, a private ballet initiation with a POB dancer—I’m assuming that means a private lesson, maybe—dinner in the famous Foyer de la Danse and a tour of the studios, all for only 40 bucks. The evening in question for two guests maximum is July 16th, and you must make your request on Airbnb’s website by March 1st. How cool!
Margaret Fuhrer:
And we are closing out the headline rundown this week with an obituary for the dancer, choreographer and educator Rena Gluck. She was part of the inaugural dance division class at Julliard, where she studied with Martha Graham, and she went on to help bring modern dance to Israel. She was one of the founders of Batsheva Dance Company. Gluck was one day shy of her 90th birthday.
Amy Brandt:
If you have an opportunity to read the obituary in the New York Times, it’s fascinating—just a really fascinating bit of dance history.
Margaret Fuhrer:
Yeah. Fascinating and important. Yeah.
So that’s the end of our headline rundown this episode. But don’t forget to check out the Dance Media Events Calendar too, because it has lots more information about all kinds of dance world events, including things like auditions, which we don’t cover here on the podcast. So to see the full list and to add your own events to it, head to dancemediacalendar.com.
Okay, now it’s time for our discussion of a story that feels impossible but is somehow true. About two weeks ago, choreographer Marco Goecke smeared dog feces on dance critic Wiebke Hüster’s face. The attack occurred after Hüster wrote a negative review of Goecke’s latest work. And if you are the kind of person who listens to this podcast, you have no doubt heard many of the gory details of this story, so I won’t repeat all them here. In fact, even if you are not the kind of dance obsessive who listens to this podcast, you probably know the basics of it. It is the rare piece of dance news that has generated much mainstream press coverage.
So Goecke was suspended and then dismissed from his position as ballet director for the Staatsoper Hannover. But after issuing a statement that was framed as an apology yet did very little real apologizing, he kept his job as associate choreographer at Netherlands Dance Theater. And the Staatsoper Hannover will continue to perform his work. So that sort of range of responses has raised a lot of eyebrows. Obviously for dance journalists like us, the stakes here feel particularly high, but it is worth unpacking why the conversation about Goecke’s attack, which should be a conversation about violence, has in some circles become mostly a conversation about arts criticism and how criticism is the problem. Big yikes to that.
Amy Brandt:
Yeah, I still can’t believe this is real. This is right up there with the Bolshoi acid attack from a long time ago, and just once again makes the dance industry and particularly the ballet industry look ridiculous.
Margaret Fuhrer:
Why are we writing Darren Aronofsky’s scripts for him? We have to stop doing that.
Amy Brandt:
I know. Netflix special coming soon. And apparently, I mean from what I’ve seen on social media, several other dance critics have said that Goecke had contacted them with angry messages or creepy messages after they themselves had written negative reviews of his work. So clearly he has an issue with negative feedback. But words are one thing, dog feces is another, and there isn’t really a more degrading thing that one could do to another human being, honestly.
Margaret Fuhrer:
Yeah. So I wanted to talk about a quote from Goecke that was in one of the New York Times pieces about the attack: “If I’d been a woman and the critic a man, this would be seen differently.” And also—you’re saying a lot of critics have been speaking out about having similar experiences, most of them that I’ve seen are female critics. That seems to be part of a pattern.
So first of all, this wouldn’t be seen differently if it were a woman attacking a man. No, any artist attacking a critic with dog poop is an outrage, whatever their respective genders are.
Amy Brandt:
Of course.
Margaret Fuhrer:
But I think we also should talk about the fact that this was a man attacking a woman. There’s an excellent essay in Van Magazine unpacking how this whole ordeal is part of a long and very old story about men trying to silence women who challenge them or express opinions they don’t like by humiliating them, specifically. This was a violent assertion of power. And it’s especially upsetting in a field where, though the majority of participants are women, men still hold so much of the power.
And yet, somehow Goecke is still positioning himself—and has still been defended by some people in the field—as the victim here, which you can feel pretty clearly in the statement he issued.
Amy Brandt:
Right. Yeah. I mean, it was two sentences followed by “Nevertheless,” and then multiple paragraphs justifying his actions.
Margaret Fuhrer:
I think there’s a question here about what the role of criticism is, what we expect from criticism. Which I think is at the root of why this conversation has become a little warped. You may not like the way Hüster was doing her job, it may hurt your feelings, you may disagree with her, but she was still simply doing her job. A critic’s work is not to advocate for the artist, it’s to advocate for the art.
Amy Brandt:
Exactly. Yeah. And on the one hand, I understand what it feels like to read a review that’s negative after you’ve put your heart and soul and all this work into something. I get that, it hurts a lot, but silencing critics is not the answer. I mean, I think we have all seen newspapers cut their dance criticism down to nothing. I mean, we are down to nothing at this point. And I think we can all agree that dance criticism is extremely vital to this art form and that we have to respect each other, dancers and critics, to a certain extent and be allowed to do our job. And this incident is just egregious. I mean, there’s no justification for it. And any other employee anywhere else would’ve lost their job on the spot for doing something like this.
Margaret Fuhrer:
Yeah. There’s something strange here happening too, where we grant more license to an artist, and especially a male artist, when things like this occur, something that would be completely outrageous in another workplace. And we’ve seen this kind of pattern again and again happening in dance, particularly in ballet, because it’s an artist—an artistic temperament—they’re kind of allowed a wider birth.
Amy Brandt:
Yeah. I think a lot of people are surprised at Netherlands Dance Theater’s response for keeping him on. I’ve had this thought, of course they know him. We’re reading about this in the paper and seeing this on social media, they’ve actually worked with him for years and have a relationship with him, et cetera, and all of that. But I just feel like I’ve known people to lose their jobs for much less.
Margaret Fuhrer:
I think what’s also so disheartening about this, and this is sort of where we started Amy, I guess, is that this is now how people see ballet. There was a story in The Guardian that surveyed a bunch of arts critics about bad interactions with artists, because this is not the first time something like this has happened. And Lyndsey Winship, the dance critic, what she said was that generally dance people are lovely, which I think we’ve also found to be true the vast majority of the time. In dance especially, there’s this understanding that this is an especially embattled field, that even among the arts dance always comes last, and we have to kind of stand up for each other. And that’s why films like Black Swan that portray ballet in particular as this terrible, cutthroat, backstabbing world are so irritating to real life ballet folks. And that’s why this real-life story is especially dismaying to all of us. It’s feeding a stereotype that really only reflects a tiny percentage of people working in dance. And of course, this is the story that ends up all over the mainstream press.
Amy Brandt:
Yeah. We have to see this assault for what it is. It’s not an incident, it’s not a situation, it’s an assault and the police are investigating it. And so just say you’re sorry, full stop, and pay the consequence. Don’t change the subject and turn it into a different conversation and blame the victim.
Margaret Fuhrer:
I have to go like shake out and take some deep breaths. I guess, unsurprisingly, we’re a little bit heated about all of this. But in the show notes we have links to a few different reports and op-eds about the attack that are definitely worth a read.
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. Keep learning, keep advocating and keep dancing.
Amy Brandt:
Thanks everyone.