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

Courtney Escoyne:
And I’m Courtney Escoyne.

Margaret Fuhrer:
We are editors at Dance Media. In today’s episode, we will unpack the lawsuit alleging abusive behavior by a dance power couple that is sending big shock waves through the community right now. We will talk about the critical work that choreographer JaQuel Knight is doing to help BIPOC creators secure copyrights to their viral and commercial choreography. And we’ll discuss what the dance world can learn from Simone Biles in the US gymnastics team—the short answer being, a heck of a lot.

But before we start today’s episode, we have actually a request for you all. We are planning to do a few mailbag episodes in the coming months, in which we’ll discuss the dance-world topics that listeners want to hear more about. So, are there bigger-picture issues you think we should dig into, or dig further into? Do you have a kind of obscure dance obsession that you want us to shine a spotlight on? Or are there moments in dance history that you want to hear more about? Anything goes, really—so let us know. Send us a message on Instagram @the.dance.edit or Twitter @dance_edit—our DMs are wide open—or you can email me directly at mfuhrer@dancemedia.com.

And we also don’t want you to forget that our premium audio interview series, The Dance Edit Extra, is about to drop its first official episode, featuring the one and only James Whiteside. We are so close to launching! Getting that debut episode will require subscribing to the separate Dance Edit Extra feed. So please do visit thedanceedit.com/podcast to find out all about that.

All right, now it’s time for our weekly dance headline rundown, which is not an especially long list, but every one of these items is big news.

Courtney Escoyne:
For sure. Starting on a low note: last weekend, nine people were injured by gunfire at The Vault, a dance studio in Columbia, SC. The shooting is still under investigation, and to our knowledge, there’s no word about what, if any, further connection there is to the studio itself.

Margaret Fuhrer:
Yeah, we really don’t have a whole lot of information about what actually happened, but we will link to the coverage that is available in the show notes.

Last week, Actors’ Equity Association and The Broadway League reached an agreement mandating COVID vaccines for Broadway performers, backstage crew and theater staff. And then the very next day, the League announced that actually, all 41 Broadway theaters in New York City will require vaccinations for audience members as well. Audience members will also have to wear masks, except in designated locations where eating and drinking will be allowed. All of these mandates extend through October of this year. And honestly? Phew. What a relief.

Courtney Escoyne:
Agreed. Well, and also New York City Ballet announced that they have similar measures in place for their performances—they’re requiring vaccinations. And then I also think under the new regulations that the New York State government just announced, that’s going to be true of basically any performance venue going forward. Vaccination is required, or you’re not getting through the door.

Margaret Fuhrer:
It seems like it’s going to be the new normal.

Courtney Escoyne:
The National Museum of Dance in Saratoga Springs, NY has closed, as well as its affiliated School of the Arts. The facilities are being absorbed into Saratoga Performing Arts Center. An announcement regarding future plans for them is expected to come later in the summer.

Margaret Fuhrer:
The Albany Times Union did a story about this closure that was a little bit wild. An attorney who’s on the SPAC board and was on the museum’s board previously literally said, “The museum doesn’t exist anymore.” But then the museum’s operations manager said, “Oh no, it still exists. It’s not going anywhere. We’re just figuring stuff out.” So there’s definitely some uncertainty here.

Courtney Escoyne:
And there were a number of quotes that were basically like, “I don’t know. Ask someone else.” So puzzling.

Margaret Fuhrer:
We’ll link to that article too, so that you can parse it out yourselves.

Here’s some much happier news. On Monday night, Valarie Allman, who started out as a dancer, won an Olympic gold medal as a discus thrower. And if you watched her Olympic performance, then you know how beautiful her port de bras is. She actually traveled with The PULSE on Tour as a teen before switching to track and field. And in interviews, she said that discus throwing feels like dancing to her. She called it, quote “a second-and-a-half dance that you do hundreds of times,” which I thought was so great. Congratulations, Valarie.

Courtney Escoyne:
Beautiful and poetic and wonderful.

This one’s a bit of a doozy: Bolshoi Ballet director Makhar Vaziev has come under fire after remarks made in a recent interview that was published in English on Gramilano. In addition to dismissive remarks on the topic of sexual harassment in the dance world, he also waved away the continued use of blackface in the company’s production of La Bayadère, and made some deeply problematic comments about race in ballet more broadly speaking. We’ve been hesitant to share this article and give him a bigger platform, but we are bringing it up now to point you instead to Theresa Ruth Howard’s excellent response on the Memoirs of Blacks in Ballet Instagram account, which is @mobballet and I’m sure will be linked in the episode description.

Margaret Fuhrer:
Yes, and absolutely. Actually, her response came in two parts, because I think after her initial response, some people were debating over—the translation from the Russian, over whether he actually used the word “blackface,” but that sort of misses the point. We’ll link to both of Theresa’s responses in the show notes.

Courtney Escoyne:
And it was also heartening to see a number of other dance organizations coming out in solidarity against these remarks. Ballet Black in the UK was one, Sadler’s Wells re-posted what they said. So there’s some traction behind like, “Hey, this is not okay,” which is heartening to see.

Margaret Fuhrer:
Yes. Okay, this is a rollercoaster of a headline rundown…

Courtney Escoyne:
It really is.

Margaret Fuhrer:
…but back to more upbeat, forward-looking news now. Next March, Chicago Shakespeare Theater will present the debut of the Broadway-bound musical adaptation of The Notebook. The new production includes songs by Ingrid Michaelson, a book by playwright Bekah Brunstetter—who by the way is also a writer for “This Is Us,” which feels exactly right—and choreography by Katie Spelman, who was an associate choreographer on Broadway’s Moulin Rouge!. All of that seems to bode well, if this kind of musical is your cup of tea.

Courtney Escoyne:
Well, and I also remember this being announced, that it was in the works, what feels like forever ago. And so now that news is re-emerging about it, it’s like, “Oh right. This thing. Cool.” Curious to see what happens with it.

Margaret Fuhrer:
For sure.

Courtney Escoyne:
And the Martha Graham Dance Company announced its new season. It’ll include new works by Andrea Miller and Hofesh Shechter, as well as a new version of Graham’s Canticle for Innocent Comedians led by Sonya Tayeh and featuring vignettes from Micaela Taylor, Yin Yue, Juliano Nunes, Kristina and Sadé Alleyne and Jenn Freeman, in addition to the remnants of Graham’s original choreography and contributions from original cast member Robert Cohan, who passed away earlier this year. There are also, of course, Graham classics on tap. And the company plans to tour stateside and to France, Germany, Turkey, Greece, and China.

Margaret Fuhrer:
I was especially struck by the two commissioned premieres. Think about the circle of influences happening in these premieres: Both Andrea Miller and Hofesh Shechter danced with Batsheva in Tel Aviv, when it was directed by Ohad Naharin. Batsheva was co-founded by Martha Graham. Ohad, before becoming Batsheva’s director, danced with the Graham company for a bit. Now, these two descendants of that tradition are coming to make work on Graham dancers. That is kind of incredible.

Courtney Escoyne:
Well, and I feel like The Graham Company has just been quietly over the last decade or so, just doing these premiers and pulling in people that at first glance you’re like, “Wait, what?” And then you stop and think about it and you’re like, “Oh, that’s so smart. I can’t wait to see what happens with this.”

Margaret Fuhrer:
Yeah, totally. Six Degrees of Martha Graham. Or is it seven degrees? How many degrees of Kevin Bacon?

Courtney Escoyne:
It’s six. Right? Yeah, it’s six. [laughter]

Margaret Fuhrer:
Six Degrees of Martha Graham. Okay. We’re going to go with it.

So in our first longer segment today, we’re going to talk about the story that was actually the biggest headline of the week. And before we begin, just a heads up: this segment will include mentions of sexual assault and abuse, so please proceed with caution and be gentle with yourself. Skip ahead if you need to.

Last Wednesday, a pair of professional dancers filed a lawsuit that accuses a former teacher—who goes by several names, but who’s called Mitchell Taylor Button in the suit—he’s accused of sexually assaulting and abusing them. The man’s wife, influencer and former Boston Ballet principal Dusty Button, is not a defendant in the lawsuit, but she is described as a non-party co-conspirator who allegedly participated in some of the abuse.

Unsurprisingly, this news was met with shock and outrage and sadness in the dance community. It should really go without saying, but we’ll say it anyway, that we are not here to spread gossip or to imply that we have any kind of insider knowledge about this story. But we did want to get into what the lawsuit actually says, and then also to talk about some of the larger problems in dance culture that we’ve seen lead to this kind of abuse before.

Courtney Escoyne:
So the suit was filed in the United States District Court in Nevada, and it claims that “the Buttons abused their positions of power and prestige in the dance community to garner the loyalty and trust of young dancers,” and that the couple would “exploit those relationships to coerce sexual acts by means of force and fraud.”

There are two plaintiffs. One of them, Sage Humphries, who is now a dancer with Boston Ballet, met the Buttons in 2016 when she was a member of Boston Ballet II, and alleges that the couple sexually and verbally abused her, forced her to live with them, isolated her from her family, limited her electronic communications… The New York Times story goes into a little more detail that I won’t necessarily get into right now. And a second plaintiff, Gina Menichino, alleges that several years prior to that, Mr. Button sexually assaulted her, when she was 13 years old and he was her 25 year old dance instructor in Florida. The WBUR coverage also notes that Mitchell Taylor Button is accused of abusing at least five of his students while he was a dance instructor in Florida, and that he and Dusty emotionally abused and molested two other young dancers, one of whom was 11 years old.

Margaret Fuhrer:
First of all, it’s so heartbreaking that we keep getting stories like this coming out of the dance world. And the lawsuit explicitly connects these new allegations to a larger “culture of harassment and abuse” throughout dance organizations. It’s true: this is a structural problem. We’ve talked about this before on the podcast, how the studio environment creates these stark power imbalances between the dancers and the people at the front of the room—by design. It’s baked into it.

Courtney Escoyne:
Well, and also because of the scarcity mentality that exists, the idea that, “Okay, well, if you’re not willing to do what it takes, there’s 100 girls who are ready to take your place.” Gina Menichino actually said in an interview with the New York Times, regarding Mr. Button, “The whole game was to keep him happy. Don’t get him angry, or I was unworthy and I would lose my dance career.”

Margaret Fuhrer:
Yeah. That quote, oh my gosh.

Courtney Escoyne:
It just speaks to the grooming that, because of the nature of dance training as it has existed, when it comes to predators, it sets up this culture where grooming like that can be waived away as being, “Oh, this is what it takes,” and it’s really unsafe.

Margaret Fuhrer:
Yeah. When your entire career is in the hands of just a few authority figures, that’s so far from a typical teacher-student or boss-employee relationship. And then the inherently physical interactions of dance training and creation and rehearsal, which blur boundaries in complicated ways—add that to the mix, the whole situation is just a tinderbox.

I think…I mean, of course the hope is that raising awareness about the problem, the courage of these dancers who are coming forward, will push dance to address these problems in its culture and to create better systems for preventing and reporting abuse. I wanted to call back to Chanel DaSilva’s great story for Dance Magazine, in which she actually talked about her own experiences with abuse, but also suggested several ways that the dance community could help prevent that type of behavior in the future.

And I have to admit, my cynical side wants to say, we’ve sounded this alarm so many times before and nothing has changed, so why would now be any different? But I mean—we’re going to talk more about Simone Biles and the gymnastics team later—but hey, yeah, let’s follow their example. Because they are proof positive that just because a community has a history of this kind of misconduct doesn’t mean it can’t evolve. It doesn’t have to be this way.

Courtney Escoyne:
And it really has to start with setting up systems that empower the dancers and empower the students and allow them to have safe outlets to be able to speak up when something doesn’t feel right. That is absolutely key, because if the culture is “Shut up and take whatever is thrown at you,” this sort of thing can flourish under the surface. There has to be a culture that allows and empowers dancers to be able to speak up.

Margaret Fuhrer:
Yes.

Courtney Escoyne:
And also the way power is siloed should not be the way power is siloed. It just shouldn’t be.

Margaret Fuhrer:
Yeah. That’s it. Retweet.

All right. We could talk about this for several podcasts worth of material, but…moving on to our next discussion segment. We want to head back toward the light with a more hopeful story. And actually I’m going to start with some context here. A few months ago, we talked about how choreographer JaQuel Knight—who’s probably best known for his work with Beyoncé and Megan Thee stallion, but he’s worked all over the industry—he’s been working to help commercial choreographers copyright their dances, which is a huge deal. And then a few weeks ago, we talked about the Black TikTok strike, in which Black creators have been refusing to create new dances for the app in an effort to secure the recognition and the compensation that they deserve for their work.

Then, this week, those two stories intersected: We learned that Knight has partnered with Logitech to help 10 BIPOC artists, including the creators of several viral TikTok dances, secure copyrights for their choreography. And he recently presented six of those artists with Labanotations of their dances, which is the first step towards securing copyright.

I love this story for many reasons, not least among them the fact that there are now Labanotations of TikTok dances out there in the universe. I could not be happier about that. That is so fantastic.

Courtney Escoyne:
I want that as a piece of artwork.

Margaret Fuhrer:
Yes, absolutely! I would hang that on my wall.

Courtney Escoyne:
I was personally a little bit curious about how this whole company would work and function. Variety did like a nice nutshell little explainer.

So, the company is called Knight Choreography and Music Publishing Inc. And the idea is that it will operate in the same way that a music publisher does, where it brokers licensing deals, protects intellectual property. Except rather than copywriting music, it will oversee the rights to Knight’s dance moves, as well as representing rights for a diverse range of choreographers and creatives across genres and mediums. I believe the quote is, “acting as their strategic partner in copyright licensing and beyond as they change the landscape of the productions for choreographers, creatives and artists in the commercial music industry.” Which, hello, this is stuff we have been talking about, this needs to happen, this needs to exist, for so long. And look, this is an actionable way that this can happen.

Margaret Fuhrer:
Yeah, it’s really happening. So here are the six creators announced so far in this initiative: one, Keara Wilson, who created the “Savage” dance to Megan Thee Stallion’s song—that dance is going to be copyrighted. The second is Young Deji, creator of the Woah dance. Fullout Cortland, their choreography for Doja Cat’s “Say So” for the 2020 Billboard Music Awards performance will be copyrighted. The NaeNae twins’ “Savage Remix” dance, the dance to Megan Thee Stallion’s song, will be copyrighted. Chloé Arnold’s “Salute A Legend” choreography for the Syncopated Ladies is on the list. And then Mya Johnson and Chris Cotter, who made the “Up” dance to Cardi B’s song, will also be getting a copyright. That’s quite a list.

Courtney Escoyne:
This just makes my heart happy.

Margaret Fuhrer:
Yeah. And this process…it’s so insanely complicated. There was a piece, I think it was in The Conversation, a couple of weeks ago—Jill Vasbinder, who’s a dance professor at the University of Maryland, connected the stealing of Black creators’ choreography on TikTok to this much longer history of Black dancers’ work getting co-opted for profit. And to tell that history, she actually broke down the whole story of how dance copyright first came to be, how it works. And then at the end, she straight up asked, like, “Hey, is copywriting the answer to this problem on TikTok specifically?”

Courtney Escoyne:
Which I think is another thing that we have been questioning on this podcast as well, because copyright law, in a lot of ways, in terms of copywriting dance, is a rather flawed system due to the complexity and the way that the documentation is required. And also, again, copyright law I do not think has really caught up with the degree to which social media and apps like TikTok are rapidly changing the landscape in terms of intellectual property, how it is shared and how it is utilized.

Margaret Fuhrer:
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. So actually Vasbinder ended up recommending, rather than copyrighting, something like Open Source licensing or Creative Commons licensing instead, which—those are systems that require attribution, but would leave space for adjusting and copying and remixing in the ways that tend to happen on digital platforms.

So, I don’t say this to downplay JaQuel’s accomplishments here at all. I mean, especially for these essentially ubiquitous super viral dances—and for commercial choreography, which, that’s a totally different game—copyright, I think, can be a really useful tool. But wow, this is complicated.

Courtney Escoyne:
And I think it’s also worth noting that because of the way copyright works, you don’t really copyright a singular move. The idea is it is a piece of choreography to a specific piece of music and specific movements. That’s why Labanotation is such a key part of it, is because it shows those relationships. It’s thorny. It’s really thorny.

Margaret Fuhrer:
It’s very thorny, but I’m super excited to see where JaQuel and his foundation are going to go because…oh, it’s just the coolest. It’s just the coolest.

Courtney Escoyne:
He’s doing the damn thing.

Margaret Fuhrer:
He’s doing damn the thing.

All right. So last but absolutely not least today, we want to talk about Simone Biles—just like pretty much the whole rest of the world is right now. More specifically, we want to talk about a great piece that dance artist Bradford Chin wrote for Dance Magazine about what the dance world can learn from, first of all, Biles’ decision to take herself out of several Olympic events last week, and also from the team’s response to her decision.

There are, of course, all kinds of parallels between the worlds of dance and competitive sports, and especially gymnastics. And this idea that self care is incompatible with heroic self sacrifice for the group is one especially harmful idea that we see in both fields. But at the Olympics, Biles and her teammates proved that actually, a team effort does not have to be–and in fact should never be—detrimental to the health of any individual.

Courtney Escoyne:
Absolutely. And I think some of the backlash initially to Simone’s decision to pull out of those events had to do with the fact that it wasn’t like she had broken an ankle on the vault. She was having issues locating herself in space, which when it comes down to it, is a perception issue, something that you can point to as, “Oh, well, that’s just all in your head, you should be fine,” which is deeply dangerous. And I noticed a lot of people pointing out like, “Yo, if she had broken her ankle, no one would be saying that.”

But overwhelmingly I know I saw people in support of Simone’s decision because it was a much safer decision. And then also, looking at the way that her team stepped up and filled in the gaps and was supporting her and taking care of her and taking care of each other…I would love to read a quote from Bradford Chin’s piece, because I think it really gets at the crux of this: “My entire career has been one gigantic team effort. I owe everything to collaboration, mutual aid and the kindness and generosity of others. But here’s the thing: The most important part of a team effort is supporting a teammate when they’re down. A team effort should not be detrimental to your health (physical, mental or emotional), regardless of whether you are dispensing or receiving aid. And you should never feel shame for needing support.” That’s it.

Margaret Fuhrer:
There it is. I mean, everybody went immediately to Kerri Strug with the Simone Biles thing, which, how many stories have we heard about the dance version of Kerri Strug? The dancer who seriously injures herself onstage and keeps going anyway, and is the hero of the show for doing so? Let’s just stop lionizing that kind of behavior, for starters.

And then also I really liked that Bradford pointed out that the stakes feel so high in dance because of—here it is again—that scarcity mindset. This idea that you should never prioritize your own health if it might jeopardize a precious performance opportunity, because your dance years are limited and dancer resources are limited and you have to hold on to whatever’s offered to you with every ounce of strength that you have—when you’re conditioned to think that way, every performance feels like the Olympics!

Courtney Escoyne:
Yeah. And then the elephant in the room, which is, well, if I say I can’t do this, does that communicate the message that I’m not tough enough to handle it, that I’m not capable of handling it? If I step away from this opportunity, will I not get another opportunity handed to me by the people who are making these decisions, Because they’re going to perceive my taking care of myself as being too weak, too fragile, incapable of doing the work?

Margaret Fuhrer:
Yeah. And the piece points out that if—rather than put the burden of self care on the individual, if we can shift that to the collective, if we can make it a collective responsibility, first of all, that can actually make us better artists. That’s exactly the kind of creative thinking that dancers are really good at, figuring out that kind of scenario. And then more importantly, if we can successfully build that kind of culture of trust, that will help us with a myriad of problems—including dance’s issues with abuse, which we discussed earlier; including its problems with inclusivity and equity. Collective trust is just a great foundation on which to build a healthy dance culture.

Courtney Escoyne:
Absolutely. And I think those relationships that can exist in a dance studio whenever you have that trust and that ability to be vulnerable with each other and the ability to say, “Hey, I need some extra help right now,” and trust that the other people aren’t going to take advantage of that, but show up for you—that can be some of the most powerful relationships in an artist’s life. And that can also just create…I mean, imagine what kind work can be created in that environment, where you’re not, in the back of your head, having to calculate constantly and having to protect yourself and act from a place of fear. That would be huge. That would be game changing.

Margaret Fuhrer:
Yeah. It really would be a different world if there were more spaces like that. Here’s hoping.

Okay, that is our episode 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.