Is it time for quotas? This was one of many questions discussed at a Dance Umbrella debate, part of the Big Dance 2016 events, at the beginning of this month.
The subject of gender inequality in choreography has been stirring up a lot of press in recent months. During a panel discussion in October last year, the Rambert Dance Company’s artistic director Mark Baldwin said,
I want Rambert to be a company which is diverse in its choices of choreographers. Programming work by women and choreographers of ethnic backgrounds plays a role. It is about embracing diversity.
The Rambert company certain plays its part with a large proportion of female dancemakers. Of course, you say, where are the female conductors? The cinema directors? True, but as Michael Cooper in the New York Times pointed out,
The dearth of female choreographers at major ballet companies is perhaps more startling, given the prominence of women in the rest of the ballet and dance fields — and the way pioneering female choreographers helped shape ballet during the 20th century.
Jennings, in The Observer, swiftly wrote off a ‘Dear Akram’ letter:
In saying that we should not have more female choreographers “for the sake of having more female choreographers”, you are choosing to disregard a gender imbalance so egregious, and of such long standing, that it shames the British dance establishment.
In the contemporary sphere, female choreographers are routinely passed over for commissions in favour of less experienced men. The more large-scale and high-profile the commission, the smaller the probability that it will be awarded to a woman.
In classical dance, female choreographers face even greater discouragement; no woman has been commissioned to choreograph a main-stage ballet at the Royal Opera House since the 1990s.
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