Moving Dialogs: Women in the Director's Chair Featuring Virginia Johnson

 

By Sharon Hoyer

 

On the fourth floor of 900 North Michigan Avenue, set slightly back from the high-end shops associated with the address, is a spacious, one-room gallery called Artspace 8. This was the venue for the second in an ongoing series of panel discussions organized by dance advocacy non-profit Audience Architects on the subject of women in dance leadership positions. About 80 attendees of the event—a good number of whom were students and young dancers—milled about the gallery for a few minutes nibbling hors d’oeuvres before settling into several rows of folding chairs to hear four accomplished women talk about their careers as leaders in dance: Virginia Johnson, artistic director of Dance Theatre of Harlem and founder of POINTE Magazine; Dame Libby Komaiko, founder and artistic director of Ensemble Español Spanish Dance Theater; Irma Suarez Ruiz, also a choreographer for Ensemble Español, and Stephanie Martinez, independent choreographer and winner of last year’s “Choreographers of Color” award from the Joffrey Ballet. William Whitener, artistic director of the Kansas City Ballet, served as moderator for the discussion and opened by stating his surprise that he, being a man, was picked for the topic. He then reflected that perhaps his history of working under the direction of Twyla Tharp could provide another perspective on women’s leadership in the dance world.

 

Whitener’s first question to the panel was about aspiration: did you know when you were dancing that you wished to someday direct? Every panelist’s response was a resounding no. Johnson replied that she once thought you had to have holes in your head to want the job; the multi-directional pressures on artistic directors—to train dancers, to meet expectations of boards, to work with unions, to budget, to manage non-profit entities—made the position wholly unappealing, but when Arthur Mitchell, founder of Dance Theatre of Harlem, asked her to take over she couldn’t refuse. Komaiko warned against the making of plans and described an illustrious career in Spanish dance that began with an audition for José Greco when she was still in high school and carried through to founding the now 40-year-old Ensemble Español, receiving the highest honor bestowed on a foreign national from the King of Spain in 1983, and helming the Dance Department at NEIU. Her story was one of an artist swept along by good fortune, passion and hard work, but not of grand plans to lead her own distinguished company. Ruiz and Martinez concurred; they expressed gratitude for their positions, for having mentors who called out their talent, for being welcomed by the community, but none talked about ambition or dreams of leadership.

 

And this sounds pretty familiar when it comes to successful women in just about every arena. Multiple studies have shown that from academia to business to upper-echelon arts, by and large, the few women at the top of their fields tend to attribute their achievements to external factors. An irony when external factors (like, say, perceptions of their competence or their ability to both work and raise children) are often stacked against them. And likewise women frequently need external nudges into leadership roles. Johnson talked of how she has seen female artists self-select out of choreographic opportunities to focus on their dancing, with the rationale that ballet dancers have such short-lived performance careers that developing their dancing took top priority. “But I think the more powerful part is this tradition,” Johnson said, “the expectation that the woman is the object to be worked on, to be beautiful, to be the center of attention, that the man who is dancing is supporting that, and behind the scenes you have a puppeteer, and that puppeteer is a man.” Johnson described her efforts to give talented female choreographers a welcoming space to work with the Women Who Move Us project; Dance Theatre of Harlem produces commissions from female choreographers, including original works in the classical ballet vein. The results included a piece that tested the limits of pointe work and the restrictions of a shoe that binds women’s toes in a box and historically disconnects them from the ground, the dancer’s source of power.

 

Martinez was by far the quietest member of the panel; she spent most of the hour listening attentively to reflections by the more senior voices. As an independent choreographer, Martinez’s challenges differ from those of an artistic director—she is hired to create work for a company and ultimately moves on to the next gig. Her job requires more hustle and has less certainty from one day to the next, but also has less administrative, directorial and strategic demands. That Martinez—the youngest artist on the panel—has been greeted by open doors and has access to create work for companies like the Joffrey Ballet is promising, but an audience member cut to the heart of the matter during the Q and A. She observed that there is no shortage of female artistic directors and choreographers in Chicago and across the U.S.—dozens of companies in our city are directed by women. It’s only in the well funded, high profile companies that female leadership is hard to come by. Another attendee observed that this is true of the arts in general: that large-scale venues—the Harris, the Lyric Opera, the Auditorium Theatre—theaters that draw mainstream audiences, are overwhelmingly run by men. Remarkable, considering that keeping a small, bootstrapped company afloat certainly requires no less creativity and business acumen than running a large organization with generous donor circles and high volume ticket sales.

 

Margi Cole, founder and artistic director of the twenty year old The Dance COLEctive, was in the audience and suggested that one way to start breaking down inequity of the sexes in arts leadership is for female artists to think of themselves also as entrepreneurs. Johnson agreed; she closed the evening by stating that the only way to figure out what makes a company succeed is by breaking down barriers between traditional roles of men and women, of artists and businesspeople. And to know that women don’t need to ask permission to do so; but that they do need both a strong support system and a readiness to redefine themselves and their capabilities.

 

It was inspiring to hear multiple generations of women in dance committed to breaking barriers, redefining traditional categories on and off the stage and opening up the possibilities only for not leadership, but collaboration. Happily, the discussion continues at the next Moving Dialogs—and in studios and rehearsal spaces around the city.

Sharon Hoyer, Dance Editor for Newcity Magazine