We have seen the #MeToo movement become popular especially from 2017 and have encouraged people to share their stories of sexual harassment and abuse. Soon enough, the ballet world was certain to have its #MeToo reckoning as well.
The core of the underlying issues seems to be the power dynamics between the mostly powerless dancers and the directors. Because the industry is so competitive and there aren’t enough jobs and money to support these artists, dancers are often subject to mistreatment. Thus, directors can take advantage of these dancers with miscommunication, overworking them, and even resulting in assault. Yet, dancers are willing to put up with this because of their profuse passion and love for dance. In addition, extreme competition can foster a culture where abuse is tolerated for fear of losing the job. Dancers usually have a short career span and are mostly young, leaving them to tolerate these poor treatments.
From the time students are young, they are met with harsh criticisms and even hitting from their instructors commenting about their body, inadequacy, and so on. The training creates an environment where the students are taught to accept any rules without questioning them, essentially not having a voice. Thus, being exposed to this mistreatment from a young age, dancers have to believe that this is something that is inevitable as a dancer and this has been normalized in the dance community. It has been brushed over as something that is “normal” because “it is just the way ballet is.”
Very recently, we have seen this when Ms. Humphries and Ms. Menichino bravely spoke up and shared their stories about sexual abuse from former dance instructors. The suit asserts that in 2016, Ms. Humphries met the Buttons when she was in the company’s apprenticeship program, and the Buttons sexually and verbally abused her, forced her to live with them, and isolated her from her family. In addition, according to the lawsuit, Ms. Menichino said that she met Mr. Button when she was a student at a Centerstage Dance Academy when Mr. Button sexually assaulted her.
The New York Times wrote that Sigrid McCawley, a lawyer representing the two plaintiffs, said that “there is a trend of predation in the dance world because of ingrained power dynamics and the desire on the part of dancers to gain approval from authority figures.” McCawley says, “Grooming in that environment is particularly easy for a perpetrator because he has full access to very young victims for long periods of time.” This comes back to the core of these abuses and issues in ballet–– it is this unchecked influence that is specific to this industry that is barely addressed.
Another instance of this was in 2018, when Ms. Waterbury, a former student of the School of American Ballet which is affiliated with New York City Ballet), filed a lawsuit against three male principal dancers, who were either fired or resigned. They had exchanged private photos of Ms. Waterbury and other company female dancers via text with degrading comments.
Even though we have those like Ms. Humphries, Ms. Menichino, Ms. Waterbury speaking up about their experiences and using their voice to encouraged victims out there to speak up because they are not alone, it is evident that these cases and issues go unnoticed or ignored way too often.
So is the ballet and dance world ready to address sexual harassment and abuse?
It is clear that the ballet culture must enter the modern world. Ballet is changing, but not enough. Gia Kourlas, a dance critic of The New York Times, “A boys-will-be-boys defense has no place anywhere, but it’s particularly disturbing in ballet, where the vulnerability of a dancer’s body is heightened every day. While the culture surrounding ballet is frequently misunderstood — it’s not the back-stabbing horror depicted in a film like “Black Swan” — there are elements that can’t be escaped. Dancers, self-critical by nature, face a mirror that lets them know that they will never be perfect no matter how hard they try.”
Siobhan Burke, also a dance critic of The New York Times, when talking about Ms. Waterbury’s case said “The current scandal, while alarming, fits into ballet’s long history of misogyny. It has precursors, like the sense of ownership over women’s bodies modeled by Balanchine and the patterns of disproportionate male leadership in a predominantly female field — including, in Mr. Martins’s case, by a man who was accused of domestic abuse. (In 1992, he was charged with third-degree assault against Darci Kistler, his wife, and a City Ballet principal at the time; she ultimately dropped the charges.) This is a moment to reflect on that past and affirm that there’s no place in ballet, not anymore, for men treating women as objects to be traded or degraded in any way.”
So is there a way to fix these issues in ballet?
Boglárka Simon-Hatala, a physiotherapist and health sciences teacher who works with dancers, points out that we need more research around how sexual harassment plays out in the dance world to thoroughly answer the question of how dance-specific policies would look like.
One strategy is to implement clear policies that go against inappropriate interactions and the encouragement of the reporting of these interactions. Especially those in leadership positions should go through harassment training and understand the policies. In addition, decentralizing power could be another strategy. If the power of a single director remains distributed among many leaders, it would be easy to hold each other accountable. Indeed, ballet companies would need more leaders dedicated to equity and more women in positions of power: “Researchers have found that male-dominated organizations are more prone to sexual harassment.” These are just a few strategies for fighting against sexual abuses and mistreatment in dance, but it is the voices of those like Ms. Humphries, Ms. Menichino, Ms. Waterbury that give other young dancers to speak up as well to take action on these issues.
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