In the midst of accusations about sexual harassment on multiple celebrities, the
#metoo movement inevitably arrived to ballet companies.
It’s been long discussed that ballet masters and artistic directors are temperamental with dancers. But the line between upsetting artists and sexual and violent harassment has been blurred in many ways by dancers and administrators alike. Partially because ballet is a very physical art form where people engage a lot of personal feelings. But still, there’s a long way from famous British choreographer Kenneth MacMillan asking Darcy Bussell if she’d ever been in love while preparing for Romeo & Juliet, to the incident that Gelsey Kirkland describes in her autobiography when New York City Ballet director, Peter Martin dragged dancer Heather Watts down a flight of stairs.
Peter Martins had already been arrested and investigated for beating his wife, (now former) dancer Darci Kistler. Although Kistler later dropped the charges, their relationship was already an unbalanced power dynamic because he was her boss, and they first dated when Darci was just 16 (Martins would’ve been 34 then). The arrest took place in New York in 1992 during the summer season of NYCB in Sarasota.
Predictably, Peter Martins was the subject of multiple sympathizing think pieces after the event, including this one by the LA Times to help him and the company put the incident behind them.
Earlier this month, The New York Times
published a piece detailing the events that led the board of City Ballet to start an investigation after an anonymous letter was presented to them with accusations of sexual harassment from both the NYCB company and the School of American Ballet (which Martins also directs, and where he regularly teaches young students). While the investigation takes place, Martins requested and was granted a leave of absence. On the same statement, the NYCB board says that the investigation has yet to substantiate the claims.
Multiple controversial takes have been issued since, including one by Youtuber and former NYCB Soloist, Kathryn Morgan. On her Youtube channel, she states that during her NYCB experience Peter Martins was nothing but kind and good to her and that she only knew that of various relationships he had with multiple dancers that were "all consensual". On the comment section to her own video, viewers commented that it's hard to determine where consent is when the relationship is with a superior who can make or break a dancer's already short career. Kathryn agreed with the comments but also added that at least one relationship she knew of was with a principal dancer.
The New York Times followed that piece with another, this time including names of 5 dancers who were accusing Peter Martins. And NYT dance critic Alastair Macaulay tweeted about the revelations, initially to share the piece and discuss the complexity of the accusations and how NYCB could deal with the issues. But later on to detail how much the board may or may not have been complicit in perpetuating the harassment that dancers were now denouncing.
As of today, neither NYCB nor the SAB have made any further statements nor taken any steps towards removing Peter Martins permanently. The board did announce that team of 4 people would run the company while Martins
is on his leave of absence.
Not a month after the NYCB scandal, ABT issued a short statement announcing that principal Marcelo Gomes had resigned after 20 years with the company.
The statement says that the company was made aware of one allegation against Marcelo, that took place 8 years ago. The company statement reads that the allegation "does not involve any current or former members of the ABT community" and that it "did not occur in relation to his employment duties with the Company". However, it also says that the alleged behavior is not tolerated by the company.
Popular ballet blog, A Ballet Education,
posted the statement in its entirety(and appears to be the only outlet to do so). Not that it makes much of a difference since the statement doesn't detail anything further.
Following the release, support came for Marcelo from multiple people, fans and fellow dancers alike.Former ABT Principal and current dancer of the Marinsky theater, Diana Vishneva posted in support of Marcelo. As did his long time partner, Nick Palmquist.
Other dancers were more subtle in their support for Marcelo, like ABT Principal Gillian Murphy.
Marcelo Gomes has an ongoing engagement with Washington Ballet for a new ballet premiere in the 2017/2018 season and an independent documentary that is releasing in the early weeks of 2018. Both of these seem to be continuing as normal.
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