Male-centric ballet must end

The dance world is atwitter with the rumor that the replacement for Helgi Tomasson as artistic director and principal choreographer of San Francisco Ballet may be decided within days or perhaps already has been. Tomasson, who announced he was stepping down in January and has led the company since 1985, looks much like the leadership across the world of ballet: white and male. That needs to change.

Female ballet students outnumber males 20 to 1. The audience for ballet is 70% female. And yet the creative content on stage is overwhelmingly driven by men.

According to the Dance Data Project, a nonprofit working for gender parity in dance, there is only one female artistic director among the leaders of the 10 largest U.S. ballet companies. Seven of the top 10 U.S. ballet companies employ resident choreographers; none are women. And 10 of the 12 fulllength world premieres in the 2019-2020 season was choreographed by men. Even among the 27 ballet companies founded by female artistic directors, 19 are now led by men.

The result is sometimes referred to as “the Ballet Thindustrial Complex” — an art steeped in sexual stereotypes and ideas of beauty that have dancers adopting life-threatening eating disorders to stay thin enough to dance. Ballets continue to depict sexual violence and female degradation. A male dancer formerly of the San Francisco Ballet, Randolph Ward, was driven to choreograph a dance addressing its “toxic masculinity.” “In classical

ballet,” he says, “the men are strong and the women need saving.”

And even when ballet companies try, they sometimes miss the mark: One major ballet company premiered a work purporting to address the #MeToo and #TimesUp movements and “what it means to be a woman.” It was created by a man.

Will things change at the San Francisco Ballet? That is unclear. There has been no public announcement of what criteria are being used to judge candidates or who exactly is making this decision. But with Tomasson stepping down, as well as leadership reshuffling happening at several other ballet companies, including at another top dance company, the American Ballet Theater, ballet is at an unprecedented moment.

As famed 20th century ballet choreographer George Balanchine famously said, “Ballet is woman.” The decision of who will lead the San Francisco Ballet will help set the ballet world on a new course — one that should be in line with both its dancers and its audience.