“At This Dance, Women Take The Lead”: Ashley Bouder Pushes for Gender Equality in the Ballet World
Powerhouse ballet dancer Ashley Bouder is no stranger to making headlines and spurring conversation, including last year when she was documented rehearsing dance moves mere days before giving birth to her first child. This year and right in the middle of Women’s History Month, she put together a program to point out the imbalance in ballet when it comes to the gender of choreographers and composers.
For At This Dance, Women Take The Lead, all three ballets performed were choreographed by women, two were world premieres that were accompanied by music composed by women.
The exclusion of women in choreographer and composer roles in the ballet world have perpetuated for years and has not gone unnoticed. Bouder with her own company had an opportunity to do something about it and seized the chance.
In a recent interview with Lindsey Adler at Deadspin, Bouder said: “I understand why the inequality is there. And I don’t place blame on men or something like that but that would be unfair to the people who are successful. I just think that there needs to be a focus on helping equality happen faster. It’s like, we hired a woman yay! And they don’t rehire her, but they rehire a man and don’t think twice about it.”
“I just hope to bring a little more attention to it through myself as a choreographer and featuring female composers to say, ‘maybe we should seek them out, because they are awesome too’.”
We applaud Bouder for using her position to make a statement about what she’d like to see change within her industry.
