JoAnna Mendl Shaw
From the performance Landscape (1994) Wave Hill, Bronx, NY
(Photo: Tom Brazil)

From NYFA Quarterly - The Long Run: A Performer's Life
Summer 2004 issue

In this column, NYFA Program Officer Edith Meeks interviews performing artists about issues relating to their working careers. Here, she speaks with choreographer JoAnna Mendl Shaw about the origins of the Gender Project and some of the questions it is raising.

Gender Project co-founder JoAnna Mendl Shaw is Artistic Director of The Equus Projects, and a dance educator at The Ailey School and Juilliard.

Edith Meeks: Would you describe the Gender Project—how it got started and what are its goals and activities?

JoAnna Mendl Shaw: The Gender Project started in 1998 out of an informal conversation with Ellis Wood. We were at a Dance Theater Workshop panel on Eastern European choreographic projects and were puzzled by how few female choreographers were present. We noted that female representation was sparse in all top echelons of the field. I shared with Ellis an experience with one of my mentors, Bessie Shoenberg. I had asked Bessie if I could assist her at Jacob’s Pillow and she said, "You know, JoAnna, you’re a fabulous teacher, but there’s nothing like a man to get those young girls started in the morning." I was alarmed and wrote her a letter saying, "Bessie, you’re an icon in this field and it is disturbing that you feel this way." It was at that point that I began thinking about my own career, how gender issues might have affected my work. I began to wonder just how pervasive gender prejudice was in the dance field.

Ellis and I decided to find out how other dancers felt about gender disparity. We conducted one on one interviews with a wide variety of choreographers, male and female: David Dorfman, John Jasperse, Marni Thomas, Elisa Monte, Elizabeth Streb, Delia Peters, who had been a principal with New York City Ballet, as well as numerous young dancers from the downtown dance scene. We began to take action and gain a voice in the dance community. We organized panel discussions. We met with Susan Jonas who had spearheaded a study through NYSCA on women in theater. We spoke at the Women in Theater conference and on a DTW panel on gender.

We launched a research project that choreographer Janis Brenner initiated, to look at both New York and national statistics and compare male and female representation. Wishing to disseminate these statistics in an unusual and very visible way, we created a performance project titled Women Hitting the Wall and featuring Janis Brenner as Narrator. Reading of statistics became the thread that wove together a series of solos. We did four versions of Women Hitting the Wall in New York, one in Chicago, and one in Philadelphia. The performances always concluded with a facilitated discussion.

EM: What were some of the statistical disparities that you found in your research?

JMS: We found that the Kennedy Center roster is entirely men. American Dance Festival—their choreographers are predominantly men, if not entirely. Their teaching faculty is very slanted towards men. If you look at the vast majority of artistic directors of major companies, they are men. And this boils down to money. With an annual budget of $100,000 or under, there are plenty of women. Any time the budget is $500,000 to $1 million, most often there is a male artistic director. There are a few exceptions, but not many.

People who are making major decisions about both the presenting and the creation of the art are men. And yet the women in numbers dominate the lower echelons of this field. They are the ones who do the teaching, run the local studios. If you look at student bodies: the NYU Tisch, Purchase, Alvin Ailey Fordham programs are predominately female. This year the Ailey Fordham senior class is graduating one man and fifteen women.

Why is it that early in their careers men are given more opportunities? Is their work more interesting? As a teacher I frequently find that the men’s work is more edgy and daring. Why? Most men start dancing later than women and are singled out and encouraged in ways that young women are not. They have not been taught to be obedient. They are taught to ask questions. Men are what Kay Cummings , former Dance Chair at NYU Tisch, called "the endangered species." The men are nurtured because they are one amongst many. With more attention, more encouragement, they come away from their training with more confidence and begin their careers with an emotional fortitude that many women do not have.

In 2000, the Juilliard Liberal Arts program invited me to come and talk with the acting, music and dance majors about gender issues in the dance field and about the Gender Project. The Juilliard students shared many stories about gender disparity. One young female pianist told us that pianos are not built for the hand span of a woman. The size of an octave puts women at a disadvantage. Also women do not have the strength to create the fierce, percussive sound that is currently sought after in piano competitions. There is a parallel in dance. The extreme athleticism that is highly valued in dance today does not tend to be the signature for many female choreographers.

EM: My mother, who was discouraged from pursuing an academic career, used to say that women shouldn't be ministers because they didn't have deep enough voices. It’s interesting to me that you get that kind of thinking reflected back from women who've been on the receiving end.

JMS: Our interviews with dancers revealed that gender prejudice exists deeply in women. This finding also emerges in the NYSCA study on women in theatre. Women tend to listen to other women differently than they listen to men, resulting in a self-effacing acceptance of a secondary role. Conversely if women choose to behave with more assertiveness their behavior is often interpreted as pushy or abrasive, while the same behavior in a man would simply be seen as ambitious and inspiring.

A lot of gender discussions have surrounded the subject of money – one’s value being measured by money earning capacity. Dance is not a lucrative field to begin with. If a man chooses this field, he will go for the gold, get as much mileage out of every opportunity as he can, promote himself aggressively and effectively. Women are not taught to be self-promoters. Many women find it hard to combine business and personal life. They do multi-track, often at an unmanageable rate. Or they are faced with simply not having a personal life. Women are also working against a biological time clock. Gus Solomons, Jr. talked to my Ailey Seniors about his career and pointed out that years ago one did not have to construct this sort of mega-career. You could just be a dancer. Today you have to attend to selling your work, selling yourself, fundraising, audience development and the social consciousness of your work.

EM: How did the conversation develop among dancers, presenters, and administrators at the Jacob’s Pillow retreat?

JMS: The discussion was revealing, sometimes heated. We did not always agree. It was acknowledged that men tend to aim for more visible venues with higher budgets, their work is presented with greater production values and that men’s work has a physicality that appeals to a wider audience. In the long run they do get more work and receive higher commissioning fees. We came away from the Retreat having fostered a dialogue between dancers and decision-makers in the field furthering an awareness of the complexity of the issue. Juilliard Dance Chair Larry Rhodes took our discussions to heart in his selection of choreographers for the Juilliard fall 2004 season; Gender Project information and statistics were included on the Dance/NYC website; and we received an invitation from Dance/USA to continue this discussion on a national level at the June 2004 Conference in Pittsburgh.

Information on the Gender Project and statistics on the participation of men and women in the dance field are posted on the Dance/NYC site in the Documents section under Hot Topics, www.dancenyc.org. Transcripts from the Gender Project interviews can be read in the Oral History Collection of the Performing Arts Branch of the New York Public Library. The NYSCA report on the Status of Women in Theatre report may be viewed on the Fund for Women Artists site, at http://www.womenarts.org/2011/12/11/nysca-2/.