Autonomy in training
Autonomy. A kind-of buzz word amongst dance at the moment. For good reason. Pop culture, testimonies from dancers, BBC panorama documentaries and some statistics show abuse and the search for power over other people’s bodies as something that populates dance and dance history.
In August 2020, the closure of ballet school ‘Ballet West’ after sexual misconduct claims. In 2020, Neil Harris, a sex offender, jailed a second time for abuse to his dance school students. These are cases where dance training has been used by individuals to manipulate, coerce and groom young people.
In September 2023, ‘the dark side of ballet schools’ documentary reveals bullying and body shaming at The Royal Ballet School and Elmhurst Ballet School. And in 2024, an article from Cunning (et al) in the British Medical Journal that calls on elite dance institutions to improve safeguarding practices and the prevention of abuse in dance, with the article suggesting that ‘cultural norms and traditions combined with a lack of compulsory or insufficient teacher training, power imbalances and fierce competition for jobs and roles are just some of the systemic factors’ of abuse in the dance industry.
Abuse in the dance industry is therefore a wide problem. With incredibly harmful and sexual cases of abuse paired with less violent but still impactful treatment in the studio that can, as the Cunning (Et Al) article suggests, ‘compromise positive experiences of dancers and negatively affect well-being’.
As a dance teacher and choreographer, I am acutely aware of these statistics, cultures and trends. I am constantly searching for ways to improve the well-being of dancers in spaces that I hold and I am led by brilliant practitioners who have paved the way in this area.
If abuse often stems from unchallenged authority and unequal power, then the question becomes what healthier models of leadership might look like. Increasingly, artists and organisations are beginning to answer that question.
Contemporary dance company ‘Thick and Tight’ are open with their values and share their policies on their website. Their codes of conduct are jointly agreed by the choreographers and their collaborators, be them dancers or venues. At the top of this code of conduct, ‘treat people with kindness and respect.’
Neus Gil Cortes, director of Lead & Create, is giving choreographers guidance when leading spaces and says, when leading collaborative processes, to think about creating ‘Thinking Environments’, as first thought up by Nancy Kleine:
1. Attention – Listening with palpable respect and without interruption
2. Equality – Treating each other as thinking peers; giving equal turns and attention; Keeping arguments and boundaries
3. Ease – Offering ‘freedom’ from internal ‘rush’ or ‘urgency’
4. Appreciation – Offering genuine acknowledgement of a person’s qualities; Practicing a 5:1 ratio of appreciation to criticism
5. Encouragement – Giving courage to go to the cutting edge of ideas by moving beyond internal competition
6. Feelings – Allowing sufficient emotional release to restore thinking
7. Information – Supplying the facts; dismantling denial
8. Diversity – Welcoming divergent thinking and diverse group identities
9. Incisive Questions – Removing assumptions that limit our ability to think for ourselves clearly and creatively
10. Place – Creating a physical environment that says back to people ‘you matter’.
Whilst slow, I believe there are efforts being made by dance educators and choreographers to work in new ways that benefit the well-being of dancers. I think I have seen it becoming more common for malpractice to be called out, for example.
I’m interested in the role of the dancer in these safer rehearsal environments. When perceptions of respect, of kindness, when people assume things in different ways and when ‘acknowledgement’, ‘praise’ and ‘criticism’ are processed differently person to person, how can these codes of conducts always remain in place? What does kindness look like in a dance training environment that aims to challenge habits and ideas? Do dancers always need to feel comfortable? Similarly, what does kindness and respect from dancers towards choreographers and teachers look like when you remove hierarchy?
What I find encouraging about Thick and Tight’s policies for their creative processes is the cross-party agreement of the values in the room. Whilst it dismantles any possibility for choreographers to be cruel and abusive, it also asks for dancer and choreographer to join an equal partnership.
It helps me to think first about the different responsibilities of choreographer and dancer.
Perhaps it can be defined that the choreographer's responsibility in a room is to shape artistic direction and create conditions for exploration. The dancer's responsibility is to embody, interpret and contribute to that work. These are two different roles, with different responsibilities. A less hierarchal rehearsal room means that each role has no difference in terms of value.
I think ideas of dismantling hierarchy in the rehearsal room, however, have now been confused in practice. I would argue, for example, that the roles don’t need to change in creative processes in order to find equality, but the perspectives of both roles and the understanding in the room of each role’s worth needs to be equalised. A choreographer can still tell a dancer what to do and how to move. The difference now is that, if the dancer doesn’t want to do it (or do it like that), they should be heard.
With equality between the two roles, there is a requirement of openness, to listen and to appreciate individual worth of dancers from the choreographer, and at the same time, a requirement from the dancer to be open, respectful and appreciate the individual worth of the choreographer/teacher. The agreement of equality that works is the one where it is accountable both ways.
The alternative is that, while this still feels a long way off in our industry, the balance tips in the other direction and the choreographer or teacher becomes the one harmed by expectations and pressures from students. Perhaps there is a temptation from dancers and students to see this as a chance to 'get their own back' on a system that has so far failed them.
But ‘safeguarding’ itself surely shouldn’t become a zero-sum transfer of power. Systems that protect dancers must also protect teachers and choreographers from unfair processes, assumptions and unnecessary stresses from the workplace. The aim is not to reverse power imbalances, but to create structures in which accountability applies equally to everyone.
I think what is tricky is, especially when imparting knowledge to dancers as a teacher, there often is an imbalance of power. Presumably, there are things or perspectives that a teacher knows that the dancer doesn’t yet – as is the role of the education system. The aim, then, is to provide a space where dancers can own the fact and feel comfortable enough that they don’t know everything yet, and have courage to take risks and explore their practice. I think this includes setting the learning dancers clear expectations around ‘failure’ and ‘trying’ as integral and positive steps towards reaching their goals.
A headteacher of a secondary school once said to me that teaching is about guiding students and giving them space to ultimately choose their own way through their learning. It’s about offering, opening doors and creating environments where students remain interested and want to learn. I would add that being taught also requires students to offer something integral to that environment, a willingness to explore.
I don’t think that a choreographer / dance teacher can hold all of the answers to a dancer’s physical and artistic development, in performance or training. Neither, in my opinion, does a dancer alone, without being willing to explore new ideas, have the capacity to grow to be a versatile dancer, all by themselves. It’s in a collaboration, at a meeting point between educator and learner, where the expectations, the acknowledgement and the bouncing off of ideas, the joint offerings and the processes of working through failures together, where the actual development occurs.
To circle back to my question of kindness. Kindness is not the avoidance of challenge. Rather, the manner in which challenge is delivered. Honest critique can coexist with respect when expectations are clear, when feedback is specific rather than personal, and when dancers understand that mistakes are part of the creative process rather than evidence of personal failure.
Reflecting on my time as a student, I would go back and perceive my teachers less on a pedestal, not because I don’t think of them as having any less worth, but because by doing so, I could allow myself to be more human in the rehearsal room, take more risks and ultimately grow and develop more as a dancer. I would be more willing to offer more mistakes so that together, teacher and I, can collaborate on my dancing. Trust, in the people that lead the room, is vital in learning. Trust has to be earnt. And trust has to be given.
