Choreographer Rosie Kay forced to resign from her own company

[peonyred]

This is a share token so you can read the story. Another Janice Turner article. Simone suggested Crowdfunding for her new company.

Rosie Kay: I resigned from my own dance company after I was accused of transphobia

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/3935bc4a-5858-11ec-a3f7-65d2d47c7fea?shareToken=d4efe0ddb11ede84d52835a0a02d70e3

@CatherinaJTV

So you all think it's normal if a lecturer/trainer invites students/trainees into their home and discussed their genitals and the students/trainees just need to "toughen up"?

Sounds very like an NCT class.

Aren’t dancers and actors always being told that they need to toughen up?

If they are not, they need to be. Both are precarious professions.

I remember Fame, so I know it’s no picnic! Haha!

I also know singers, actors and dancers - it’s a tough job (well usually a side job alongside teaching, serving in restaurants, temping or busking). And there’s always the parts that go to lesser experienced or talented friends and family of directors. And critics can be brutal. You need a thick skin.

@CatherinaJTV

So you all think it's normal if a lecturer/trainer invites students/trainees into their home and discussed their genitals and the students/trainees just need to "toughen up"?

Is it normal for a director to invite the company round to their house for some team building? Yes.

Is it normal for performers' physicality and characteristics (including sex characteristics) to be bluntly discussed by those responsible for their training? Yes. Especially with reference to their likely castings - it does people absolutely no favours to let them have a false image of their physicality. Like it or not, performers are usually cast on both performance ability and their physicality.

Is it normal for performers to be told to toughen up? Yes. Because if they don't, they'll last about three years.

The pity of all this is that their training college seems to have utterly failed these students. Nobody seems to have spelt out to them that having a flaming row with their very first professional director is going to kill their careers.

Those are very good points. And I'd like to see Ms Non-Binary lift women the way that men do. I would be very surprised if she could.

So you all think it's normal if a lecturer/trainer invites students/trainees into their home and discussed their genitals and the students/trainees just need to "toughen up"?

I think if I were making a point about something to do with, say, what I thought about wheelchair users' rights, and someone said "but you have working legs, right?" that would be a valid thing to say. Similarly if I were claiming to be non-binary not as a state of mind in a sexed body but as an actual statement that body sex does not exist for me and someone said "But you were born with a vulva not a penis or a third thing, right?" that would also be a valid thing to say given the context of the conversation.

It can't be ok to have someone able to demand a group acquiesce to a claim that everyone knows is false simply because it's too rude/indelicate/triggering to say the truth that exposes the falsehood.

So if someone pushes a false argument to a place where the only way to counter it is to say something that is true but generally considered impolite to mention, they will unfortunately sometimes find people who consider being rude is better than condoning a lie (or more charitably, a misapprehension), especially if they consider this falsehood to be harmful to people other than just the liar.

If a truth is too dreadful (or simply too socially unacceptable) to say, that unsayability becomes a cover for people with bad intentions. As the many women who put up with boundary-crossing behaviour from men because they feel pointing it out will be seen as "making an unwarranted fuss over nothing" can attest.

As an aside, and related to points on a recent thread, I find it very odd that the current shibboleths of so-called (but actually not) progressive politics include both trans identities "Shhhh shhhh must never mention the genitals, what sort of awful awful person wants to know about genitals anyway???!!!" and Sex Work is Work "Being a person who wants to pay to
use or look at other people's genitals is totally ok and only prudes have a problem with it!!!!"

@AlfonsoTheUnrepentant

Those are very good points. And I'd like to see Ms Non-Binary lift women the way that men do. I would be very surprised if she could.

Perhaps they can't lift like a man or be lifted like a woman so just stand there confused?

Who knows? Really! I believe that two of the dancers described themselves as "trans non-binary" which is a contradiction in terms.

So you all think it's normal if a lecturer/trainer invites students/trainees into their home and discussed their genitals and the students/trainees just need to "toughen up"?

You may have the very best of intentions.

But know that a squeamishness to name genitals - be it for your non-binary "theybie" or just because you're posh and have decided to tell your daughter her vulva is called a twinkleydink - is an absolute gift for those who would abuse.

Yes when sex based rights are being discussed, genitals might have to be mentioned. Mostly because gender idealogues insist on pretending the terms men /male/woman /female no longer mean what they used to mean!

Where is this squeamishness when we are called menstruators and cervix havers anyway? Make your mind up!!

Is it normal for performers' physicality and characteristics (including sex characteristics) to be bluntly discussed by those responsible for their training? Yes. Especially with reference to their likely castings - it does people absolutely no favours to let them have a false image of their physicality. Like it or not, performers are usually cast on both performance ability and their physicality.

According to this non binary dancer who’s been very vocal about the need for the dance world to denounce Rosie Kay, that’s a HUGE no-no.

Sorry, thought I’d added screenshots.

There’s seemingly also significant pressure on other dancers to participate in the denunciation.

It is called "whipping up a mob". You can't have a lynching without a mob!

Good grief. The stupidity in those screenshots is staggering.

@KittenKong

I remember Fame, so I know it’s no picnic! Haha!

I also know singers, actors and dancers - it’s a tough job (well usually a side job alongside teaching, serving in restaurants, temping or busking). And there’s always the parts that go to lesser experienced or talented friends and family of directors. And critics can be brutal. You need a thick skin.

I loved Fame! But I remember being struck by how gritty the film was. Dance is a tough business and it seems to be completely at odds with a constant need for validation.

If you don't want the job, don't apply for it. It's fairly straight forward. It's a job, it is not a bloody therapy service.

Those screenshots are vile. Such righteous indignation! Any kind of career in performance is fucking tough and there's no end to the barriers most people face trying to make it - race, class, sex, age, disability, income, location... That this lot seem to be putting barriers in their own way, demanding everyone bow down to their ideas about identity is beyond belief. This furious whinging is ridiculously unpleasant. These people sound so miserable.

Good grief. The stupidity in those screenshots is staggering.

It did make me laugh when they complained nobody had been warned about the presence of trans people in the building, leading to them being misgendered “by every single person they came into contact with”.

Well, it's certainly a tough industry but (speaking in general terms here) that should not mean you have to put up and shut up if your employment rights are being shat on.

Were there any dancers that were happy in the company and didn't participate in the vilification? Aren't they furious with the way these narcissists have stuck their feet out an tripped up their careers? I know it must be daunting, but I would really like to hear from them.....

The Royal Opera House story is mind boggling. I mean, ROH audiences pay a considerable amount of money to see performances from a traditional repertoire. There’s room for innovation but it still has to reflect what audiences actually want and will pay for.
I can see that the world of dance must be really difficult if you are uncomfortable with your gender and I wish them all the luck in the world in setting up their own companies that make art in the way they want and still manage to attract enough audiences to make it viable. I am sure it can be done with enough hard work, creativity and talent.
Rather than getting a job at the ROH and then whinging when it isn’t all exactly the way you want it to be…

And I'd like to see Ms Non-Binary lift women the way that men do. I would be very surprised if she could.

Women can lift women and men - you get trained in how to do it safely & effectively in contemporary dance training (especially contact improvisation). But a woman lifting in this way is not the same as a man - and certainly the one-armed presage lifts, or shoulder sits, or fish dives that you see in classical ballet pas de deux might be very difficult for a woman.

@Sashimimimi

Good grief. The stupidity in those screenshots is staggering.

It did make me laugh when they complained nobody had been warned about the presence of trans people in the building, leading to them being misgendered “by every single person they came into contact with”.

Not everyone in the building had been told there were special more important people in the building whose feelings and made up ideas must be specially respected !!!

(Yet if everyone had been told, you bet that would be transphobic too.)

Those tweets copied above are just astonishingly self centred, petty, self aggrandising and demanding. Why the jeffing hell do these people think “GENDER” is some kind of identity God that’s more important than anything else, anyway? FFS.

Those screenshots.

Boiled down to "Yes, sweetheart, we'll do our best to remember your pronouns, but in dance you are a bloke, now lift that ballerina and stop pratting about with the swans"

Again, I shal say it loud, in context, and in absolute truth, there is a physiological reason those hips don't lie!