An image of 'Ballet for Life / Le Presbytére', from the ballet Béjart.GREGORY BATARDON
The scandal started earlier this month. An investigation sponsored by the Béjart Foundation following several complaints from students at the famous Rudra-Béjart school in Lausanne (Switzerland), supervised by the foundation, led to the suspension of classes until the next year and the sudden dismissal of their two directors, Michel Gascard and Valérie Lacaze, accused of abuses of power and nepotism. But the case did not end there, as the controversy erupted in the classrooms also led to complaints from the dancers of the Béjart ballet against Gil Roman, artistic director of the company since 2007, for sexual and power abuses. This second part of the investigation has not yet concluded and, for the moment, Roman remains in his position,But the case has once again highlighted the paradigm shift that the sector seems to be going through in parallel with social movements such as Me Too: previously tolerated behaviors have less and less place in the world of the arts.
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Jan Fabre, the creator who went beyond the extreme
The
Béjart case
is not the only one that has become known in recent years in the sector. In 2018, two all-powerful figures of ballet and contemporary dance, Peter Martins, director of the New York City Ballet, and the Belgian Jan Fabre, founder of the prestigious Troubleyn company, were in the eye of the hurricane. Both were accused of abuses of power, sexual harassment and humiliation. More tragic and recent is the case of Liam Scarlett, the youngest and most promising choreographer of the London Royal Ballet, who apparently committed suicide last April, after the cancellation of all his ballets scheduled for future seasons in England, Australia and Denmark. after serious accusations that they pointed out to him for sexual harassment of students of the famous school of this institution.
And not so far away, in Spain, also in April, some students from the Professional Dance Conservatory, attached to the Institut del Teatre de Barcelona, organized a strike to denounce the degrading, insulting and offensive treatment they claimed to receive from some teachers, following the wake of a greater scandal that for the same reasons had broken out earlier, in February, at the Theater School of the same center.
The complaint was then directed against the stage director Joan Ollé, a teacher from that house, but ended with the resignation of the board of directors of the Institut del Teatre in full.
Liam Scarlett rehearses a choreography in Miami on August 14, 2012 Lynne Sladky / AP
"Once all this became media, it became a tsunami and suddenly the four schools that are part of the Institute were left without a directive," recalls Alexis Eupierre, director of the Higher Conservatory of Dance of the Institute. “There has been a bit of confusion and confusion, many people do not know that we are four schools at the Institute, but now we are calmer, this has calmed down. We have just auditioned for new students and we have had the same number of applicants as ever ”.
For Eupierre, that this is happening is not new. What is truly news is that it is made public and has a social impact. “I think it has to do with a social paradigm shift as a result of movements like Me Too or Black Lives Matter. All these problems have always been there and they were seen as something normal, but nowadays the way of relating to the teacher has changed and it seems good to me, I think it is important that changes take place ”.
Asun Noales, director of the OtraDanza company and also a teacher at the Alicante Conservatory, was a student at the Institut in the nineties and agrees that cases like these already happened but were not visible, although she confesses that they never happened to her.
“When I was studying the hierarchy it was very evident.
The relationship between students and teachers used to be one of admiration.
The cases of romantic relationships between a student and his teacher were quite common.
There were also eating problems in girls obsessed with a body sometimes valued from excess by a teacher ”.
Stereotypes
It is true that, from the outside, the perception that one has of the world of ballet and dance is usually stereotyped.
It does not help that the cinema, television with its dance competitions that make stars in two weeks and the series eager for audiences insist on selling an outdated image of teachers and students, which fits well in the elaboration of their professional sacrifice dramas but not both in reality.
The castrating and perverse teacher is a very common stereotype and it is proven that he exists, but not as a majority.
"I consider that they are specific cases, very anecdotal, but that they should be known", admits Noales.
"That they take that relevance is normal because a good teacher is not news."
Delicate y cruel
, a successful Netflix title developed in a fictional American ballet school, endorses unhealthy ideas by putting erroneous and dangerous beliefs about the profession in students, which end up being believed by the audience. "The ballet teacher is the brain and you are only the body," a student is heard saying in relation to a strict and severe teacher.
Eva López Crevillén, ex-dancer from the CND, classical teacher and director of the María de Ávila Superior Dance Conservatory in Madrid, assures that “before the students idolized certain teachers, whom they saw as their guru, and felt that if they no longer received their classes they would not succeed as dancers ”. "But that is not my vision of teaching today," he adds, "and at the conservatory we try to make them have contact with many teachers, all different."
From all this controversy, Crevillén is interested in highlighting that for her, rigor does not imply abuse. “I do not think it is bad for a teacher to be strict and severe, as long as the demand is not confused with the intention of hurting the students or making them feel terrible. Being strict and rigorous is important for excellence, but the two parties must share the same idea, knowing where the limits of what is strict and rigorous are ”.
In addition to sexual harassment, yelling, insults and mistreatment, there are other no less serious but more subtle problems present in schools and that are exacerbated in professional life. Gender discrimination is one of them. Asun Noales has 30 years of professional life and has worked as a dancer for five choreographers and 30 choreographers. “In dance there was always favorable treatment towards men. They are fewer and they are cared for a lot. At the auditions you could see women who danced great and yet the contract was taken by men perhaps with less preparation, but as there were few they were valued as essential even if they danced worse ”, he asserts.