WORKING DRAFT BEGUN MAR. 1, 2020 // UPDated ON AN ONGOING BASIS // We value inquiry, information gathering, and collaborative learning.  A team of artists, board members, artistic leadership and creative teams have worked together to set out the values, goals, and objectives detailed below. We invite our community to join the conversation here: feedback[AT]balletfantastique.org.

Introduction

Since our first performances, Ballet Fantastique has worked to disrupt the attitudes, behaviors, and barriers that underlie classical ballet’s exclusive traditions, while exploring ways to tell new stories and weave new connections into the mosaic of contemporary American life. This is not enough.

Ballet Fantastique, along with all ballet and theater companies, must evolve, even through discomfort and failure, working to further disrupt inherited stereotypes, interrupt access barriers, and to affirmatively bring new levels of diversity, inclusivity, and anti-racism to our organization and to our field.

To our community, we renew Ballet Fantastique’s pledge to serve all in equity and to lead in love, rooted in deeper understanding.  Ballet Fantastique commits to new learning, discovery, growth, at leadership and whole-organization level.

We recognize that this work is a marathon, and not a sprint.

Our work is beginning here:

Conversations:

• Direct conversations with POC artists, students, families, and collaborators within BFan, past, present, and future.

• Ongoing + facilitated, regular conversations within our entire staff, faculty, and company about issues in IDEA + ballet and theater.

Professional Leadership Development:

• DEI (Diversity, Equity & Inclusion) training for Ballet Fantastique leadership—Cascade Employer’s Association for senior staff and board leadership; full artist training with Kylin Ellison, consultant; ongoing training continuing.

Leadership & Organization Commitments:

• Increasing POC representation on Ballet Fantastique’s Board of Directors toward a goal of 30-50%. Update: Resolution adopted June 16, 2020.

• Dramatically expanding Ballet Fantastique’s 2016 Diversity & Inclusion Values Statement—June 2020. Update: This statement, created in 2016, has been updated in conversation with Ballet Fantastique’s board of directors and full company of current and future artists. For transparency and conversation, our current draft of our work is included below.

• Creation of Ballet Fantastique National-International Artist Resource Council: See below. Please reach out to us if you would like to join: feedback[at]balletfantastique.org.

Equity & Inclusion Work:

• Scholarship: New scholarships in BFan’s school specifically for young artists of color—beginning 2021 school year (continuing). Update: Applications currently being accepted/scholarship funded with an incredible major donation in Winter 2020! Email academy[at]balletfantastique.org to nominate a scholarship recipient.

• Audience-Building Initiatives: See “Action Plan,” below.

• Recruitment/Hiring/Auditions: Reaching new diverse applicants through auditions in new cities and regions (continuing). See “Action Plan,” below.

This list is not all-inclusive of our ongoing work. We will continue to be transparent to learn, grow, and in our actions and progress toward meaningful change.  As we remain in dialogue, we will continue to provide regular updates here, on this page of our website.

Values statement draft

We affirm BFan’s founding organizational values:

Organizational goals + objectives

Looking to the future, we believe that our world and our art form needs bold industry leaders in this time of necessary change.

We commit to the following organizational goals and objectives:

Ongoing care + commitment + conversation

• CONTEXT: Ballet Fantastique recognizes that embracing difference and building a company where we don’t all look the same means that we have new things to learn.  We affirm that language has power, that these issues are complex, and that not everyone may always agree on vocabulary, or solutions.  We know we are going to make mistakes.  We commit to acknowledging our mistakes, listening in love and openness, learning from any mistakes when they occur, and to doing better.

• GOAL: We are committed to increasing cultural awareness and inclusiveness throughout our organization and beyond. We seek to create a culture informed by care, conversation about complexity, openness to learning—one in which we can admit mistakes, take responsibility for our own learning, and also in which we can learn from each other. We always have more to learn!

• STRATEGIES: A continuous, committed learning process requires us to choose to trust each other and that BFan becomes better through teamwork.  With a focus on eliminating racism and other biases and dismantling white supremacist culture, we will engage our current team members in ongoing training and discussion, including those facilitated by leaders and change agents in and beyond our industry.  When questions or considerations are raised for the team to discuss, we will do so in a team-building and proactive way, as outlined by Nicole Brewer in her 2019 Howlround essay (excerpted here).  We recognize that it takes bravery and trust to confront a problem directly.  We continuously strive—even within the stresses of creating new work—to create an environment of mutual trust where this exchange can occur in a productive, honest way.  We take mutual responsibility to work with each team member to build this positive environment.  We strive to create an environment based on trust.

Hiring/recruitment & casting

• CONTEXT: We believe that a diverse Ballet Fantastique enables us to better deliver our mission to all members of our community. Ballet Fantastique is committed to building a company, faculty, and training program that values and promotes the cultural, educational, and life experiences of all—one that inclusively welcomes participants from all backgrounds. In this quest to build a diverse Ballet Fantastique, we also recognize that our regional base is not as racially or ethnically diverse as our country as a whole.

• GOAL: Ballet Fantastique affirmatively seeks to increase ethnic and cultural diversity in our team, inclusive of—as well as more diverse than—our immediate community.

• STRATEGIES: Wherever possible, we are committed to actively seeking new artists, teaching faculty, and team members by moving our company auditions and auditions marketing to new communities.  We strongly encourage women, persons of color, and other traditionally under-represented groups to apply to job openings within our organization, as well as to membership on our Board of Directors.  With a goal not to eliminate difference and to “treat everyone the same”—but rather, to value the beauty of what makes us different—Ballet Fantastique will embrace the diversity of our team’s backgrounds and experiences and celebrate cultural differences in casting.  We will continue to practice color-disruptive as well as color-conscious casting.  We will continue to tell stories that embody a wide range of cultural experiences.

Audience building

• CONTEXT & GOAL: We will be proactive and intentional in working towards a continuously diverse audience makeup, including socio-economic diversity, diversity in age, and racial and ethnic diversity.

• STRATEGIES: Ballet Fantastique affirms our commitment to our outreach programs (including our EXPERIENCE DANCE! in-school project and Passport to Dance in-theater project, as well as our need-based Academy scholarship fund) as one of the most empowered ways we can affect the socio-economic, age, and racial and ethnic diversity of future dance audiences.  These Programs will continue to affirmatively give priority access to Title I and rural groups.  In order to expand access for those who are not part of our current core audience, Ballet Fantastique will strategically make affordable tickets available throughout the season and will sell discounted tickets to events with availability.  We will seek additional strategies, including online and pop-up performances, to increase audience accessibility, reach new audiences, and to decrease barriers in attendance. Ballet Fantastique affirms our commitment to creating programming that a diverse range of audiences (including families) can enjoy together.  We embrace our proven ability to attract and build audiences <age 35, and we will continue to proactively develop programs, pricing, and marketing strategies that attract and enable young adults and audience members <35 to experience our work, including our New Audiences Series.