Directors of UK Ballet Companies - Pay Differential

[li tai po]

The recent public debate about the remuneration and gender pay gap of BBC high profile stars, celebrities and presenters has led me to inquire about the relative pay of the directors of the major ballet companies.  Here the gender pay gap is tilted well in the direction of the female.

 

The latest annual reports and financial statements of the UK’s five leading ballet companies are published on The Charity Commission and Scottish Charity Commission websites.

 

The various sets of financial statements have different dates for reporting, but the emoluments of the highest paid employees are shown in bands, as for the BBC, as follows:

 

English National Ballet (Tamara Rojo)

2015 - £200,000 - £209,999

2016 – £230,000 - £239,999

 

Royal Ballet (Kevin O’Hare)

2015 - £179,813

2016 - £183,423

 

Birmingham Royal Ballet (David Bintley)

2015 - £140,001 - £150,000

2016 - £130,001 - £140,000

 

Scottish Ballet (Christopher Hampson)

2015 - £110,001 - £120,000

2016 - £90,001 - £100,000

 

Northern Ballet (David Nixon)

2015 - £90,001 - £100,000

2016 - £90,001 - £100,000

 

By way of comparison, the Prime Minister is paid £150,402.

 

Under company law, the figures disclose all emoluments, including fees for choreography and dancing.  David Bintley, Christopher Hampson and David Nixon are also choreographers; Tamara Rojo is also a dancer.

 

These emoluments should be considered in the light of the current austerity squeeze on arts funding.  They appear to show that David Bintley and Christopher Hampson accepted salary sacrifices in 2016, whilst Kevin O’Hare received a pay rise of just 2%.  The bandings suggest that Tamara Rojo received a rise of approximately 17% in 2016.

 

The bandings suggest that Tamara Rojo’s emoluments are 30% higher than those of Kevin O’Hare.  This is against a background of low pay for English National Ballet dancers, who are paid significantly less at all levels from Principal to Corps de Ballet than their colleagues at the Royal Ballet.

 

Finally, the English National Ballet accounts for 2012 show that in 2011 (his last full year as Director of ENB) Wayne Eagling (also a choreographer) was remunerated in the band of £100,000 - £109,999.

[MAB]

I knew she was the highest paid, but a 17% pay rise is staggering, thanks for that information.

 

Surely the company is supported via ACE, i.e. public money where I was under the impression a pay freeze is in force.  Bravo those AD's that accepted pay freezes.  Have to say that the size, complexity and responsibilities of running the RB should surely mean Mr O'Hare receives the superior salary,  Pappano, admittedly rewarded by incrementals due to longer service, is on £600K or thereabouts. 

 

Off topic:  love your user name Li Tai Po

 

 

[aileen]

Surely TR's remuneration reflects the fact that she is still performing as a lead principal dancer with all that that entails in terms of retaining technique, fitness and stamina and rehearsals etc. I appreciate that recently she has not appeared in every programme but in those that she does appear in she has a full workload.

 

 

[Coated]

The prime minister also gets free travel and accommodation, up to £115k public duty cost allowance and a pension mortals can only dream of. Unless ADs get similar perks, an exact comparison can't be made.

 

A 17% pay rise seems fairly hefty, considering that the average wage increase for 2017 is forecast at around 3.5%.

[bridiem]

 

38 minutes ago, aileen said:

Surely TR's remuneration reflects the fact that she is still performing as a lead principal dancer with all that that entails in terms of retaining technique, fitness and stamina and rehearsals etc. I appreciate that recently she has not appeared in every programme but in those that she does appear in she has a full workload.

 

 

 

That would indeed explain the higher overall salary; but it doesn't explain the large rise from one year to the next.

Edited July 30, 2017 by bridiem

[Sim]

51 minutes ago, aileen said:

Surely TR's remuneration reflects the fact that she is still performing as a lead principal dancer with all that that entails in terms of retaining technique, fitness and stamina and rehearsals etc. I appreciate that recently she has not appeared in every programme but in those that she does appear in she has a full workload.

 

 

So I will be very interested to see if her salary is duly reduced once she stops dancing....

[MAB]

The differential between Rojo and O'Hare is approximately £60K, is that the going rate for an ENB principal?

[capybara]

18 minutes ago, MAB said:

The differential between Rojo and O'Hare is approximately £60K, is that the going rate for an ENB principal?

 

It was a few years back but, presumably, one can also see this in the accounts.

[MrsBBB]

1 hour ago, MAB said:

The differential between Rojo and O'Hare is approximately £60K, is that the going rate for an ENB principal?

It seems to be between £60k and £80k, see page 25 of the 2015-16 annual accounts https://www.ballet.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/English-National-Ballet-Accounts-Report-2015-16.pdf

 

Antonio Pappano's £600k+ emoluments at Covent Garden were referenced earlier in the thread. These include conducting fees as well as the Music Director fee and will vary depending on how many performances he conducts in any given season. Not sure if Rojo's pay varies in a similar way.

[Quintus]

I imagine that Ms R has leveraged the fact that she has had an extraordinarily successful few years with significant recognition from awards bodies and public alike, and that the governing board are anxious to keep her.  Who would blame her? Salaries in the £150-250K range for people leading prestigious institutions and managing a crazy workload are not excessive in my opinion.  You do not have to be much of a second division footballer to earn that, or in business you'd get it for slapping in ERP systems or being an entry level partner in a tier 2 consultancy.  Compare the depth and range of talents of Tamara Rojo to those (whatever they might actually prove to be, which is a complete mystery to me...) of Claudia Winkelman, who earns twice as much from the Beeb.  If Kevin O'Hare had been found to be earning 60K more than Ms Rojo, there would doubtless be howls of anguish about the gender gap - sometimes you just can't win!

 

As a footnote, I think the PM's salary is irrelevant in these and other public pay comparisons as the prestige and unique insights and connections gained guarantee hugely lucrative contracts in later life - just look at the £30 million plus that Tony Blair has amassed since stepping down....

[alison]

10 hours ago, li tai po said:

The recent public debate about the remuneration and gender pay gap of BBC high profile stars, celebrities and presenters has led me to inquire about the relative pay of the directors of the major ballet companies.  Here the gender pay gap is tilted well in the direction of the female.

 

I really don't think you can conclude that based on 1 female versus 4 males: it's hardly statistically significant, and Rojo could be an outlier.

 

Quote

Finally, the English National Ballet accounts for 2012 show that in 2011 (his last full year as Director of ENB) Wayne Eagling (also a choreographer) was remunerated in the band of £100,000 - £109,999.

 

I'm assuming that choreographers also get ongoing royalties from their works: not sure whether those would be included or not.

 

8 hours ago, bridiem said:

That would indeed explain the higher overall salary; but it doesn't explain the large rise from one year to the next.

 

No.  I suppose there might be other factors which are not immediately apparent.

 

1 hour ago, Quintus said:

Salaries in the £150-250K range for people leading prestigious institutions and managing a crazy workload are not excessive in my opinion.  You do not have to be much of a second division footballer to earn that, or in business you'd get it for slapping in ERP systems or being an entry level partner in a tier 2 consultancy. 

 

Quite.  But OTOH, those occupations are not taxpayer-funded/subject to a funding freeze.

[bangorballetboy]

I don't know where the 17% figure came from, but by my calculations the rise was somewhere between 9.5% and 20% depending on where within each band the relevant salary actually lay.

[MAB]

Frankly I don't see how anyone can argue that Kevin O'Hare doesn't shoulder the greater burden of responsibility and that should be reflected in his salary.  Larger number of dancers, larger repertoire and above all, a far, far larger budget that he administrates.  The manager of a local convenience store doesn't earn as much as the manager of a super store in a retail park.  Pay is down to the size, of the operation, or at least it is outside of the arts world.

[capybara]

Is it possible, of course, that Tamara Rojo has an element of 'performance pay/bonus' built into her terms and conditions (and I don't mean for her dancing!). By that token (audience numbers; awards received by ENB; etc.), it would be possible to build on a basic salary quite significantly.

[MAB]

Well, yes Capybara.  The new Giselle did incredibly well just about everywhere, but I would have thought if a 'bums on seats' bonus was being awarded it should have gone to Akram Khan.

[Jan McNulty]

4 minutes ago, MAB said:

Well, yes Capybara.  The new Giselle did incredibly well just about everywhere, but I would have thought if a 'bums on seats' bonus was being awarded it should have gone to Akram Khan.

 

Actually it didn't sell out in Manchester, or at least the early performances didn't.  I think a lot of "word of mouth" helped.

[Kate_N]

Quote

Here the gender pay gap is tilted well in the direction of the female.

 

Well, that might be - although Rojo is running a large touring company and appearing as one of its principal artists. 

 

But let's not let her higher salary blind us to the glaring fact that she is the only woman in that list. All the other ADs you list are men.

[Bruce]

A few things come to mind.

 

I doubt that anybody on the list has taken a salary cut associated with the base directors salary. Differences for Bintley and Hampson are probably down to choreographic licence fees and reflect what's in the repertoire in that particular year.

 

Christopher Hampson is not 'just' an artistic director - he is also CEO. That's effectively a separate (and very well paid) role in all the other companies.

 

Everybody should be paid what the job is worth - which is not necessarily what an individual person is worth in the wider and more open market. When Rojo stops dancing it would be hard to defend the current rate I suspect. But I'm sure a case could be made - Rojo has done more then anybody to get ENB's name out there and given a very public national face. That's gold-dust for any organisation.

 

It would be nice to know the numbers in context - what other major arts undertakings pay for their management.

[Solor]

A few points come into my head regards the issue of Miss Rojo’s salary.

 

As has been said senior executive salary level is normally related to the level of scope of the role – particularly in terms of the size of the organisation and, crucially, the level of budget / financial responsibility. An MD of a company with a turnover of £1 Million is likely to earn less than an MD of a company with a turnover of £1 Billion.

 

It is, therefore, bemusing that Miss Rojo is paid nearly 50K - 60K more than Mr O’Hare. Kevin has a far bigger budget to manage and deliver against, stewardship of a far bigger Arts Council public grant and he has to deliver highly complex, expensive productions such as Woolf Works with public money. ENB does not deliver comparable productions in terms of technical complexity and cost, it’s on a smaller scale than what Kevin has to do. No shame in that – it’s just a fact because the Royal Ballet is our premium company with the biggest budget, highest profile productions, access to the best resources etc. So one would expect the salary of the RB Director to be the higher – the same as the salary of the Music Director of The Royal Opera is higher than that of the Music Director at Opera North!

 

In my personal opinion I don’t think the effect of dancing fees stacks up given one would expect the Director’s salary at ENB to be lower than the RB to start with – and actually Tamara’s number of performances is quite low at ENB. She has, to her credit in my view, stepped back from trying to steal the limelight as a Ballerina in favour of letting her dancers have the limited number of performances. She did not dance Juliet this year and she can go many months without dancing a single performance with ENB.

 

Then there is the substantial rise taken over 2015 – 2016 of between 20K to 40K increase in one year. This is at a time when public funding is squeezed and taking a massive 20K – 40K pay rise in one year would raise eyebrows in most organisations I would have thought. Even if the Board offered it she could have refused it so that her dancers could have been given a bit more.

 

The leap from Wayne Eagling at c.100K-110K in 2011 to Tamara Rojo at 230K-240K in 2016 is extraordinary. This is salary growth of 230% in 5 years. I would have thought any salary more than doubling during a period of austerity and restraint is very unusual (especially at ENB given it is part public funded). And we do not yet know the extent of any further rises in 2017 and 2018.

 

Whatever your view it probably boils down to one very simple question – is Kevin O’Hare underpaid or is Tamara Rojo overpaid? I am no expert on salary levels for ballet directors but looking objectively at what the other UK ADs get suggests that Kevin is on about the right level and they need some serious realignment at ENB. The money saved can be shared amongst the hardworking dancers and staff who have been facing pay restraint in the same period.

[MAB]

Have to admit I wasn't aware of Wayne Eagling's salary, although such things are in the public domain, but I haven't noticed extra responsibilities going with the role of ENB's AD since 2011.  

 

Britain has one of the worst pay gaps in the world with incomes falling rapidly in real terms since austerity was introduced, the usual argument in support of sky high salaries is wealth creation, but ballet companies don't create wealth, they just need to remain solvent.  If the ENB dancers are facing pay restraint whilst at the same time they see the salary of their boss soar, it goes some way to explain discontent leading to an exodus.

 

[Nicola H]

another thing that  has struck me ,  and it;s come up in a number of  different topics  is inconsistency of  nomenclature , with directors, in the upper school  audition  thread  and somewhere else 

you see some companies who have  very  few  principals ,  but  have three ranks of soloist (even technically 4  in the case of Northern  - even though  the current roster  only has one  first soloist  bettween   the leading soloists and the 'plain' soloists +junior soloists) AND coryphees  'above' their corps and apprentices , yet here are other companies with a dozen principles  but  only  2 ranks of soloist ( or even 1 and half  due to small numbers in one  ofthe  groups)  , above  'first artists','artists' and apprentices ( coryphees and  corps) ...
 this is before considering  thaose who wear multiple hats  - as raised with  those who are both Artistic and Executive  in their  role  and those who are both  directors and  choreographers  / 'sti;;' performing as principals ... 

[penelopesimpson]

I can only say that without benefit of any particular knowlege, KOH more than earns his salary.  He is doing an incredible job.

[Ballet enthusiast]

Hi there,

 

How can members tell based on the public accounts that the payment at the highest band is to Ms Rojo and not, say, to the executive director? As no names are attached to the bands, how can we be certain that Ms Rojo is the recipient of the salary? Thanks

[aliceinwoolfland]

Excellent post, Solor!

[Guest]

14 hours ago, Ballet enthusiast said:

How can members tell based on the public accounts that the payment at the highest band is to Ms Rojo and not, say, to the executive director? 

 

I have sent you a PM. I think that this may be a difficult question for people to answer on here as we need to be careful not to speculate.