Press Release: English National Ballet announces promotions and new joiners for the 2017/2018 Season

[Juliet]

I don't think anyone is working behind the scenes to undermine Tamara......I think the places were available in Munich because Igor has had his own unsettling time following his takeover of Bayerische Stattsballett. 

[aileen]

I agree with Juliet. The reason that there are so many positions available at Bavarian State Ballet is that the company has seen a lot of departures following Zelensky's appointment and, according to a quotation in a post on another thread, some of the dancers who left were fired! 

[Guest]

WOW! Just  catching up for a second time with a thread which would surely have never taken flight in the way that it has if ENB had judged its press release better.

 

Of course, we are all reading the situation in our own way but I do find myself agreeing with Aileen and FLOSS that the picture which emerges raises some interesting issues around ENB as a company. Although my own managerial track record is not within the ballet world, looking from the outside my experiences lead me to wonder:

1. Is the balance among the ranks of dancers ‘right’ for the rep. and the schedule?
2. Do dancers feel that there is a career structure within which talent and hard work will earn opportunities, recognition and, perhaps, promotion?
3. Do the pay differentials provide adequately for long service (and continuity) within the corps as well as higher salaries for promoted ranks?
4. Do the pay and conditions of dancers compare appropriately with those of ENB’s executive staff?
5. What is causing what appears to be an unusually high turnover of dancers and are there any implications arising from this in terms of performance standards?
6. Is morale within the company (as distinct from a sense of ‘teamwork’ among colleagues) as buoyant as it should be?
7. Are the artistic and human resources arms of the organisation working effectively together in the interests of the dancers?
8. Do the Board and managers use a variety of means, including direct dancer feedback, to ‘take the temperature’ of the company and listen/act on what is being said?
9. Does the company give sufficient attention to developing its artists?
10. Are promising dancers given the kind of prominence which will enable them become known and help to build both the company’s reputation and their own profile?
11. Do individual dancers feel valued? Do they feel that staff  take a real interest in them?
12. Do support and acknowledgement of what is good sit alongside the necessarily more strict and corrective teaching and coaching which one imagines has to be an integral part of professional ballet life?
13. Why has it become the norm to have so many guest principals and is the possible downside to this being addressed?

I know that there has to be a distinction between the function of a Board and that of managers but, especially in the light of the high turnover of dancers (including people appointed and/or promoted recently), it may be that at least some of these questions need to be asked, answered and acted upon at Board level sooner rather than later.

[aileen]

Returning to those who have stayed with the company, I think that it's a nice set of promotions covering all the ranks and there's nobody obvious (to me at least) who has been overlooked. I'm not going to comment on whether those who have left should have been promoted.

[invisiblecircus]

What's the deal with being a "4th year artist" ?

 

I seem to remember that Rina Kanehara was promoted to "8th year artist" one year. Does it denote a raise in salary? On the ENB website and in programmes, artists are listed as just that, there are no 1st year artists, 2nd year artists etc although the year the dancer joined the company is usually indicated.

[alison]

It's a salary grade, as far as I know.  I've never understood why it was necessary to print it in the programme: surely "artist" is enough.

[alison]

2 hours ago, turtledove said:

WOW! Just  catching up for a second time with a thread which would surely have never taken flight in the way that it has if ENB had judged its press release better.

 

Or if there had been rather less public speculation by people who may or may not know what they're talking about, may or may not be making assumptions/reading between the lines whether correctly or incorrectly, and so on and so forth.

[SwissBalletFan]

43 minutes ago, alison said:

 

Or if there had been rather less public speculation by people who may or may not know what they're talking about, may or may not be making assumptions/reading between the lines whether correctly or incorrectly, and so on and so forth.

Then there wouldn't be much need for a forum to thrash-out their thoughts. Members have either personal or close knowledge of the people involved or maybe no idea and just pure speculation. The rules of the forum really prevent people naming their sources or their knowledge without losing a large dollop of discretion afforded to them from the people directly involved.

 So the 'may or may not know', keep the forum posts building up which I am guessing is the interest for the forum membership, and those that 'know', will recognize who else knows from the content and implications of posts.

 

Otherwise we should just accept press releases, even with serious omissions, and it a bit of spin on the 'real' story.

 

 

[MAB]

SBF, here in Britain we sign 'gagging orders' when we leave jobs under duress.  When I challenged my redundancy, I engaged a lawyer who proved unfair dismissal and won me compensation, but I had to sign a document preventing me from discussing it.  If untoward actions were taken towards former ENB members, I imagine they are legally bound to keep quiet, therefore there won't be any public revelations.   Even if someone here had been given information it would be against the rules to post without naming a source and to identify the source would cause them more than just embarrassment.

 

Yes, I have spotted who is 'in the know' and who isn't.

[Geoff]

I'm living back in a farming community at the moment. When the sun shines, they ask for rain; when it rains, they wish it was sunny. So in a sprit of self-awareness (Maoist self-criticism?) here is a thread from not that long ago:-

 

 

A year can make a big difference in perception.

Edited August 2, 2017 by Geoff

[Kate_N]

Yes, Geoff, I recognise this pattern as well! I don't live in a farming community now (but have done), but speak as an historian of the performing arts (my day job) - the kinds of mix of speculation, gossip, fact, and comments by people "in the know" and comments about those who are "in the know" and those who aren't, are historical givens. Commentary/speculation that we see on this thread has always happened - it's a way for audiences to feel connected to performers, for regular spectators to feel special, and just generally the human instinct to think about others' intentions and actions - we are social animals after all!

 

I'm writing at the moment about the whole journalistic genre of "in the know" writing in Victorian magazines & newspapers - taking readers to that normally hidden area backstage, telling them about the "real" private lives of their favourite performers, explaining the so-called mysteries of the theatre profession. It's all there, just as it is all here in this thread 

 

 

[MAB]

Dancing Times and Dance Europe weren't shy about commenting when Wayne Eagling 'left' ENB', I'm hoping they will be covering this story too.

 

An unprecedented number of dancers leaving ENB isn't history, it's happening in real time, if we are not sufficiently qualified in your view to make comments, perhaps we should ignore events altogether and walk away, rather like those people that walk away when someone is attacked in the street.  I haven't worked as 'an historian of the performing arts', but I have worked in the world of dance ,  stuff happens, even something jaw-dropping can have no place in the public domain but I still maintain that a company losing over half it's members in a short time span is worthy of discussion.

[bridiem]

5 hours ago, Geoff said:

I'm living back in a farming community at the moment. When the sun shines, they ask for rain; when it rains, they wish it was sunny. So in a sprit of self-awareness (Maoist self-criticism?) here is a thread from not that long ago:-

 

 

A year can make a big difference in perception.

 

I think the discussion here is primarily about dancer development and retention etc, not about wider artistic issues.

Edited August 2, 2017 by bridiem

[bridiem]

3 hours ago, Kate_N said:

Yes, Geoff, I recognise this pattern as well! I don't live in a farming community now (but have done), but speak as an historian of the performing arts (my day job) - the kinds of mix of speculation, gossip, fact, and comments by people "in the know" and comments about those who are "in the know" and those who aren't, are historical givens. Commentary/speculation that we see on this thread has always happened - it's a way for audiences to feel connected to performers, for regular spectators to feel special, and just generally the human instinct to think about others' intentions and actions - we are social animals after all!

 

I'm writing at the moment about the whole journalistic genre of "in the know" writing in Victorian magazines & newspapers - taking readers to that normally hidden area backstage, telling them about the "real" private lives of their favourite performers, explaining the so-called mysteries of the theatre profession. It's all there, just as it is all here in this thread 

 

 

 

I think this thread is primarily motivated by concern about ENB, not by interest in the private lives of the dancers.

[Kate_N]

MAB, I was simply commenting from my point of view. I'm not sure why you are seeing it as an attack, or why you are taking such a hostile tone. My post was just offering a different perspective, and I was explaining how I come to that perspective. A plus ça change observation.

[FLOSS]

I had always understood that when POB began to be run on a commercial basis in the early nineteenth century the management found it necessary to generate followings for individual dancers to stimulate ticket sales.  Marketing performers was one of the great inventions of the actor David Garrick who was painted in famous roles and whose portrait in prints and ceramic representations were in wide circulation during his lifetime.

Commercial imperatives encouraged the POB's early nineteenth century managers to take the audience's interest in its performances and its artists a stage further than Garrick had done by hinting at rivalries between its artists and stimulating and encouraging dansomanie (balletomania), fans and fandom as a way of shifting tickets. I think that so far the current discussion has not degenerated into the sort of thing that you might find in a mindless magazine directed at creating and maintaining celebrity status. The current discussion merely suggests that ENB has a following interested in its future development and viability not one that is interested in the lives of its dancers. It is possible to be superior about a company's loyal supporters who buy tickets for everything that it does and get concerned about lack of promotion and high turnover among its dancers  but it has to be acknowledged that a ballet company is not going to get very far without them.

 

 

It is interesting to see during the course of this discussion evidence that Kevin has been transformed in the space of a couple of seasons, in the eyes of ballet goers, from the man whose artistic taste was suspect, to say the least, into the great AD. This transformation appears to have been achieved pretty much on the basis of a single season in which we saw considerably more classical and neo-classical choreography than we have for some time and injury gave unexpected opportunities to young male dancers. Let us remember that much of the "adventurous " casting we saw last year was the result of having two male principal dancers injured for the entire season. I somehow doubt that we would have seen quite so much of Ball and Clarke or that they and others would have had the same development opportunities if Kish and Golding had been fit and able to perform. 

 

I think that we should also remember that "Untouchable "which was one of the Turkeys which Luke Jennings was writing about at the end of 2015 is due for revival this season and that the all Bernstein mixed bill includes the revival of The Age of Anxiety which was not that highly regarded in its first season .The season as a whole has several opportunities for Kevin's artistic judgement to be called into question in the form of the new works due to be premiered in the season's mixed bills and a very high profile new production of Swan Lake with over twenty performances allocated to it at the end of the season and, no doubt, somewhere in the region of a further twenty allocated to it in the 2018-19 season,sight unseen. It is quite possible that by the end of the season 2017-18 all the good work and development opportunities which the Kevin is now being praised for will have been forgotten and the questions raised in 2015 about his control over the quality of the new works being staged and their cost will have been renewed. Meanwhile Rojo whose man management skills are currently being called into question will have resumed her position as the most admired of ADs on the basis of another  season in which she  has demonstrated how artistically astute an AD  she is to critics and ballet goers alike. 

Edited August 2, 2017 by FLOSS

[MAB]

Depends on personal criteria I suppose, FLOSS.  For years I've dreamed about world class British ballerinas and. hey presto!  Mr O'Hare delivers the goods.  We're not living in a choreographic golden age so if we have a season of duds, it's a matter of better luck next time Kev, at least as far as I'm concerned.

[MAX]

ENB's press release is really not very precise, if my memory is correct Aaron Robison was a finalist in the 2004 Prix de Lausanne but he did not get any prize. 

[FLOSS]

MAB,

Perhaps I should have put artistically astute in quotation marks but that is the way the story will be told and it will be great fun for the professional critics to play one AD off against the other. As if no AD ever makes mistakes over commissions and stagings and we don't need really good ADs heading both the RB and ENB.

 

As far as the world class ballerinas are concerned I would have thought that it was a bit of an overstatement to say that Kevin has "delivered the goods". If you are referring to Hayward and Naghdi then surely we are talking about a subtle mixture of innate gifts and excellent training. These dancers have natural ability, including musicality and physical aptitude and seem possessed of a burning need to dance which Cope said was the greatest gift a dancer could have. It seems to me that in them we are finally seeing the fruits of Gailene Stock's labours at the RBS.

 

 I believe that both dancers were actually recruited by Mason rather than Kevin. That is not to say that Kevin played no part in developing and building on their ability and their training. In many the AD's part is the most crucial as he has to know what to do for his dancers as individuals, selecting the right coaches and repertory, the right roles, the right opportunities for development. at the right time and speed.I am not seeking to diminish Kevin's role in all this I am simply trying to get the balance right. Perhaps we should be grateful that Kevin's career as a dancer was with Peter Wright from whom he seems to have learned a great deal

 

.Creating and maintaining a great ballet company is a cumulative enterprise. After several false starts and unfortunate directorships in the last forty years it is to be hoped  that the remedial work Mason undertook and Kevin is building on will not be undone in the future.

 

 

Edited August 15, 2017 by FLOSS

[MAB]

You appear to be viewing Ms Mason's directorship through rose coloured spectacles.  Were she still in charge I have a nasty feeling that the careers of Ms Hayward and Ms Naghdi may have reflected the careers of Xander Parish and Maria Kotchetkova.

 

This is a digression however, the main  question is what is causing so many members of ENB to leave and can anything be done about it.

[Solor]

MAB hit the nail on the head about this way back when referencing the MacLeod Report into Employee Engagement. I work in management and leadership development. All the research (highly evidence based across a range of industries and working environments) shows that the key factor in people’s happiness at work (and therefore their likelihood to stay) IS their PERSONAL relationship with their management. Just Google “Employee Engagement” and you can read all the research. For example The Chartered Institute for Personnel & Development's publication “Becoming an Employer of Choice” states that "70% of people leave their manager and not the job".

 

Think about your own jobs – those where you have had a really nice and genuinely caring line manager have been more bearable (even if other aspects of the job were not ideal) than those which might have in many ways been your perfect job but the person you worked for was unpleasant, treated you like dirt or in a threatening way and made no attempt to build a warm and caring personal relationship with you.

 

Of course there are some occasions when people leave a job for other reasons even when they have a great relationship with their manager / director, but the point is these are the minority. The research proves beyond doubt that in the majority of cases (between 70% to 80%) people leave because of a poor relationship with management. And this applies to any industry / environment – human relationships are the same regardless of whether in a ballet company or a nuclear power station. There are technical factor differences of course in different jobs, but as far as management relationships are concerned all of us humans tend to crave the same things from our managers / leaders – such as empathy, respect, reward and recognition, feedback that is evidence based, emotionally intelligent responses, mutual trust, warmth and genuine care in you as an individual etc. If these qualities in management style are missing or, even worse, if the opposite is displayed by the manager / leader i.e. coldness, contempt, aloofness, lack of genuine empathy, dishonesty, back stabbing etc, the employee is likely to be unhappy and highly likely to leave as soon as a chance comes. If you as a manager go on any decent management training course it will teach you all this.

 

Turtledove gives a brilliant list of questions to be asked surrounding the leadership culture at ENB – indeed this list could be explored as critical on any management training programme! Point H is very pertinent at ENB: “Do the Board and managers use a variety of means, including direct dancer feedback, to ‘take the temperature’ of the company and listen / act on what is being said?” At ENB yes they do an anonymous staff survey. ENB HR could therefore end all the “speculation” on this thread once and for all by publishing these employee survey results, including the feedback on the Artistic Director and the senior management. The data is anonymous so no risk of identifying individual employees.

 

On the issue of “those in the know” which has been commented upon – some people who have posted likely know exactly what is going on, presumably through personal contacts in the company, but are nervous to say things explicitly for fear of getting friends into trouble. All employees in any job have a mortgage or rent to pay and rule by fear can keep anyone in any job from publically commenting about management.

 

In leadership training we teach behaviours such as “Encourage the Heart” i.e. reward and recognition, and “Model the Way” i.e. defining positive values as a leader and leading by exemplifying them. All of us will have our own opinions about whether we think such leadership behaviours are evident at ENB – some opinions based purely on speculation, others on direct information from people in the company. Of course were the staff survey ever to be published it would end the speculation and provide transparency on the level or lack of leadership adroitness at ENB.

[aileen]

What other dance company puts employee feedback in the public domain? I really am curious about who you are, Solor, as you keep posting along similar lines and seem to have some personal animosity towards Tamara Rojo.

 

I think that this thread should be closed now as it's becoming repetitive and unproductive 

[capybara]

ENB has now updated its list of dancers on its website: https://www.ballet.org.uk/the-company/dancers/

 

 

[Solor]

Hello Aileen,

 

I am not quite sure what you mean by "you keep posting along similar lines" - I have made just two posts, one in each thread, as opposed to your 3,990 posts. I don't think two posts is excessive is it? I'm just a new poster giving my own opinion on an interesting and important subject and bringing some new information about leadership issues based on my own profession. I am sorry if that is not welcome.

 

Of course everyone is entitled to say what they think but you don't have to agree with them - I thought that was the point of such a forum. It's not about any personal animosity, it's about opinions / information on the subjects at hand i.e. the situation at ENB that the leadership has the highest salary but also the highest staff turnover - in other words the biggest remuneration for the worst results in terms of people retention.

 

Regards the survey absolutely it's unusual to publish it - but other dance companies do not appear to have had the kind of retention problems over the last few years as at ENB. Turnover figures at this level are what triggers the company I work for to be called into organisations to work with their senior management on leadership style, culture, employee engagement etc to try to fix the issue.

Edited August 30, 2017 by Solor

[MAB]

Thanks, Capybara, notice Lauretta Summerscales and Irek Mukhamedov are both listed, very glad they haven't completely severed their ties.

[MAB]

1 hour ago, aileen said:

What other dance company puts employee feedback in the public domain? I really am curious about who you are, Solor, as you keep posting along similar lines and seem to have some personal animosity towards Tamara Rojo.

 

 

Solor isn't the first poster to make a debut on these ENB threads,  the high number of company leavers is a hot topic in the dance world in general, not just among those offering thoughts on this forum.

[aileen]

Solor, I don't agree that ENB has had a retention problem 'over the last few years'. The number of departures this year is unusually high which is or may be a cause for concern; I can't say as I have no inside knowledge. A company like ENB with its more restricted rep, gruelling schedule and touring commitments will always lose dancers who move onto pastures new. Carlos Acosta and Maria Kotchekova, among others, as well as TR herself, passed through ENB more than a decade ago en route to other companies. If you look at the other companies (with the possible exception of the RB) they all have a fair number of departures, sometimes quite a few in some years (e.g. NB 'lost' about a dozen - and it was a smaller company at the time - a couple of years ago). 

 

I just think that the discussion about TR's salary has been exhausted now.

[MAB]

In a short space of time over half the company has left and all but one member of the teaching staff, I call that a retention problem.  Please bear in mind that many dancers have joined and left during that period too.  Whatever the reason it must be hard for young dancers to even find accommodation in such an overpriced city as London, I'd be thinking of throwing the towel in too if I discovered that while my own wages were stagnating, the boss's wages were soaring.

[blackdove]

3 hours ago, aileen said:

What other dance company puts employee feedback in the public domain? I really am curious about who you are, Solor, as you keep posting along similar lines and seem to have some personal animosity towards Tamara Rojo.

 

I think that this thread should be closed now as it's becoming repetitive and unproductive 

How right you are aileen

[capybara]

ENB has posted on its Facebook page that the following dancers have also joined the Company as Artists:   Matthew Astley (Ballet du Capitole du Toulouse),  Fernando Carratala Coloma (Victor Ullate Ballet),  Noam Durand (San Francisco Ballet School),  Victor Prigent (Atlanta Ballet 2) and William Simmons (Estonian National Ballet).

[capybara]

Joseph Caley (ex BRB), who joined ENB last summer as a Principal, was promoted to Lead Principal on stage tonight after his appearance as The Nephew/Prince in The Nutcracker.

[Jan McNulty]

And the official press release:  

 

Joseph Caley to be promoted to Lead Principal of English National Ballet. 

 

Tamara Rojo CBE, Artistic Director of English National Ballet, has today (Wednesday 13 December) announced that Joseph Caley has been promoted to Lead Principal of English National Ballet. 

 

Joining Caley backstage following his performance as the Nephew in Nutcracker at the London Coliseum, Rojo announced his promotion in front of the Company. 

 

Of Caley, Tamara Rojo CBE said: “Joe has made a wonderful contribution to English National Ballet in the few months since he joined, performing a variety of lead roles including James in La Sylphide, The Man in Song of the Earth, Romeo in Nureyev’s Romeo & Juliet, and the Nephew in Nutcracker. 

 

“In recognition of his incredible talent and professionalism I am thrilled to promote Joe to Lead Principal. I am in no doubt that he will continue to delight audiences throughout the upcoming season.” 

 

Born in Hull, Caley trained at the Royal Ballet School. He joined Birmingham Royal Ballet in 2005, and was promoted to Principal in 2011. He joined English National Ballet as Principal at the start of the 2017/2018 season. As a student, he was awarded medals in the Young British Dancer, Adeline Genée Awards and won a scholarship at the Prix de Lausanne. 

 

Caley recently performed in Opening the New as part of Hull UK City of Culture 2017. He has been a guest artist with The Australian Ballet and with Star Dancer Ballet in Japan with Miyako Yoshida. 

 

Caley performs in Nutcracker, Song of the Earth, La Sylphide, and Le Jeunne Homme et la Mort at the London Coliseum this winter. Full casting details can be found here; www.ballet.org.uk. Caley’s promotion takes effect from 20 January 2018. 

[Sim]

Many congratulations to Joe Caley.  Great news!