It’s tough being the Artistic Director of The Royal Ballet. The company is on autopilot churning out tedium on tap, Wayne McGregor is your resident choreographer but he’s never there and Christopher Wheeldon is trying to poach all your best dancers.
So facing all of this stress is probably the single driving factor behind Monica Mason, the AD of The Royal Ballet, saying, to the New York Times no less, that there are more male directors of ballet companies because ; “[men are] more assertive and more competitive”.
The crazy continues with; “It’s more natural to them [men], and women very often view themselves in an assisting situation.”
Of course they do Ms Mason. While the male dancers are hard at work making dances and branding cattle the little women are on the sidelines, cooking dinner, changing nappies and doing cross stitch. Female dancers don’t have time for class because they are always at home washing clothes, ironing and making themselves look pretty for their men folk!
Men have to be more competitive in dance because, let’s face it, for every male dancer there are about 60-100 female dancers and all of that non existent competition is tough on the poor little lambs.
Some male dancers even have to put up with the ignominy of being allowed to remain in dance school when they should have been booted out for being a bit crap as many talented, unassertive, non-competitve, female dancers are kicked to the kerb for no other reason than sheer weight of numbers.
As we say in Scotland, “what utter pish!”
That there are greater numbers of male directors in dance is nothing more than the business as usual prejudice towards the male of the species when it comes to appointing those into positions of responsibility.
Most of the time Ms Mason, the women are not “assisting” they are quietly fixing the never ending procession of screw-ups perpetrated by the men in charge.
We know many talented, hard working male dancers who exercise tremendous initiative but they are far fewer in number than their female counterparts. More than a few male dancers make it through the ranks because of their chromosomes and little else, safe in the knowledge that society’s imbalances will protect them from being fired.
We strongly urge you, Ms Mason, to get your head out of the 50’s, smell the coffee and, perhaps, resign and take up knitting or something that taxes your small mind a little less.