New York City Ballet Dancers Boycotted the Company’s Fall Gala
On Wednesday night, New York City Ballet hosted its annual Fall Fashion Gala, the glitziest event on the company’s social calendar. Beloved by ballet regulars like Sarah Jessica Parker and her husband, Matthew Broderick, the fundraiser also counted Julia Fox, Mick Jagger, Olivia Palermo, and Amy Sedaris among its attendees. But while vice-chair of the NYCB board SJP was twirling in her winged Iris van Herpen gown on the red carpet, one crucial block of attendees was noticeably absent from the affair: the City Ballet dancers. That’s because one hour before the event, the company members, who are affiliated with the American Guild of Musical Artists, announced that they were boycotting the red carpet and dinner portion of the evening as they continue to fight for much-needed pay increases. In a letter addressed to City Ballet management Wednesday, the AGMA members wrote: “While we wish we could celebrate with the donors who help make this institution so great, the artists cannot celebrate when our needs have not been met.”
“We made the collective decision not to attend the dinner or walk the red carpet because we wanted our absence to be felt,” the group said in a statement to the New York Times, though they still fulfilled their contractual obligations to perform at the gala. “We hoped to demonstrate, respectfully but unmistakably, how essential the artists are to this company — and how undervalued we currently feel.”
According to the letter, the dancers have been negotiating a new contract since May. Their previous three-year agreement expired on August 31, and the union members were still in bargaining sessions with company management as recently as Monday, October 6. Chief among their concerns are an increase in compensation to offset the rising costs of inflation in New York. In their letter, the group said that management’s latest economic proposals “fall far short of what AGMA Artists at nearly any other dance company nationwide have secured over the past twelve months, despite most of those companies operating without the financial stability that NYCB enjoys.” The letter was signed by prominent company members from the corps de ballet all the way up to its principal dancers, including Gilbert Bolden III, India Bradley, Megan Fairchild, Miriam Miller, Unity Phelan, Sara Mearns, Tiler Peck, Indiana Woodward, and Roman Mejia.
The gala still managed to attract its usual flashy set of socialites and rock stars. But several attendees told “Page Six” that they arrived at the post-performance dinner only to find empty seats where the dancers were intended to sit. One source said that the company “may have scrambled to fix some, but the [place cards] in my section were still there.”
In an interview with the Times on Wednesday, Diana L. Taylor, the chair of the ballet’s board of directors, said that the dancers “are going to do what they want to do.” It is what it is,” Taylor added. “We’re sad that they’re not here, but they did an amazing job tonight.”
“Yes, the dancers chose not to walk the red carpet or attend the dinner, but the show and post-performance dinner, with more than 800 guests in attendance, went on as planned,” a spokesperson for City Ballet told “Page Six” in a statement. “NYCB management looks forward to returning to the bargaining table and reaching a mutually beneficial agreement for all involved.”
Meanwhile, the dancers — some of the most highly skilled artists both in the country and in the dance form at large — are telling a different story. Fairchild, a principal dancer with the company for more than two decades who in April announced her upcoming retirement, spoke out about the negotiations on Instagram on Friday. “It seems the event went on, and people tried not to notice,” she wrote. “I woke up a little disheartened, feeling like an organization that is based solely on the artistic achievements of the dancers doesn’t care when those same artists take movements to be heard. Artistic leadership skipped the speeches before the show, which usually talk about how much the company raised that night — usually well over a million dollars.”
“What the Artists are asking for is the bare minimum. This contract will be in effect after I’m gone, but it matters to me that Artists, current and future, are respected,” Fairchild went on. “All to say: In the history of NYCB, the dancers have never had to escalate to this point.”
“Everyone should be talking about this, because the dancers matter,” the 41-year-old concluded. “As a leader in the ballet world, I would hope we would set a better example of how much we value the Artists who make nights like Fall Fashion Gala possible.”
The Cut has reached out to AGMA and New York City Ballet for comment and will update this post if we hear back.
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