The Sad Choreography of Systemic Misconduct, from Cause to Affect

Abstract

The high prevalence of workplace sexual misconduct in Euro-American dance has been widely known yet seldom discussed throughout its history. However, in recent years, whistleblowers have disclosed misconduct at multiple large dance institutions across the United States, Britain, and Canada. These reported cases have inspired a considerable reckoning in the dance community, their acknowledgment having been met with increasing calls for institutional change. In ‘The Sad Choreography of Systemic Misconduct, From Cause to Affect’, author Martin Austin examines how misconduct occurs at seven Euro-American dance institutions as a choreography repeated with devastating similarity across cases. This critical essay does so by finding commonalities between whistleblower testimonies reported to print media platforms between 2018 and 2022. The institutionalized differentials in power, relational proximity between bodies, and sequence of violence conducted by perpetrators together amount to a choreography that systemizes how dancers experience misconduct by their superiors. For Baruch de Spinoza, sadness is the root of all negative affects including hatred, fear, and more. Sadness is theorized as being caused by a lack of agency: much like what is experienced by survivors in these acts of misconduct. Yet because this sadness is shared by past victims and allies alike, it may also be capable of uniting dancers to demand accountability and change in dance's institutionalized practices. If sadness is caused by misconduct, that sadness can also be affectively witnessed, felt, and compounded by others when survivors choose to share their experiences. This article therefore aims to catalogue the stories of survivors, and harness the sadness felt by readers to bolster a collective movement to change Euro-American dance institutions' problematic practices.