Ashley Bouder, the Feminist Ballerina With a Mission

At the end of a two-hour rehearsal on a recent afternoon, Ashley Bouder whipped through a series of unwavering fouetté turns, then dashed to the back of the studio and — with the final notes of a racing, brassy score — collapsed to the floor.

“That was insanely amazing,” said the choreographer Lauren Lovette, who had put together those steps (dramatic fall included) just moments before. She laughed as Bouder caught her breath. “I think we can make some things a little easier.”

Bouder and Lovette, both principal dancers at New York City Ballet, were hammering out a new solo for the Ashley Bouder Project, one of five companies taking part in this summer’s Ballet Festival at the Joyce Theater. City Ballet’s six-week spring season had just ended, but these two were not taking any breaks, finding three days to rehearse together between out-of-town engagements.

It is not unusual for full-time dancers in ballet companies to strike out on their own in the offseason, exercising creative freedom in ways not always possible at their tradition-steeped institutions. But Bouder, 34, is on a mission that sets her side-project apart: To promote the work of women and other underrepresented voices in the slow-to-change world of classical ballet.

It is well known that while women dominate the ranks of ballet companies as dancers, the majority of ballet choreographers — those hired to make new works, as well as those whose works are posthumously revived — are men. The same goes for company directors (at least in the United States) including, until his recent retirement amid abuse and sexual harassment allegations, City Ballet’s Peter Martins. (The search for a new leader is underway.)

Yet while critics and choreographic initiatives have long sought to address the field’s gender inequality, it is less common for a ballerina to speak out about it publicly. That’s why it was striking when Bouder, buoyed by the #MeToo and Time’s Up movements, published an op-ed in Dance Magazine this spring, with a headline that declared, “It’s Time for Ballet to Embrace Feminism.”

In an interview at Lincoln Center, Bouder, who does not mince words, talked about the risks of broaching this subject from inside a large, highly competitive company. “I think a lot of people in companies don’t want to write about it for fear of retaliation, because we’re still very much run by men,” she said. “So if you’re a woman that speaks out, then you lose opportunities. That’s happened to me.”

She said that after years of dealing with instances of sexism, she had run out of patience: “I just don’t care anymore. It’s time to say something.”

Bouder knows she has an audience. Having joined City Ballet 18 years ago, she is one of the company’s most senior principals. Younger company members — and ballet students everywhere — look up to her. Devin Alberda, a City Ballet corps member and a dancer with the Ashley Bouder Project, described her in a phone interview as “enormously self-assured, incredibly intelligent and keenly aware of her power.”

That power, of course, also radiates onstage, where Bouder is known for her scintillating athleticism, clarity and attack. If she has earned a reputation for falling in performance, that is only a testament to how emphatically she goes for it. In the words of Lovette, 26, who grew up watching Bouder perform: “She never holds back. I think she’s fallen more often than anybody, but she also succeeds more.”

Lovette said she fully supported Bouder’s call for a more equitable field. “It’s kind of like when a politician speaks out about something you believe in, and you’re like, ‘Yeah, you say it!'”

The reluctance to speak out on divisive issues — which Bouder also does on social media, often on topics other than dance — is not just about fear of retaliation. Ballet is both a largely nonverbal art form and one that prizes conformity. “We’re used to being told to shut up and get in line and point your foot and turn out,” Bouder said, noting that this pressure tends to weigh more heavily on women, who are more easily replaced than men.

Yet just because dancers’ voices are not encouraged, she added, does not mean they do not exist: “It shouldn’t be shocking to anyone that every ballerina has a voice.” Bouder said she has always been assertive but certain life changes led her to be more vocal publicly, and to refine the mission of the Ashley Bouder Project, which she founded in 2014. One was becoming a mother two years ago. “I’m going to say what I think, because I want my daughter to live in a world that is not like mine,” she said. Her part-time studies at Fordham University, where she is a political science major, have also been eye-opening. “Starting to think about how the world works, I realized I had kind of always worked for men.”

In the past few years, works by women have become less anomalous at City Ballet; new ballets by Lovette, Annabelle Lopez Ochoa and Gianna Reisen have entered the repertory. But there is still progress to be made. Bouder said that of the 40 or so choreographers to come through City Ballet during her career, only seven have been women. And, looking back, she discovered that she had never — not once — danced to music by a female composer. She has also been paying attention to the company’s diversity initiatives. She recalled feeling cautiously hopeful last fall when a new group of apprentices joined City Ballet, and half of them weren’t white. “I walk into the studio and people don’t look the same anymore,” she said. “Everybody deserves a chance to be here.”

With the Ashley Bouder Project — which will perform at the Joyce on July 2, 3 and 5, with live music by the New York Jazzharmonic — Bouder has tried to model the gender and racial equality she would like to see in ballet at large. She chose artists whose work she had admired at City Ballet, like Lovette and Ochoa, and who would push her and her dancers out of their comfort zone, like the contemporary choreographers Liz Gerring and Abdul Latif.

In addition to Lovette’s solo, called “Red Spotted Purple” after a species of butterfly, the Joyce program includes a new pas de deux by Ochoa; Gerring’s “Duet,” created last year for two women and restaged this year with two men; a premiere by Latif, which he calls “an ode to the power of the feminine divine”; and “In Pursuit of …,” Bouder’s own 2017 ensemble work.

Joining Bouder will be a first-rate cast of mostly City Ballet corps members and apprentices, as well as her fellow principal Taylor Stanley. Four of the five works feature music by female composers, much of it newly commissioned. Ron Wasserman, who directs the 17-piece Jazzharmonic, met Bouder through his job as a bassist in City Ballet’s orchestra. As the evening’s co-producer, he said he appreciated her decisiveness in planning such an ambitious program. “She makes up her mind,” he said. “It’s risky, but it’s daring.”

Bouder said that some male colleagues have brushed off her project as trendy. “They’re like, ‘Oh yeah, every ballerina’s doing it now.'”

Her response? “Yeah, actually, we are. We finally stepped up! It took a lot of courage and a lot of time to get here. Please don’t be so dismissive.”