IDEA Newsletter - July & August 2021 |  View in browser

Pacific Northwest Ballet

Image Description: Kiyon Ross, a Black man wearing a red striped shirt, grey pants, black shoes, a black mask over his nose and mouth, and a white sweater tied around his waist. He is standing with both hands on a ballet barre in front of a wall of mirrors in a dance studio with a grey floor, and dark and light grey and red rectangles on the white walls. Kiyon is surrounded by eight ballet students. The students are wearing white shirts, black leggings, and white socks and soft ballet shoes and have masks of various colors over their noses and mouths. Kiyon and the students stand with their feet in a first position plie with their feet flat on the floor, heels together and their knees bent.

July & August IDEAs

 Each month the IDEA (Inclusion, Diversity, Equity, and Accessibility) Newsletter will give you updates from PNB's IDEA Committee and Board EDI Task Force, along with PNB events, resources like workshop opportunities, and book recommendations. 


We want your submissions to include in future issues! 


PNB is Listening - Latinx

Image Description: The four headshots of Ana María Campoy, Clara Ruf Maldonado, Amanda Morgan, and Sarah-Gabrielle Ryan are cropped into circles and sit on a square background with darker pink on the bottom and lighter pink at the top. At the top of the graphic is the PNB is Listening Series dark pink logo.

PNB is Listening - Latinx

Theater artist and activist Ana María Campoy recently met with PNB dancers Amanda Morgan, Clara Ruf Maldonado, and Sarah-Gabrielle Ryan for a rich conversation about their respective Chicana and Latinx heritages, how their identities inform their dancing, and their advice to young dancers today. Click here to enjoy their conversation!

PNB is Listening is an ongoing collaboration between PNB artists and staff, highlighting diverse voices within our community. Do you have a story or lived experience you'd like to share? Email Kristen Ramer Liang at kliang@pnb.org for more information.

Kinetic Light

Image Description: A still from “Revel in Your Body”. Alice Sheppard, a multiracial Black woman with short curly hair, and Laurel Lawson, a white woman with very short cropped teal hair, fly through a cloudless blue sky in their chairs. Laurel is facing the camera, Alice is facing away; both have arms stretched high. They are both wearing silver sleeveless tops and shimmery copper leggings. They embody pure joy. (Image and description courtesy of Kinetic Light.)

July is Disability Pride Month

Disability Pride Month is a month that focuses on the disability community and, "celebrate the pride disabled people have as people with disabilities." This Forbes article and this USA Today article have more detailed information and history of Disability Pride Month. 

We would like to highlight the work of Kinetic Light. The company, "creates, performs, and teaches at the nexus of access, disability, dance, and race. Disability is not the deficit of diagnosis. In our work, intersectional disability is an aesthetic, a culture, and an essential element of our artistry. Access is a central part of the art and [Kinetic Light's] creative process."

DanceChance Summer

Image Description: Kiyon Ross, a Black man, stands with his arms over his head in a port a bras in a dance studio with a grey floor, dark and light grey and red rectangles on the white walls, with two metal ballet barres horizontal to the ground. He is surrounded by four young dance students who have their arms up in the same shape as Kiyon's. Kiyon is wearing a red striped shirt and dark grey pants with a white sweater tied around his waist. The students are all wearing white shirts, black leggings, and white socks and soft ballet shoes. Everyone is wearing a mask over their nose and mouth.

DanceChance Summer

Kiyon Ross, Director of Company Operations at PNB, is back in our studios teaching the first summer session of DanceChance! We are pleased to add a new DanceChance Level III for fall, extending the DanceChance experience from two years to three. A new cohort of DanceChance Level I will be joining in September for the Fall Introductory Session.

Seattle Arts Voter Guide

Image Description: A bright yellow square with bold black text that says, "Seattle Arts Voter Guide." The words, "Connect. Dialogue. Engage. Vote!" are underneath in smaller text.

Seattle Arts Voter Guide

The nonpartisan Seattle Arts Voter Guide from the Program in Arts Leadership at Seattle University engages political candidates and community members on critical issues in the arts ahead of municipal elections, including the 2021 Primary Election. They ask: How do Seattle residents envision arts for the city?


Racial Equity Training continues!

On August 20, PNB will host our next full-day racial equity training over Zoom for employees led by members of the IDEA Training Sub-committee and facilitated by fellow PNB employees. 

These trainings center on the documentary RACE—The Power of an Illusiona three-part series which asks a question so basic it’s rarely raised: What is this thing called ‘race’? What we discovered was that many of our conventional assumptions about race—for instance, that the world's peoples can be divided biologically along racial lines—are wrong. Yet the costs of racism are very real, and can even have biological consequences.


Join PNB's Inclusion, Diversity, Equity, and Accessibility (IDEA) Committee as an at-large member!

The IDEA Committee is encouraging “at-large” membership in an effort to include and make use of the many valuable perspectives, life experiences and skill sets of our larger PNB community. 

Some examples of ways that “at-large” members could participate include: 

•  Bringing ideas to the IDEA Committee for any of the subcommittees to work on.
•  Offering to help with specific committee needs (ie. language translation, event planning).
•  Supporting specific events (ie. extra hands on deck for Community Engagement events). 
•  Participating in the IDEA Committee’s monthly media club activities (ie. book club readings and discussions). 
•  Volunteering as a facilitator for IDEA Committee’s trainings of PNB staff.
•  Submitting stories, events, and resources that could be shared in the monthly IDEA newsletters

Contact IDEA Committee co-leads Naomi Glass (she/her) at nglass@pnb.org or Kiyon Ross (he/his) at kross@pnb.org for more information!


Did you know?

People sometimes use Hispanic and Latinx interchangeably – but they’re not the same at all. As you’ll hear in our latest PNB is Listening panel, the term “Hispanic” refers to a shared language, and includes Spanish-speaking people from Spain and Latin American countries where Spanish is spoken, but excludes countries that speak languages other than Spanish. The term “Latinx” is a non-binary, inclusive term that refers to a tie to the land, including countries that were formerly colonized by Spain. Both Latinx and another term you’ll hear in the panel, Latinidad, refer to a spectrum of races, countries, and languages that all have a tie to a culture or place.
Click here to watch the Latinx Artists PNB is Listening panel and learn more!