The politics of dance
All works are a product of their context – the part of a society that decides who is given space, trust, and long-term visibility. The question of who can reach high-up artistic positions is neither neutral nor a given. It is the result of the interplay between several variables that inherently include how educational structures work, institutionalized habits, and the deeper, often overlooked social expectation of what the “ideal artist” looks like: how smoothly they navigate the system and how little their life impacts on their way of working. It is here that the politics of dance and theatre reveals itself most clearly – long before the performance itself is created.
Structural discrimination of women?
Quantitative data shows an explicit and long-standing discrep-ancy: women make up the majority of graduates in the directo-rial and choreographic fields at Czech universities (56% between 2004 and 2024), but represent a much smaller share of lead crea-tive roles at institutional theatres (21% between 2014 and 2024). So it is not that this is a temporary situation or a case of “genera-tional lag”. If that were the case, the data would show a gradual evening out. That is not happening.
The local independent scene offers an interesting contrast, where female representation in directorial and choreographic positions is much higher (43% between 2014 and 2024), more closely cor-relating with the ratio of graduates. This difference shows that the problem is not the lack of female artists, but a deeper structural imbalance.
Discussions with female artists further cements this hypothesis. The independent scene – despite the economic uncertainty – often facilitates more flexible working arrangements, a different rela-tionship with time, and a greater openness to various living situations. In contrast, the institutionalized environment operates on an assumption of constant availability, long-term planning, and an uninterrupted career path.
It is here that the key difference begins to emerge: not in the qual-ity of the art, but in the compatibility of certain lived experiences with institutional demands. The difference between the inde-pendent and institutional scene become an important means of understanding the political character of the cultural production system itself. This does not necessarily mean open discrimination or individual failure, but rather the structural underpinning of institutions that deem certain lived experiences incompatible with artistic pursuits. One theme in particular came up repeated-ly and with a particular urgency in our discussions: motherhood. This emerged as the key point around which the structural im-balances of the institutional environment most clearly centred.
The artistic sphere often likes to view itself as intellectual and progressive precisely because it regularly tackles issues of value and conflict. How can it be then, that institutions which profess an openness and sensitivity to contemporary issues, can also systematically marginalize experiences of care – and what does this mean for the distribution of opportunities, visibility, and authorship in the artistic environment?