Something is happening in Louisville, Kentucky. If you haven’t read, the Louisville Ballet was the target of homophobic hate-mail from a “prominent member of the community” as a result of a postcard for the upcoming season, which featured two men holding hands to advertise Human Abstract, a contemporary ballet featuring a “story of love and loss ” between two men.
The community has rallied around the company in support, and the performance was met with raving reviews. The doctor who wrote the email above lost his job as an editor with the American Heart Association’s journal Circulation Research but retained his job on the faculty of the University of Louisville School of Medicine. You can read a response from the AHA here.
Arts Writing is Dead posted the letter and also a trilogy of response articles from different angles here, here, and here.
I am astounded that self-proclaimed “supporters of the arts” could spout such vitriol; however, the response of the Louisville community in support of the company and performance warms my heart. Not only did Dr. Bolli’s email “out” him as a bigot, but he unintentionally put the Louisville Ballet and Human Abstract in the news, bringing attention to the resilience and talent of the company members and the instution itself.
A review of the piece here:
https://wfpl.org/review-human-abstract-is-tangible-evidence-of-louisville-ballets-vision/