Mick Hartley

Last year choreographer Rosie Kay was forced out of her dance company when she voiced gender-critical beliefs. She speaks to Brendan O'Neill at Spiked.

She's hosting a party for her young dancers….

Then, very late in the night – about 1.30am or 2am – they asked me what my next show was. I said I was just about to put out audition notices for the main role of Orlando. I was going to do an adaptation of this incredible, witty Virginia Woolf novel, where the eponymous hero starts off as a male aristocrat and halfway through he transforms into a woman. So we began to talk about who could, should or must play that role. I was pretty easy – I felt like it just needed to be someone extraordinary. But then it became a discussion around sex and gender and it got quite heated quite quickly. I felt like I was the only one who was actually standing up for women, considering the repercussions of these ideas. And the more I tried to explain why I thought these ideas could be a danger to women’s rights and to children, the worse it got. I was genuinely shocked at how far down the ideological road they had gone.

At first, I thought it would all blow over. But then my board and my management got involved. It just got worse and worse and worse. I went through two separate investigations. I was exonerated by the first one and we did another load of shows. Then one of the dancers appealed and so suddenly expensive lawyers and HR consultants were involved. I then lost complete trust in my management. I got two separate legal opinions and I resigned from my own company, citing constructive dismissal….

Later on, my lawyer and I did a subject-access request and we learned that my managers thought I would need to be re-educated. There was a discussion between my chair and my manager about what kind of re-education programme would be most suitable, whether it be from Mermaids or Gendered Intelligence. And I know all about these organisations. There was this moment of lucidity where the manager said: ‘But of course Rosie is better read than most of these trainers would ever be and would run rings around them.’ Damn right I would. But they clearly had this sense that my ideas were so dangerous that they needed to be nipped in the bud.

As usual there's no question of a debate. These opinions are so outrageous, so threatening, that silencing and re-education are seen as the only options.

At the time, I thought everyone had just completely lost their minds. Now I realise this kind of thing is happening a lot in the arts and it is much worse than I thought. It’s really like a new religion. I’m surprised at how few artists have spoken out. There are so many brilliant, intelligent artists. They cannot surely all agree with this. Or are a lot of people just deliberately staying quiet?

Yes, they are. Though the tide is turning…