Cancel Culture Comes For Ballet: Choreographer Lincoln Jones’s Problematic Journey

Lincoln Jones is the director of the American Contemporary Ballet Company in Los Angeles, which he co-founded in 2011. Lincoln took an unusual path to dance and has an approach to performance and stage production that is worth discussing in its own right. But he came across Meghan’s radar because of his unlikely involvement in the new free speech debates. In this conversation, Lincoln explains how that happened (spoiler alert: he didn’t want to perfunctorily post a black square on his company’s website in the summer of 2020) and talks about how even the ballet world has been affected by the censoriousness of the current moment. Most of all, though, he talks about dance. In a conversation unlike you’ve heard on The Unspeakable, Lincoln talks about what choreography means to him, especially the choreography and dance of Fred Astaire, and about how movement maps onto the human experience and translates to the stage. 

In the bonus portion for paying subscribers at https://meghandaum.substack.com Lincoln shares his feelings about his age–47 years old–and talks about how awareness of his mortality is fueling his work. He offers his opinion about TikTok dances, Michael Jackson, and discloses how he really feels about the film LaLa Land.

Guest Bio:

Lincoln Jones is the director of the American Contemporary Ballet Company in Los Angeles. Learn more about the company at https://www.acbdances.com.