Today Sarah and Courtney spoke with Zachary Whittenburg about many areas of ballet culture: hiring practices, company structure, inclusivity, and how all of that ties into the mental health of dancers. Zac spent ten years as a professional dancer followed by a freelance career including performance, teaching, and choreographic work with many prominent companies including Hubbard Street Dance Chicago, BJM Danse Montréal, Pacific Northwest Ballet, and North Carolina Dance Theatre, now Charlotte Ballet. Zac is a regular contributor to Dance Magazine, a panelist and guest speaker, and tweets @trailerpilot about contemporary culture, politics, and the performing arts. Founding board secretary for the Chicago Dance History Project, he serves on the artistic advisory council for High Concept Labs, and consults on a variety of programs for artist support and equitable funding in the cultural sector. As associate director of marketing and communication at Hubbard Street, he represented the company on the Chicago Dancemakers Forum consortium. As communications and engagement director at Arts Alliance Illinois, he helped promote the value of the arts and give voice to a creative state. You can follow Zac at @trailerpilot On Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/trailerpilot/ On Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/trailerpilot On Twitter: https://twitter.com/trailerpilot Please remember that Sarah and Courtney are mental health professionals, and anything you hear them say are experiences from their lives and should not be considered medical advice. If you are in crisis, please call 1-800-273-TALK (8255) to reach a 24-hour crisis center, text MHA to 741741, call 911, or go to the nearest emergency room. To find a local MHA affiliate who can provide services, check out https://www.mhanational.org/ Theme music is, "A Journey" by Kevin Hartnell It has been edited and reproduced under the Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-SA 4.0). Follow us on Instagram! Dance; Better Podcast @dancebetterpodcast Courtney @courtulrich Sarah @techballet Send in your questions or episode suggestions to [email protected] If you relate and found this episode helpful, please click follow/subscribe and leave us a review. (We might even read it on the next episode!) This helps to make our show more searchable, and will make it more accessible to more people...plus, we’d love to hear from you!