Eighteen – nearly half, including its top two female principals – are quitting.
By Carrie Seidman/Suncoast Searchlight
Original Air Date: June 18, 2025
Host: Over the past two decades, The Sarasota Ballet has transformed from a little-known regional troupe to an internationally acclaimed draw largely thanks to the effort of Director Iain Webb and his wife, Assistant Director Margaret Barbieri. The couple have made the ballets of British choreographer Sir Frederick Ashton the company’s signature. But that winning formula now appears to be faltering. Carrie Seidman reports, via Suncoast Searchlight.
Voice over: Two households, both alike in dignity,
In fair Verona, where we lay our scene,
From ancient grudge break to new mutiny.
Sir Frederick Ashton’s Romeo and Juliet, the classic story ballet set to Prokofiev’s powerful score. Steel against steel. Brother against brother. This is war. This is fate. A love born to die.
Carrie Seidman: This is a dramatic scene setting from a recent Sarasota Ballet promotion for its production of Romeo and Juliet. But as it happens, there’s also drama and intrigue behind the scenes.
Macarena Gimenez and her husband, Maximiliano Iglesias, in a promotional image from Romeo and Juliet. Photo by Frank Atura for Sarasota Ballet via Suncoast Searchlight
Nearly half the company’s dancers—including its top two female principals—have left the organization. That’s after a season marked by strained relationships with leadership, internal strife and what the dancers describe as a toxic work culture.
The exodus cannot be attributed simply to attrition, a labor dispute or artistic sensibilities.
Interviews with 13 of 18 departing dancers detail an environment of fear, favoritism and frustration. They claim it is perpetuated by the very leadership that helped raise the company’s profile. All declined to have their names published, citing “career suicide.” But their statements were corroborative and in line with sentiments expressed by a former Sarasota Ballet dancer who was willing to go on the record.
Among the dancers’ complaints: Tempestuous outbursts and harsh verbal attacks by the director, often in front of colleagues; casting decisions based on factors other than artistic ability, work ethic or suitability; inadequate performance preparation due to a failure to delegate responsibilities; and the squelching of individual artistic expression.
Josh Fisk danced with The Sarasota Ballet from 2022-2024. He says this is a level of dysfunction that he fully acknowledged only after spending last season with the Cincinnati Ballet. There, he said, he not only enjoys better pay, shorter hours and a new purpose-built facility, but an “open door” policy between dancers, staff and leadership.
Misa Kuranaga and Nelson Madrigal in “Romeo and Juliet.” Photo by Roaslie O’Connor, courtesy of Boston Ballet via Suncoast Searchlight
Fisk said, in his words, in Cincinnati, “there’s a higher level of respect from the artistic staff. In Sarasota, it was a blame game.”
He said, “In Sarasota, a meeting ‘upstairs’ was never a good thing. My director now is super receptive and happy to talk about concerns anytime. We all—the dancers, the staff, the administration—work together to produce the best possible result.”
The mass exodus has put The Sarasota Ballet in a precarious position. In addition to the two exiting principal ballerinas—Macarena Gimenez and Jennifer Hackbarth—five of the company’s seven soloists are gone. This comes as the company heads toward a mid-July engagement at the prestigious Jacob’s Pillow dance festival in Massachusetts.
Misa Kuranaga. Photo from Sarasota Ballet via Suncoast Searchlight
The company declined to say if it has hired any new dancers, but its website states it is “looking for Principal and Soloist dancers.” In a press release issued recently it announced that Misa Kuranaga will appear in the performance at Jacob’s Pillow as a “resident guest principal,” as well as in three other programs during the upcoming Sarasota season. Kuranaga is a principal with the San Francisco Ballet who has guested with the troupe previously,
The departures have come with consequences for the dancers, too. Among them, only Gimenez is going to a more prestigious company, the Miami City Ballet. Her husband, Maximiliano Iglesias, a Sarasota principal, was not offered a position in Miami and declined a contract renewal in Sarasota, leaving him unemployed. Others either are going to smaller companies or have no job prospects at all.
Director Webb and Executive Director Joseph Volpe declined to answer questions, saying in a statement that it “would be inappropriate and unprofessional to discuss our dancers’ abilities, attributes or frailties publicly.”
The president of the ballet’s board of directors, Sandra DeFeo, also did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
Jennifer Hackbarth and Ricardo Rhodes, in a promotional image. Photo by Frank Atura for the Sarasota Ballet via Suncoast Searchlight
Dancers still profess respect for Webb and Barbieri’s careers as dancers, for their depth of historical knowledge, and for the attention the company has received. This is not a personal attack or vendetta, they insist; it is a plea for mutual professional respect.
Said one dancer, “Even if I cried every day for two years, I don’t hate them. I hate the way I was treated.”
To be sure, ballet companies are notoriously places of drama and tumult. But in this case, the dancers said, the breakdown in relations and communications was not amongst themselves, but between artistic management and dancers. And that created a culture of unpredictability, hostility and retaliation.
In choosing to publicly share their concerns, the dancers said they hope The Sarasota Ballet can again become the “dream” workplace they thought it was when they accepted contracts here.
Webb and Barbieri “have achieved an incredible thing,” acknowledged a longtime company member. “They took a company no one had heard of and gave it international acclaim, which is no mean feat. But the company has changed and they haven’t. I would love to see a development in their artistic vision.”
Reporting for Suncoast Searchlight, I’m Carrie Seidman. To read the full report, go to suncoastsearchlight.org/sarasota-ballet-dancers-exit-toxic-culture.
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