Relax…today’s ethics quiz has nothing to do with whether Jill Biden’s Christmas video featuring the modern ballet troupe Dorrance Dance is your cup of eggnog.
Rather it is this…
Is it responsible and ethical for the White House to use the holidays to promote a politically radical, anti-police, anti-white, Marxist organization like Dorrance Dance?
For Dorrance Dance is an overtly and outspokenly Marxist dance company that even prominently displays a quote from Angela Davis on its website: “You have to act as if it were possible to radically transform the world. And you have to do it all the time.” The group advocates defunding the police across the country, and prominently endorses Black Lives Matters, another Marxist organization.
The group’s radical politics are a bit buried on its website behind standard aspirational artistic blather like “Our goal is to engage with audiences on a musical and emotional level, and to share the complex history and powerful legacy of this American art form throughout the country and the world.” Well, yes, that, and ending capitalism and the United States of America as we know it in order to achieve “racial justice.”
My answer to the quiz is that as long as the group keeps its politics out of its work for the White House, good luck to them. They were engaged—I hope—because of their dance artistry rather than their contempt for the United States. I wouldn’t be surprised if the Bidens had no idea what the group advocates.
Yes, it’s annoying that Dorrance Dance will undoubtedly use its White House gig as cognitive dissonance helium to elevate their public image into more positive territory than any organization connected to Angela Davis, Black Lives Matter and Karl Marx deserves. But if we chose our art based on the political sophistication and delusions of artists, we’d just end up with bad art.
Ethics Alarms 
This little dance number was covered heavily on FOX News where I rendered my opinion on the matter. However, nowhere in their coverage did they mention this dance company’s leftist politics. I think the White House’s use of this particular company is appalling, but not surprising. At the end of the day though, I was more concerned over the removal of all the scuff marks on the floors of the people’s house from all the tap dancing upon them. That is the extent of the ripple it placed upon my day.
Rose Montoya wasn’t available…?
PWS
I’ll let someone with more time and available brainpower to deal with the ethics… for me, the thing is in extremely bad taste/nouveau riche style. This is the sort of thing the previous occupant of the White House was accused of having. That it is happening now is offensive to any sane person’s aesthetic sensibilities.
I heard someone comment-
Humans have been hardwired since caveman times to detect when things aren’t right in their environment and surroundings. They had to develop this instinct to survive.
Today- that gut instinct often manifests as when something feels creepy it probably is creepy.
And, my man, Jill Biden’s Christmas display and that dance thing felt flat out creepy.
Tap dancing to Tchaikovskv? Seems like cultural appropriation.
The question: Is it responsible and ethical for the White House to use the holidays to promote a politically radical, anti-police, anti-white, Marxist organization like Dorrance Dance?
For most of the western world, the holidays are a time for taking stock of that which we are blessed and goodwill to all. It seems like the administration evaluates the world through a consumer and political lens. Using this particular dance troupe at this time was probably ill considered but that is typical of the Biden administration. I would have thought that their would have been other events the group could have been invited to perform as part of an overall effort to have diversity in art.
The political philosophy of the troupe might be taken more seriously if they were performing for the inmates at Rikers or Sing Sing as they want to eliminate prisons and replace it with restorative justice. It’s easy to claim a position but few actually do anything of substance to make people better off. So to me most activists are simply grifters who use an issue to make a name for themselves.
I don’t know if callous stupidity constitutes being unethical but I am not going to let the Biden family get under my skin on this one. It’s Christmas, and a time to focus on the good and not the bad.
Any dance troupe touting itself as ‘anti-racist’ should not be taken seriously:
https://www.dorrancedance.com/anti-racism-books
jvb