Welcome to the Quillette Podcast, which is usually hosted on alternate weeks by me, Jonathan Kay, and by Iona Italia. Quillette is where free thought lives. We are an independent, grassroots platform for heterodox ideas and fearless commentary.

If you’ve been following Quillette for a while, you’ll know that through the years, we’ve often covered stories involving professional subcultures that get captured by fringe ideologues, who leverage their professional power to bully others into ideological compliance—often on issues connected to race, gender, or, more recently, the Middle East.

And a disproportionate number of these stories involve the arts—literature, music, theatre, and—in the case of the story you’re about to hear, modern dance.

My guest this week is British dancer and choreographer Rosie Kay, who learned the hard way in the late 2010s and early 2020s that her progressive dancing milieu had little tolerance for women, such as herself, who sought to reserve female dressing rooms for female dancers—as opposed to biological men who self-identify as trans women or non-binary.

And after enduring a period of “cancellation,” Rosie decided to do something about the situation. Along with former government worker Denise Fahmy—whom you’ll hear more about during the podcast—Rosie started up Freedom in the Arts, a group dedicated to studying and exposing the degree to which artists in the UK feel pressured into toeing the ideological line on sensitive social issues.

Recently, they published a report called Afraid to Speak Freely, which details survey data from hundreds of their fellow artists. They did a similar survey back in 2020, and the trends discussed are worryingly similar. Many British artists, it seems, feel they have to keep their mouths shut about their opinions—or, in some cases, even say things they don’t believe, as the price of keeping their careers alive in sensitive artistic fields.

Please enjoy my interview with dancer, choreographer, and Freedom in the Arts founder Rosie Kay.