A costume designer filed a lawsuit saying the company discriminated against her because she is a mother.
When Barbara Delo, a costume designer, got an offer last year to join the Paul Taylor Dance Company, one of New York’s most prestigious troupes, she thought she had landed a dream job. But she soon began to feel uneasy.
Delo, 32, who had just given birth to her first child, said she believed the company was routinely discriminating against her because she was a mother. The company did not provide her a private space to pump breast milk as required by state law, she said, and its executive director expressed displeasure when she brought her daughter on company tours.
She was fired in July, she said, after less than a year with the company.
On Thursday, Delo brought a lawsuit against the company and its executive director, John Tomlinson, in Federal District Court in Manhattan, contending that she was wrongfully dismissed. In the suit, she describes a hostile work environment that left her in a state of “emotional and physical distress.”
“They were making me feel so bad and so worthless,” Delo said in an interview. “That because I had become a mother, that I was somehow not as good in my job anymore.”
Paul Taylor Dance Company, named for the renowned modern dance choreographer, did not comment on the lawsuit after receiving several requests on Thursday.
The dispute touches on issues of motherhood in the workplace that have persisted in the dance industry, where many women say they feel pressure to delay pregnancy to avoid disrupting relatively short careers as dancers.
Delo is not the only former employee accusing Paul Taylor Dance Company of discrimination. Stacey-Jo Marine, 54, a production manager who left the company in May after filing a complaint of verbal harassment, recently submitted a grievance with the New York State Division of Human Rights that says she felt forced out of her job because of her gender.
The company has denied Marine’s accusations, which are also described in Delo’s lawsuit. In responding to Marine’s filing with the state, the company’s lawyers said that she had not raised concerns about gender discrimination while she was employed there, and that she had left voluntarily.
Delo said her troubles began in September 2021, almost as soon as she started her job, which paid $78,000 a year.
According to the lawsuit, Tomlinson, the executive director, criticized Delo at a meeting for bringing her infant daughter on a company tour to Washington. At the meeting, the lawsuit says, Tomlinson said that the company had a strict “separation of church and state” on family matters and that children were barred from any work space because they could be distracting.
In the lawsuit, Delo said her husband, who also worked for the company, did not face similar criticism when he brought their daughter to the office. Delo brought her daughter on eight company tours, according to Wigdor, the New York firm representing her. Marine, who helped hire Delo, corroborated some of her account in an interview, saying that she recalled hearing Tomlinson speak dismissively of Delo and calling her a “liability” because she was a mother.
After a couple of months in the job, the lawsuit says, Delo inquired about the company’s policies on pumping breast milk in the office and provided a copy of New York State laws on the rights of nursing mothers. “I have no concerns about it, our company has no policy applicable to it, and our company is fine with your actions and New York State’s laws,” Tomlinson responded in an email. Still, Delo said the company failed to provide a private space for her to pump.
Not long after the email exchange, in what Delo viewed as an act of retaliation, Tomlinson interrupted her while she was pumping milk at her desk, according to the lawsuit. Delo said Tomlinson brought repairmen into the area and at one point reached over her to make a phone call. She said Tomlinson’s actions had caused her anxiety and made it difficult for her to express milk.
“I felt like I was failing not just in my work, but I was failing as a mother because I wasn’t able to feed my daughter,” she said in the interview.
Delo said she was never given a reason for her dismissal beyond that she was not a good fit for the job. It is important, she said, for dance companies to do more to protect and support women.
“We’ve got to work to change the culture,” she said. “We have to allow people to come do the best work they can do, regardless of who they are, regardless of their gender, regardless of their status as a parent.”
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