On Ballerinas

and ballet's tragic womanhood

I recently went to the ballet in London, or as I call it, skinny white women dancing¹.

It was only the second time I’d seen a ballet performance, the first being in Perth with an old rig-worker colleague. I think we were attempting to be cultured, but neither of us knew what on earth was going on, and I fear I fell asleep in the second act. Fortunately, this time it was a performance of ‘Cinderella’, and I was successfully able to follow the children’s fairytale, told in silent movie, dance form.

That said, I spent most of the show pondering ballet as an art, its influence on (white) womanhood, and reflecting on a lifetime spent outside those bounds.

the prince and cinderella, from the royal ballet website.

Europe’s Elitist Dance Form

Ballet is deeply European. It began in the Italian Renaissance period of the 15th and 16th centuries as court entertainment and later spread to France, via the influence of the slightly terrifying Catherine de' Medici. One of the Louis founded the first professional theatrical ballet company, the Paris Opera Ballet, in the late 17th century (thus all the French vocab), and it soon spread to Denmark, Russia, and so on.

Ballet cannot be separated from its European roots, nor from its aristocratic ones. It is a profoundly elitist art form and seems to be quite comfortable, proud even, of that fact. Fine - it is what it is. What I find fascinating is what has come with that: the idea of the ballerina as the ideal, and how that influences the concept of (white) womanhood as a whole.

“Perfection is perhaps the key term that ballet is centered around. It is the nature of ballet i.e. perfect balletic lines, perfect angles of the body, perfect movement quality and so on and so forth. Perfection is expected of ballet dancers more so than of any other profession because dancers are supposed to be able to do what no one else can; they are sublime, airy, and spiritual like ghosts.”

These are the words of young Alessandra Ortiz, a dancer writing for the Worldwide Ballet blog at the age of 18. She echoes the same sentiment espoused by anyone in the industry - dancers, choreographers, directors alike. To be a successful ballerina, it’s not enough to move ‘precisely and artfully through space’. It is about achieving the ‘overall harmonious outline’.

‘From head to toe, limbs and torso create the illusion of continuous reach and length. Weight, with its bulk and bulges — including, yes, breasts — plays its part and can interfere with a seamless, sculptural quality,’ writes Gia Kourlas, the dance critic at the New York Times. Dancers are like elite athletes, but most importantly, you’re not allowed to show your effort. Unlike a sportsperson, Yasmine Naghdi tells the Guardian, “you have to make it look easy and not show the effort.” Naghdi is a principal dancer of the Royal Ballet.

naghdi in the firebird in 2019. photograph: tristram kenton/the guardian

He Liked his Dancers Hungry

“Ballet is woman,” said George Balanchine. Known as the father of American Ballet, Balanchine is considered one of the most influential figures in 20th century dance (I’m going to say ‘white dance’, because, well— let’s not universalise unless necessary). He ‘co-founded America's first world-class ballet school, choreographed more than 400 works for the stage…and died an undisputed modern master,’ writes Elizabeth Kiem.

But generations have paid for his artistic legacy, because the man who choreographed more ballets than anyone else was only creating for one type of ballerina: “leggy, linear, musical, unsentimental, elegant, and, of course, untouchably beautiful.”

Balanchine liked his dancers hungry, writes Chiara Greco. That was seen as fine, aspirational even. Everything that I’ve read since - that ballerinas starve themselves, that ballet is obsessed with competition, perfection, the pursuit of an angelic, almost non-existent existence - seems to accept that this is a price worth paying. There is an undercurrent of, well, we know it’s not for everyone, but…

But somehow, that’s the point. Somehow, that only adds to the allure. The constant sacrifice, the risk of injury, even death, in the pursuit of the never-quite-attainable, that is what people want! That’s what they’re signing up for. They’re not really interested in changing it. It is not attainable for all. The impossibility is the point.

But doesn’t it feel like a trap? To have the idea of perfection be a form so limiting, so constrained, requiring such effort but god forbid you break but a bead of sweat? What form of masculine excellence has such claustrophobic requirements?

Outside the Bounds

As I watched the skinny, strong ballerina twirl and twirl on stage, I couldn’t help but feel sorry for all the young girls in the audience who saw her as the goal. I couldn’t help feeling sorry for - and I know this might annoy you - all the women in the audience who saw this specific manifestation of white womenhood - thin, angelic, swept off her feet by a prince - as the best of tales, the story against which all other stories fall short.

I know, I know - how condescending of me. Who am I to tell anyone how to be, what to aspire to. I am certain that the professional ballerinas on stage love what they do. They would have to, wouldn’t they? Do work so hard, and appear so effortless? They would have to have such focus, such dedication, such craft! But something about it felt sad to me.

It felt sad that this - being small, silent - was the feminine aspiration. Being white, virginal, your worth resting entirely on your ability to control your body. Was this really is the highest form of art?

But it occurred to me, as I sat and observed, that despite growing up surrounded by these depictions of femininity as aspirational my whole life, somehow I had not absorbed them myself. I have never once thought ‘I’d like to be a ballerina’, or look like a ballerina, or even watched Center Stage (2000) and wished I was one of them. No, the world of ballet felt as relevant to me as the world of Mongolian horse racing. Interesting, but completely irrelevant to my life. A curiosity from another culture.

A quirk of not being seen within a context is the ability to act outside the bounds of its rules.

What do I mean? Well, the research has often reported on how Black women are not seen as ‘true’ women, reinforcing stereotypes and ideas about white women and justifying the mistreatment of Black women more generally.

However, at the individual level, I have found a freedom in not being seen as a ‘true woman’. Because if ‘woman’ is the above - thin, silent, virginal, ornamental - I don’t want any of it. I want to chart my own path, decide for myself what woman is.

At the very least, I want to allow myself to sweat.

1. Yes, yes, I know there are people of colour doing ballet (the royal ballet is surprisingly diverse) and men are always part of the company also. But when you think of ballet, what comes to mind?