Funnily enough I watched this documentary about Pointe shoes by Business Insider (https://youtu.be/tn1rN0tu1Ro?si=-NTSv4dJc7hZAgo1) yesterday and I couldn’t help but feel that that the “art” that is celebrated is less so the visual performance that the audience gets to enjoy and more so the knowledge of just how gruelling and difficult it is for the dancers to present such fastidious beauty.
It is intended to represent a super-human discipline and so even by simply opting for my comfortable footwear (that would allow you to create the same output) is frowned upon and viewed as cheating.
It’s no surprise that the western beauty standards of thinness (and therefore whiteness) are so tightly embedded and really quite terrifying as you say for young girls who aspire to be like the ballerina
oh, thoroughly enjoyed that video - thank you! Fascinating to see what is explicitly celebrated is the difficulty... that more comfortable shoes are looked down upon as 'cheater' shoes!
Hi Yassmin and community! I think everything that you say is relevant and moving, especially from the perspective of young women (White or not). But it's missing a relevant comparison to any art form that might require perfection of idealisation in your own culture. Putting aside (if we can) the toxic idealisation of femininity (big big big spew), ballet is an art and discipline that made me feel, and still does, so elevated and joyful. I am Greek-Cypriot Australian, I am short and I have MASSIVE boobs, but I never felt anything other than utter transcendence, and it was the combination of discipline and movement and music that achieved that. I feel like I never absorbed the ideals of perfect womanhood either (I have always been happy with my appearance). I guess my point is, don't all forms of embodied idealisation require not only sacrifice (I don't think that's your point), but also some form of toxic transcendence, separation from messy, sweaty mortality? Why do we wear makeup? Why do we wear bras?
Hiii! Thanks for this comment ! I’d love to hear more about your love of the art and discipline and maybe why you were able to resist the ideals? I guess I haven’t heard enough stories about that… and on your second point, indeed an intriguing question! Do all embodied ideals require some sort of toxic transcendence? I don’t know - I don’t think all transcendence has to be so toxic, maybe? Prayer, meditation, other forms of faith based ideals see things differently - in Sudan the Sufi practices tend to be quite messy, so I think maybe it’s more culturally informed perhaps? But I’m happy to be proven wrong, I love this kind of back and forth! 🤩
The movement know as modern developed by pioneers Isadora Duncan, Martha Graham & my heroine Doris Humphrey. Doris believed that all movement is "rise and fall" and created a series of exercise and patterns around this. If you listen to Laurie Anderson's "Walking and Falling" you'll hear this.
Maria Tall hierarchy- a member if the Osage Nation is considered as the first Prima Ballerina in America.
Apart from Maria & Doris, these people colonised Asian and Greek and religious forsm of movement. They were not inventors - they could afford to "incorporate freedom seeing other cultures" and bring it back to the Occidental.
The internet as is should be - a digital cafe chat 💕 I really resonate with Janet Robertson's comment. To quote ABBA, I was a dancer before I could walk, and at two years old, classical ballet made me feel...well, as transcendental as a two year old can lol. Everything about it just felt so incredible; I'd say it's the equivalent of a spiritual experience. That continued and still does, even though I had to stop ballet when I was 12 because of my knees, and I'm now in my 40s. So, unlike some other people, I missed out on the toxic body image crap. However, I studied classical voice as well, from my teens to my 20s. THAT was toxic, which sits very uncomfortably in the body when that same body loves the thing its doing, in its pure form. The thing that I'm taking from your piece is that all transcendental embodiment arts and practices have potential for immense joy and transcendence, which maybe makes the younguns vulnerable to be manipulated by narcissists and power trippers (the Medicis?). It's not the art itself, it's how it's used and why. (I'm a social worker in case you can't tell lol). Thanks for the great discussion!
Angelique Odyssea, my partner Jo has screwed knees too from ballet. I'm wondering if you ever also did traditional Greek Cypriot dance? It always seemed like the men had the best steps (like everywhere I guess.) Thank you for your words. This has been delightful morning exchange.💜💃💜
Really, you are on point, so to speak. Brilliantly said, Yassmin. Despite my 2 prima ballerina cousins, I have long regarded ballet as abuse of the female body for an unrealistic ideal. Thank you for the way you think and write. All the best!
Wow such an interesting piece Yassmin! Do you think other non-European cultures have similarly toxic ideals in their art forms? Wonder if you know why the medicis were interested in ballet, I read they patronised the arts to avoid accountability for their own crimes - a bit like the sacklers
it's an excellent question - do other cultures have such toxic ideals in their art forms? The answer is - maybe? But I know for sure if they do, it would be seen as barbaric, primitive, rather than elite and aspirational. Eurocentrism at its finest!
It depends on what you or I define as toxic. All forms of dance bend/ twist/ contort the body. Is it fair for young Balinese girls to assume positions that they don't fall into naturally? Or Thai dancers.
Butoh is really interesting because it's all about meditation and slowness and looks bewildering to the untrained eye.
Fun fact about the minuet: it was a sequence of steps & men could humilate women by not letting them exit the pattern at court (when I did my masters I worked with a range of dance historians).
Yassmin thank you for mentioning Sudanese Sufism- I just did a shallow dive into some you tube on its history- similar in some ways in their carrying of teachings across the country as in Iraq, Turkey etc., but very different in physical movement.
I also saw a video with Chechnyan Sufis and that was very um hard core stomping!
Watching Sudanese Sufis I was struck by something my dull brain hadn't grasped- the charismatic Christian movement that began in 1906, in Azusa Street Los Angeles but really took off in the 1970's. The "hands in the air" as we jokingly say style of worship was really powerful to me in my adolescence. My father actually banned me from going to a Pentecostal church when I was 13 because, as he said, "that style of worship contained psychic energies that could be dangerous". I was sent down the road to the Congregational church. As you mentioned today, meditative movement and so called religious movement & even folk dance was considered less important by the upper classes, and dangerous as far as the Church was concerned. Thanks again.
I also revisited the videos you shared of the Karpe/Omar Sheriff concert in Oslo. "Fairuz"
Thank you for sharing all the music & arts videos this year especially those from Sudan.
I must apologise for you covered in your research Balanchine so well and I got a bit hyped up! I find his "gem stone" duets repulsive. One of his lead dancers wrote an autobiography "I'm dancing as fast as I can". Great book.
Fun factoid #100 🤷🏼😉 in the 1960's - 80's, the Australian Ballet was sponsored by Benson & Hedges and dancers could get a free carton weekly. You could actually hear them wheezing at times. They also went on strike & stopped a performance and walked off. 👏👏👏
Oh goodness me Yassmin. I apologise in advance for this huge reply & feel free to ignore. You've accidentally given me a huge mental distraction, as I'm currently caring for my partner which involves extra doctors appointments, extra medications, and acute care teams. Thank you! Now for the response!
My background
💃 is one of my favourite topics. I
have a post graduate degree in "movement for the actor" from NIDA. As a theatre director I always worked with a choreographer. In 1996 I was a movement teacher at Toi Whakaari, the New Zealand equivalent of NIDA From 96 - 99 I was executive producer of a minor funded contemporary dance company and re structured it to give a range of choreographers and dancers work. I grew up watching classical ballet thanks to wealthy parents who gave me a subscription to the Australian Ballet from 6 to 18years, (because I was adopted & my mother had been an arts performer😆). I saw the best and the worst of the form over those years. I studied classical ballet from the age of 6 because I had 'knock knees'. I delighted in dance as a large bodied child/woman.
So, in response to your words: ballet is white-hot white. you've essentially covered the basic history of Occidental dance, so I'm going to provide you with some alternative names that you or anyone can read about on wiki or 😉 chat gpt who shaped the Australian dance scene.
Look up Carole Johnson - went to Juillard then was
Lead dancer with
"Elo Pomare Dance Company"
Then
Co founder of ADT - Aboriginal Dance Theatre. (Bangarra)
Look up:
Ronne Arnold - African American dancer/singer who came out with the musical Pippin (life changing moment for me), brought "afro dance" to Australia. Also life changing being a white 12yr old doing afro dance workshops in 1972.
Then of course the great
Alvin Ailey
Judith Jamison 🙏
Kai Tai Chan - founder of the Extra Dance Company Australia
As for white hot white dance - England and Australia were shaped by Fonteyn & Nureyev.
America was shaped by Balanchine who created the angular lean body that was really not feminine. Dance companies "try" to remove that but dancers still have a physical requirement. Anna Pavlova was huge by comparison.
For anyone still reading Things to listen to and watch:
The Red Shoes is an extraordinary film based on Diaghalev, and really shows how women are treated. It was choreographed by the australian expat Robert Helpmann who also choreographed an extraordinary piece called "The LyreBird" for the Australian Ballet that was about "othering" an effeminate man.
On you tube:
Dawn French & Jennifer Saunders skit on classical "bunheads"
Listen to: "Everything was beautiful at the Ballet" from the musical A Chorus Line.
Also for American black dance:
Harlem Dance Company.
The extraordinary doco on krumping called RIZE directed by a white guy David LaChappelle.
Okay that's enough - it's been an extraordinary distraction.
If youve got this far: when reading academic books on dance the term 'Occidental' is used to describe the way the western form was overvalued, while the "oriental form was devalued as exotic when it was eons old in tradition compared to Louis 1V & the Petersburg school.
Finally
Every kid in the West so iften starts at the barre, plie, 1st position etc
Every young girl in Bali starts with head and finger positions.
Every Butoh dancer started cleaning the floor and moving slowly. The point being we are designed to move.
We would be less insane if we just moved every day and felt the earth.
Classical ballet is a museum of form. Spend your $$ on contemporary dance, dance companies with disabilities, dance classes, belly dancing, ululate the joy and pain to the sky.
Watch the patriarchal white male classical ballet style which reduced women to be lifted on pointe while men got to leap, watch it fall into dust, even though little girls thought "everything was beautiful at the ballet" 💖
Funnily enough I watched this documentary about Pointe shoes by Business Insider (https://youtu.be/tn1rN0tu1Ro?si=-NTSv4dJc7hZAgo1) yesterday and I couldn’t help but feel that that the “art” that is celebrated is less so the visual performance that the audience gets to enjoy and more so the knowledge of just how gruelling and difficult it is for the dancers to present such fastidious beauty.
It is intended to represent a super-human discipline and so even by simply opting for my comfortable footwear (that would allow you to create the same output) is frowned upon and viewed as cheating.
It’s no surprise that the western beauty standards of thinness (and therefore whiteness) are so tightly embedded and really quite terrifying as you say for young girls who aspire to be like the ballerina
oh, thoroughly enjoyed that video - thank you! Fascinating to see what is explicitly celebrated is the difficulty... that more comfortable shoes are looked down upon as 'cheater' shoes!
Also - seems like a lot of waste!!
My god, SO much waste!
Hi Yassmin and community! I think everything that you say is relevant and moving, especially from the perspective of young women (White or not). But it's missing a relevant comparison to any art form that might require perfection of idealisation in your own culture. Putting aside (if we can) the toxic idealisation of femininity (big big big spew), ballet is an art and discipline that made me feel, and still does, so elevated and joyful. I am Greek-Cypriot Australian, I am short and I have MASSIVE boobs, but I never felt anything other than utter transcendence, and it was the combination of discipline and movement and music that achieved that. I feel like I never absorbed the ideals of perfect womanhood either (I have always been happy with my appearance). I guess my point is, don't all forms of embodied idealisation require not only sacrifice (I don't think that's your point), but also some form of toxic transcendence, separation from messy, sweaty mortality? Why do we wear makeup? Why do we wear bras?
Hiii! Thanks for this comment ! I’d love to hear more about your love of the art and discipline and maybe why you were able to resist the ideals? I guess I haven’t heard enough stories about that… and on your second point, indeed an intriguing question! Do all embodied ideals require some sort of toxic transcendence? I don’t know - I don’t think all transcendence has to be so toxic, maybe? Prayer, meditation, other forms of faith based ideals see things differently - in Sudan the Sufi practices tend to be quite messy, so I think maybe it’s more culturally informed perhaps? But I’m happy to be proven wrong, I love this kind of back and forth! 🤩
The movement know as modern developed by pioneers Isadora Duncan, Martha Graham & my heroine Doris Humphrey. Doris believed that all movement is "rise and fall" and created a series of exercise and patterns around this. If you listen to Laurie Anderson's "Walking and Falling" you'll hear this.
Maria Tall hierarchy- a member if the Osage Nation is considered as the first Prima Ballerina in America.
Apart from Maria & Doris, these people colonised Asian and Greek and religious forsm of movement. They were not inventors - they could afford to "incorporate freedom seeing other cultures" and bring it back to the Occidental.
Yep. Fucking colonialism.
Oops Maria Tallchief bloody autocorrect
The internet as is should be - a digital cafe chat 💕 I really resonate with Janet Robertson's comment. To quote ABBA, I was a dancer before I could walk, and at two years old, classical ballet made me feel...well, as transcendental as a two year old can lol. Everything about it just felt so incredible; I'd say it's the equivalent of a spiritual experience. That continued and still does, even though I had to stop ballet when I was 12 because of my knees, and I'm now in my 40s. So, unlike some other people, I missed out on the toxic body image crap. However, I studied classical voice as well, from my teens to my 20s. THAT was toxic, which sits very uncomfortably in the body when that same body loves the thing its doing, in its pure form. The thing that I'm taking from your piece is that all transcendental embodiment arts and practices have potential for immense joy and transcendence, which maybe makes the younguns vulnerable to be manipulated by narcissists and power trippers (the Medicis?). It's not the art itself, it's how it's used and why. (I'm a social worker in case you can't tell lol). Thanks for the great discussion!
Oh I can see you and me dancing for joy at the end of year recitals. The larger kids shone. 💖
Angelique Odyssea, my partner Jo has screwed knees too from ballet. I'm wondering if you ever also did traditional Greek Cypriot dance? It always seemed like the men had the best steps (like everywhere I guess.) Thank you for your words. This has been delightful morning exchange.💜💃💜
Really, you are on point, so to speak. Brilliantly said, Yassmin. Despite my 2 prima ballerina cousins, I have long regarded ballet as abuse of the female body for an unrealistic ideal. Thank you for the way you think and write. All the best!
Two Prima ballerina cousins, gosh! What was that like for you? It sounds intense!
Much younger than me and living far away. But even in childhood, I wasn’t a fan. Arabic or African dancing was my thing.
Wow such an interesting piece Yassmin! Do you think other non-European cultures have similarly toxic ideals in their art forms? Wonder if you know why the medicis were interested in ballet, I read they patronised the arts to avoid accountability for their own crimes - a bit like the sacklers
it's an excellent question - do other cultures have such toxic ideals in their art forms? The answer is - maybe? But I know for sure if they do, it would be seen as barbaric, primitive, rather than elite and aspirational. Eurocentrism at its finest!
It depends on what you or I define as toxic. All forms of dance bend/ twist/ contort the body. Is it fair for young Balinese girls to assume positions that they don't fall into naturally? Or Thai dancers.
Butoh is really interesting because it's all about meditation and slowness and looks bewildering to the untrained eye.
Fun fact about the minuet: it was a sequence of steps & men could humilate women by not letting them exit the pattern at court (when I did my masters I worked with a range of dance historians).
Yassmin thank you for mentioning Sudanese Sufism- I just did a shallow dive into some you tube on its history- similar in some ways in their carrying of teachings across the country as in Iraq, Turkey etc., but very different in physical movement.
I also saw a video with Chechnyan Sufis and that was very um hard core stomping!
Watching Sudanese Sufis I was struck by something my dull brain hadn't grasped- the charismatic Christian movement that began in 1906, in Azusa Street Los Angeles but really took off in the 1970's. The "hands in the air" as we jokingly say style of worship was really powerful to me in my adolescence. My father actually banned me from going to a Pentecostal church when I was 13 because, as he said, "that style of worship contained psychic energies that could be dangerous". I was sent down the road to the Congregational church. As you mentioned today, meditative movement and so called religious movement & even folk dance was considered less important by the upper classes, and dangerous as far as the Church was concerned. Thanks again.
I also revisited the videos you shared of the Karpe/Omar Sheriff concert in Oslo. "Fairuz"
Thank you for sharing all the music & arts videos this year especially those from Sudan.
I must apologise for you covered in your research Balanchine so well and I got a bit hyped up! I find his "gem stone" duets repulsive. One of his lead dancers wrote an autobiography "I'm dancing as fast as I can". Great book.
Fun factoid #100 🤷🏼😉 in the 1960's - 80's, the Australian Ballet was sponsored by Benson & Hedges and dancers could get a free carton weekly. You could actually hear them wheezing at times. They also went on strike & stopped a performance and walked off. 👏👏👏
Oh goodness me Yassmin. I apologise in advance for this huge reply & feel free to ignore. You've accidentally given me a huge mental distraction, as I'm currently caring for my partner which involves extra doctors appointments, extra medications, and acute care teams. Thank you! Now for the response!
My background
💃 is one of my favourite topics. I
have a post graduate degree in "movement for the actor" from NIDA. As a theatre director I always worked with a choreographer. In 1996 I was a movement teacher at Toi Whakaari, the New Zealand equivalent of NIDA From 96 - 99 I was executive producer of a minor funded contemporary dance company and re structured it to give a range of choreographers and dancers work. I grew up watching classical ballet thanks to wealthy parents who gave me a subscription to the Australian Ballet from 6 to 18years, (because I was adopted & my mother had been an arts performer😆). I saw the best and the worst of the form over those years. I studied classical ballet from the age of 6 because I had 'knock knees'. I delighted in dance as a large bodied child/woman.
So, in response to your words: ballet is white-hot white. you've essentially covered the basic history of Occidental dance, so I'm going to provide you with some alternative names that you or anyone can read about on wiki or 😉 chat gpt who shaped the Australian dance scene.
Look up Carole Johnson - went to Juillard then was
Lead dancer with
"Elo Pomare Dance Company"
Then
Co founder of ADT - Aboriginal Dance Theatre. (Bangarra)
Look up:
Ronne Arnold - African American dancer/singer who came out with the musical Pippin (life changing moment for me), brought "afro dance" to Australia. Also life changing being a white 12yr old doing afro dance workshops in 1972.
Then of course the great
Alvin Ailey
Judith Jamison 🙏
Kai Tai Chan - founder of the Extra Dance Company Australia
As for white hot white dance - England and Australia were shaped by Fonteyn & Nureyev.
America was shaped by Balanchine who created the angular lean body that was really not feminine. Dance companies "try" to remove that but dancers still have a physical requirement. Anna Pavlova was huge by comparison.
For anyone still reading Things to listen to and watch:
The Red Shoes is an extraordinary film based on Diaghalev, and really shows how women are treated. It was choreographed by the australian expat Robert Helpmann who also choreographed an extraordinary piece called "The LyreBird" for the Australian Ballet that was about "othering" an effeminate man.
On you tube:
Dawn French & Jennifer Saunders skit on classical "bunheads"
Listen to: "Everything was beautiful at the Ballet" from the musical A Chorus Line.
Also for American black dance:
Harlem Dance Company.
The extraordinary doco on krumping called RIZE directed by a white guy David LaChappelle.
Okay that's enough - it's been an extraordinary distraction.
If youve got this far: when reading academic books on dance the term 'Occidental' is used to describe the way the western form was overvalued, while the "oriental form was devalued as exotic when it was eons old in tradition compared to Louis 1V & the Petersburg school.
Finally
Every kid in the West so iften starts at the barre, plie, 1st position etc
Every young girl in Bali starts with head and finger positions.
Every Butoh dancer started cleaning the floor and moving slowly. The point being we are designed to move.
We would be less insane if we just moved every day and felt the earth.
Classical ballet is a museum of form. Spend your $$ on contemporary dance, dance companies with disabilities, dance classes, belly dancing, ululate the joy and pain to the sky.
Watch the patriarchal white male classical ballet style which reduced women to be lifted on pointe while men got to leap, watch it fall into dust, even though little girls thought "everything was beautiful at the ballet" 💖
See you next year. X
Thank you for this complex comment! 💕