TomandCandice.com

The real balance needed for ballet

Posted by Candice on April 14, 2009 at 11:20 pm

As part of my Dance Writing class I have to give a three minute speech on the topic of my choice. After weeks of thinking about it, today I realised what I had to talk about. I’ve posted a draft of my speech here. Right now it’s called “Balancing Ballet and Feminism.” I’m working on a more clever title!
Oh, and by the way, although I’m still a little weary of it, I now have a twitter account. Follow me at www.twitter.com/candicepike

Here it is:

I have grown up as strong willed individual. I realised early on what the implications of being labelled “female” were and have been exploring how best to highlight and improve the status of marginalised people in my own subtle (and not so subtle) ways ever since. Yet, I have also grown up as a “ballerina.” I have worn excessive amounts of tulle and lycra, bourred around studios like an innocent sylph, forced my body into unconventional positions, been lifted and supported by men, and generally submitted myself, as a privileged white girl, to an inherently patriarchal system.
These two identities battled each other for years, creating a rather annoying mental dialogue.
“Shouldn’t a feminist be into the more ‘natural’ women-empowered modern dance?”
“Do the other ballerinas worry that I’m going to start some sort of anti-pink uprising?”
“Why aren’t I fighting the unrealistic aesthetic goals ballet sets for women?”
“What right does an independent thinker like me have to do these passive moves?”
The struggle intensified when I started reading critical dance writing. I loved that people had chosen to write about ballet, but Ann Daly’s analysis of the Balanchine woman controlled by men, Susan Leigh Foster’s discussion of the ballerina’s “phallic pointe,” (aka the asymmetrical male/female relations in ballet) and the multitude of other feminist writers who critiqued the unrealistic physical demands placed on female dancers, the power structures that kept them down, and the way men ‘choreographed’ their realities disheartened me. How could I continue to respect ballet? I even wrote my first academic paper in dance on Balanchine as a father figure who replicated family patriarchy in the ballet world.
After finishing the first phase of my adult dancing “career”, I thought a lot about whether or not I would continue to study ballet at the graduate level. If it is so wrought with contradictions to my values, why bother? But then I realised, perhaps ballet has a lot more in common with my values than I realised. Years of ballet and dance training have taught me how to be dedicated and how hard work can make almost any goal perfectly attainable. Ballet allows for subtle achievements and the development of incredible social groups and networks. It let me discover how to be an effective teacher and learner and has generally enhanced my life and helped me get where I am today.
And recently, I have found someone else who has faced similar contradictions and come to a similar conclusion. In “Nutcracker Nation” Jennifer Fisher briefly writes about how she too was disheartened by the feminist critiques of ballet when it had provided her with “a metaphor for achievement and transcendence,” a way of “armouring” her body against the world, an understanding that persistence and hard work can achieve any goal, and a variety of strategies for dealing with failure. Since reading this little aside in the book I have been constantly thinking about how both women and men negotiate multiple identities with ballet. I see an over ambitious research project in the future!
So, I am continuing to research gender inequality in ballet, but now I am doing it from a position of great reverence, using the skills and values that I have gained from living the past 17 years as a dancer and a feminist.

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