The Radical Swan
A Feminist’s Argument for Ballet
“She’s a ballerina!” my cousin-in-law exclaims, taking her toddler’s hand and pointing it towards me at the dinner table.
“When are you signing Sam up for classes?” my aunt joins in, assuming my cousin will follow in the likeness of many mothers of two-year-old daughters.
“Oh, I definitely won’t be. I mean, I think it’s great that Sabrina dances, but I don’t want Sam around all that. It’s too girly. Too…I’m not sure. I want her to be a tomboy — strong,” my cousin replies.
She smiles forcibly at me, attempting to absolve her apparent judgmental remark, but I wave her off. The position is one I have encountered many times, and, in many senses, I am in agreement: ballet is, seemingly, the antithesis of feminist theory.
From a historical standpoint, ballet dancers were made, quite literally, to dance for the male gaze. The stylistic technique of epaulment, or angling one’s shoulders to give positions dramatic effect, was originally developed as a means of vying for the attention of rich aristocrats in the French courts. As the ballerinas performed, they used the technique to “flirt,” hoping to win sponsorship from patrons. The classical pas de deux, or duet between male and female principal leads, furthermore, plays out a visual, highly physical power dynamic between the two sexes, the male dancer lifting the female and promenade-ing, or rotating her, around on one pointe shoe with his support.
Much of ballet’s most famous on-stage content, likewise, draws a very narrow, two-dimensional portrayal of its female protagonists. “Giselle: She dies. Carmen: She dies. […] The Sleeping Beauty: She sleeps. Les Sylphides: She’s already dead,” former Paris Opera Ballet icon, Sylvie Guillem, writes.[1] Indeed, the female leads do not fare particularly well, or excitingly, in classic story ballets. Their characters, furthermore, often fall into the category of the delicate and passive: Giselle Act I’s “peasant girl” dies and transforms into a filmy, fairy-like ghost for Act II, while La Corsaire’s protagonist, a “slave girl,” falls recklessly in love with her master.
Most explicitly contradictory to feminist theory, however, is ballet’s central concept of the body on display. Aided through costuming and emphasized through lack of dialogue, the intense scrutiny of a dancer’s physicality on stage serves to raise the appearance to the level of the persona — even suggesting that the appearance is the persona.
Ballet’s feminist narrative exists not in opposition to or denial of the above argument, but because of it, employing the art form as a means of reclaiming the notion of the self and the traditional concept of femininity. What circumstances should result in the sexualization and diminishment the ballerina, firstly — the combination of bodily display and the dancer being an object of the male gaze and, more generally, the audience — serve instead to empower and uplift her. In the classic story ballet, Giselle, mentioned above, the protagonist is, perhaps, in the most extreme position of visibility in any ballet: not only is she in the eye of the audience, but she is also in the eye of her fellow characters, pursued by not one, but two “suitors,” and dancing solo in front of villagers and the visiting duke for the entirety of Act I. Performing superhuman feats, however — namely the infamous 31 consecutive hops on a single pointe shoe and long balances on one leg into the penche position, or a standing split perpendicular to the floor — she is anything but a mere object to be exploited. She takes ownership of her position in the spotlight, showcasing the strength of her talents and bodily facilities to a degree elevating her to supernatural status. The ballet’s plot, unsurprisingly, mirrors this effect. When Giselle dies and awakens in the afterlife, the storyline of Act II, she is no longer a peasant girl, but one of many “Wilis” — the hoard of, incidentally, vengeful female spirits who rise from the grave each night to torment their ex-lovers. Adorned in ghostly white and travelling across the stage in a series of bourrees, in which the feet move rapidly in a single direction so as to achieve a floating effect, Giselle has now come to physically embody the supernatural state achieved in Act I. She is ethereal, desirable not in the sense that she engages exploitative gaze, but that she has risen just out of reach of others by her own accord — while still relatable as a woman, she is now a level above the human in the direction of the divine, bestowing her with certain power. This transition would not be possible, however, to return to a previous point, without the very fact that she was indeed before in a position of vulnerability, a power dynamic she could then harness and subvert in her own favor.
This on-stage concept is one mirrored on and off stage in Darren Aronofsky’s Oscar award-winning film, Black Swan, albeit in significantly more violent fashion. When ballet company member, Nina (Natalie Portman), is placed in a position of vulnerability by her male artistic director (Vincent Cassel), who insists that she demonstrate she has enough grit to play the conniving, evil black swan, Odile, through sexual favors, she begins a self-transformation that, effectively, disregards and casts off the oppressive structures that hold her down: abandoning her overbearing mother, uncovering her homosexuality and letting go of her put-together, innocent past self. With each outburst, she grows nearer to physically resembling Odile, first finding cuts and sores and later sprouting black, feathered wings. In the culminating performance of Swan Lake, Nina fully embodies the black swan physically and through her dancing, her total, supernatural transformation representative of her departure from these oppressive structures. Her famous final words before death, “it was perfect,” are representative of this newfound freedom, figments of the world she has come to embody in her own mind.[2] Though a questionable one, she has, effectively, performed an act of self-emancipation, and, although substantially darker and more destructive, the power she acquires is comparable to that of Giselle: dancers transcending visual and sexual objectification through ascension to the ethereal and supernatural, and doing so through their own means.
What is even more powerful to me, however, is the very fact that these protagonists are, indeed, swans, spirits, princesses, nymphs, goddesses and other traditionally “feminine” figures. In a time in our society in which rough-and-tumbled Katniss Everdeen is heralded for ushering in a new era of female heroines, it can, at times, seem that to embrace feminism must also mean to reject what has been traditionally claimed as “feminine.” Classical ballet appears to retain a hold on this traditional femininity where other institutions have let go long ago — appearance-driven, pink-adorned, gender binary-enforcing, gentile and graceful — and it takes the idea to its extreme. Taking into account what is discussed above, however — the ways in which ballet can be used for emancipatory and empowering purposes — it also reclaims femininity as a power all its own. In January of 2015, Misty Copeland debuted in the Kennedy Center as the white swan in Swan Lake, demolishing racial stereotypes. While her portrayal of the white swan as an African American reclaimed the role for a new era, it did even more. Using her politicized body — there is an unfortunate stereotype in the dance world that African American bodies are “too muscular” for classical ballet — as the backdrop for the traditional white tutu and feathered crown, she emphasized the notion of femininity, alongside its reputations as appearance-based power, as a source of internal power, a confidence transcending the particulars of the body on which it manifests.[3] In such a way, Copeland was able to turn ballet’s externally-based reputation inside out: ballet is about more that dancing beautifully and with pristine appearance — it is about believing in one’s own beauty, and taking ownership of one’s body as a dancer and, more importantly, a woman.
Taking this knowledge into a vulnerable space, its manifestations will, hopefully, as in Copeland’s case, turn heads — inspiring others to feel the same. Such is my experience with ballet, and the primary-most reason why I am so compelled to make the argument I have. Using the anti-feminist rhetoric as a framework for a new interpretation, I am in firm belief that my ideologies and passions are not inherently incompatible: I am a feminist, not in spite of the fact that I am a classical ballet dancer, but especially so.
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[1] Martha Schabas, “Manon: The Ballet With Feminism Talking Points,” The Globe and Mail (Toronto), November 7, 2014, [Page #], accessed August 7, 2016, http://www.theglobeandmail.com/arts/theatre-and-performance/manon-the-ballet-with-feminism-talking-points/article21505979/.
[2] Black Swan, directed by Darren Aronofsky, 2010.
[3] “Finding the Next Misty: Why Black Ballerinas Are in Such Short Supply,” New York Daily News (New York, NY), July 14, 2015, [Page #], accessed August 8, 2016, http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/finding-misty-black-ballerinas-rare-article-1.2288544.
