I’ve been doing a lot of thinking in the past three-plus months about my life as an artist. I’ve been reflecting a lot on my past adventures, some of which I’ve shared through stories in this blog. More, I’ve been wondering where my artistic life is going and what it will look like, due to the pandemic and its affects on the performing arts – when will it be safe for dancers to gather in a room to sweat and breathe and move through space with other dancers? And when it is safe, will there be a place for me?
But most recently, in the wake of George Floyd’s murder and the re-energized push for anti-racism in all areas of our lives, I’ve been pondering how I can effect positive change in and through an art form that was born of an aristocratic, oppressive, and racist system.
This past week, I came across a quote from the writer Toni Cade Bambara: “The role of the artist is to make revolution irresistible.” And as I began to think about how dance, specifically ballet, can be utilized to address the issues of racism and inequality, I realized we first must figure out how to make this particular revolution irresistible within the art form itself, irresistible to the decision-makers in ballet – ironically many of whom are actually artists themselves.
Classical ballet has survived political revolutions, and evolved because of them. Interestingly, France and Russia were each the center of the ballet world at the time their respective revolutions arrived. And the art form had to change in order to adapt to new realities. Ballet arose through the courts of France and was initially a reflection of royal etiquette and social control, and something in which only those (primarily male) of noble birth could participate. Following the French Revolution, the art form shifted to a slightly more egalitarian approach, and saw the rise of the ballerina through the continued development of pointe work. However, the ballerina typically represented something otherworldly – a Wili, a Sylph, a Swan, a fairytale Princess – a romanticized version of woman.
The Russian Revolution scattered dancers all over Europe, and eventually to the United States via the various Ballets Russes touring companies. Sergei Diaghilev and his Ballets Russes (1909-1929) embodied a bold collaborative approach to creating ballets, commissioning composers such as Igor Stravinsky and artists such as Henri Matisse to work with young choreographers such as Vaslav Nijinksy and George Balanchine. When this creative model eventually made its way to the expansive shores of America – during and following the tumult of two World Wars – ballet had begun to expand its boundaries, both in choreographic movement choices and in subject matter.
Balanchine’s neoclassicism stretched the traditional classical vocabulary along with the look of a ballet performance – no costumes!?! – taking the art form into the realm of abstraction. Simultaneously, other 20th century choreographers began making ballets about real people, with worldly problems and issues…albeit primarily reflective of white people.
The art form has since moved steadily towards an embrace of contemporary movement styles, and within that framework, there are the occasional works of choreography that address inequities and inequalities. But mostly it’s modern and contemporary companies showcasing this type of work; ballet companies usually don’t select contemporary works that have a social agenda.
And even though there are now prominent black dancers in many ballet companies, the art form is still very white. Just last year, it was newsworthy that New York City Ballet cast its first black Clara in its famed Balanchine Nutcracker. Typically, dancers of Asian and Latin descent – and black dancers with lighter-skin – get more opportunities in classical companies than those with darker skin. This speaks not only to the standard of having a uniform look within the corps de ballet, but more revealingly to the ingrained expectation that ballet’s stage is a white space.
Any exceptions to that expectation – Arthur Mitchell’s Dance Theatre of Harlem, for example – aren’t truly exceptions, because its very premise is that it is a company of primarily black dancers. So, either a space is created specifically for black dancers or the space is considered white and a dark-skinned dancer may be allowed to inhabit it briefly.
In tracking this progression – and it has been a progression, although extremely slow and absolutely incomplete – we see that ballet, even with its elitist DNA and its Eurocentric aesthetic, has not been able to live in an ivory tower, untouched by the forces of the world. It has not been immune to political and cultural shifts, but rather has adapted – haltingly, to be sure – to new realities. So, how to continue, maybe even speed up the journey? Back to my original question – how do we make this revolution irresistible?
As always, there are multiple roadblocks to inclusivity. Beyond an understanding of the historical foundations and developments of ballet, what else keeps the art form from diversifying? I think one of the most important answers to that question involves financial considerations. Ballet is expensive – both to train for as a dancer and to produce as an organization. I’ll be looking at that in more depth in my next post.
Penny Askew 