(Re:) Claiming Ballet

Description

The collection of essays demonstrates that ballet is not a single White Western dance form but has been shaped by a range of other cultures. In so doing, the authors open a conversation and contribute to the discourse beyond the vantage point of mainstream to look at such issues as homosexuality and race. And to demonstrate that ballet’s denial of the first and exclusion of the second needs rethinking.

This is an important contribution to dance scholarship.  The contributors include professional ballet dancers and teachers, choreographers, and dance scholars in the UK, Europe and the USA to give a three dimensional overview of the field of ballet beyond the traditional mainstream.

It sets out to acknowledge the alternative and parallel influences that have shaped the culture of ballet and demonstrates they are alive, kicking and have a rich history. Ballet is complex and encompasses individuals and communities, often invisiblized, but who have contributed to the diaspora of ballet in the twenty-first century. It will initiate conversations and contribute to discourses about the panorama of ballet beyond the narrow vantage point of the mainstream – White, patriarchal, Eurocentric, heterosexual constructs of gender, race and class.

This book is certain to be a much-valued resource within the field of ballet studies, as well as an important contribution to dance scholarship more broadly.  It has an original focus and brings together issues more commonly addressed only in journals, where issues of race are frequently discussed.

The primary market will be academic.  It will appeal to academics, researchers, scholars and students working and studying in dance, theatre and performance arts and cultural studies.  It will also be of interest to dance professionals and practitioners.

Academics and students interested in the intersection of gender, race and dance may also find it interesting.

Introduction: Regarding claiming ballet / reclaiming ballet

Part One – Histories

Chapter 1: Ballet, from property to Art – Adesola Akinleye

Chapter 2: Should there be a Female ballet canon? Seven Radical Acts of Inclusion - Julia Gleich and Molly Faulkner

Chapter 3: Arabesque en Noir: The Persistent Presence of Black Dancers in the American Ballet World - Joselli Audain Deans 

Chapter 4: Portrayals of Black people from the African Diaspora in western narrative ballets – Sandie Bourne

Part Two – Knowledges  

Chapter 5: The traces of my ballet body - Mary Savva  

Chapter 6: Ballet Beyond Boundaries – Personal History. Brenda Dixson Gottschild  

Chapter 7:“Auftanzen statt Aufgeben” and The Anti Fascist Ballet School -Elizabeth Ward 

Chapter 8: Dancing Across Historically Racist Borders – Kehinde Ishangi 

Part Three – Resiliences  

Chapter 9: Dance Theatre of Harlem’s radicalization of ballet in 1970s & 1980s – Theresa Ruth Howard  

Chapter 10: Personal testimony as social resilience - Theara J. Ward 

Chapter 11: “Can you feel it?”: Pioneering Pedagogies that Challenge Ballet’s Authoritarian Traditions - Jessica Zeller 

Chapter 12: The Ever After of Ballet – Selby Wynn Schwartz 

Chapter 13: Ballethnic Dance Company Builds Community: Urban Nutcracker leads the way – Nena Gilreath

Part four – Consciousnesses 

Chapter 14: The Counterpoint Project – When Life Doesn’t Imitate Art -  Endalyn Taylor

Chapter 15: Ballet’s Binary Genders in a Rainbow-Spectrum World:

A call for progressive pedagogies - Melonie B. Murray  

Chapter 16: Dancing through Black British ballet: Conversations with dancers - Adesola Akinleye and Tia-Monique Uzor 

Chapter 17: Ballet Aesthetics of Trauma, Development, and Functionality – Luc Vanier & Elizabeth Johnson 

About the contributors 

Index 

Sujets

• Performing Arts
• LGBTQ+
• América
• Black British
• African American
• Dance
• American
• Ballet

Informations

• Publié par: Intellect Books
• Date de parution: 02 mars 2021
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781789383638
• Langue: English

Extrait

(Re:) Claiming Ballet

(Re:) Claiming Ballet
Adesola Akinleye, editor/curator
First published in the UK in 2021 by
Intellect, The Mill, Parnall Road, Fishponds, Bristol, BS16 3JG, UK
First published in the USA in 2021 by
Intellect, The University of Chicago Press, 1427 E. 60th Street,
Chicago, IL 60637, USA
Copyright © 2021 Intellect Ltd
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Cover designer: Aleksandra Szumlas
Copy-editing: Newgen Knowledgeworks
Cover image credit: Dancer Nena Gilreath, in The Leopards Tail by Waverly Lucus, Photographer Keiko Guest
Frontispiece image credit: Agata Lawniczak
Production manager: Laura Christopher
Typesetting: Newgen Knowledgeworks
Print ISBN 9781789383614
ePDF ISBN 9781789383621
ePUB ISBN 9781789383638
Printed and bound by Severn
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This is a peer-reviewed publication.
Contents
Foreword
Katy Pyle, Founder and Artistic Director of Ballez Company
Foreword
Virginia Johnson, Artistic Director and former Principal Dancer of the Dance Theatre of Harlem
Introduction: Regarding claiming ballet/reclaiming ballet
Part One: Histories
1. Ballet, from property to art
Adesola Akinleye
2. Should there be a female ballet canon? Seven radical acts of inclusion
Julia Gleich and Molly Faulkner
3. Arabesque en noire: The persistent presence of Black dancers in the American ballet world
Joselli Audain Deans
4. Portrayals of Black people from the African diaspora in Western narrative ballets
Sandie Bourne
Part Two: Knowledges
5. The traces of my ballet body
Mary Savva
6. Ballet beyond boundaries: A personal history
Brenda Dixon Gottschild
7. Auftanzen statt Aufgeben and the Anti Fascist Ballet School
Elizabeth Ward
8. Dancing across historically racist borders
Kehinde Ishangi
Part Three: Resiliences
9. The Dance Theatre of Harlem’s radicalization of ballet in the 1970s and 1980s
Theresa Ruth Howard
10. ‘Showgirl with red pointe shoes’: Personal testimony as social resilience
Theara J. Ward
11. ‘Can you feel it?’: Pioneering pedagogies that challenge ballet’s authoritarian traditions
Jessica Zeller
12. The ever after of ballet
Selby Wynn Schwartz
13. Ballethnic Dance Company builds community: Urban Nutcracker leads the way
Nena Gilreath
Part Four: Consciousnesses
14. The Counterpoint Project : When life doesn’t imitate art
Endalyn Taylor
15. Ballet’s binary genders in a rainbow-spectrum world: A call for progressive pedagogies
Melonie B. Murray
16. Dancing through Black British ballet: Conversations with dancers
Adesola Akinleye and Tia-Monique Uzor
17. Ballet aesthetics of trauma, development and functionality
Luc Vanier and Elizabeth Johnson
Notes on contributors
Index
By no means the first, this book just scratches the surface of the contributions of the many brilliant dancers of our communities; the book looks forward to sitting alongside more books, histories, and of course more dances.
In the spirit of multiplicity that this book represents, we begin by offering two Forewords representing different generational acknowledgments.
Foreword
Katy Pyle, Founder and Artistic Director of Ballez Company
With this book, we remember ourselves, and remember that ballet is awoken, enlivened, radicalized and made better by our work outside the racist, cis-heteropatriarchal mainstream status quo. Through the braveness of celebrating the very differences we represent, a path is carved to make ballet truly relevant today. The ballet canon is studded with transgressive acts that created seismic shifts; acts of change have inspired and transformed the art of ballet from being a lonely re-enactment of a bygone Western European colonial era into a site of contemporarily relevant, beautiful art with transformational expressive power.
Art must electrify, challenge and Queer in order to stay alive. The Queer, the different , the other have subverted mainstream ballet throughout its history, whether intentionally or by the de facto nature of our presence, and thereby propelled its evolution. Our contributions have always been present in ballet, in the training, the culture and the performance – so much so that we have been folded into the fabric of ballet itself, but also usurped, made invisible and threatened with disappearance.
I fell in love with ballet as a young person when it showed me that I could use my body to be expansive, generous, dramatic, expressive, precise, powerful and graceful. At the same time, ballet also taught me to betray myself, through hiding my gender, my sexuality and the beauty of my powerful frame. The gatekeepers in ballet asked me to be subdued, fragile and quiet, which I could only accomplish through disordered eating and the suppression of my truth. For those of us not within the definitions of ballet’s current mainstream status quo, our relationship can be abusive. For me, ballet was the great love of my life, and I felt as if I had to betray myself in order for us to stay together.
Once I left ballet, came out, came into myself and developed my artistic voice, the thought of returning to ballet felt like it could only be some kind of postmodern, conceptual joke. I could not perceive myself inside the form as anything but funny, strange or ironic – so I founded Ballez, which embraced those contradictions. And it was not until I found my ‘dancestors’ that I was able to become myself within the form, able to recognize my lineage within it, and accept the fact that I am part of shaping its future.
It is important to know your ancestors, and for those of us in dance, I offer that we might know our ‘dancestors’ . In order to know belonging in ballet, I needed to know mine. I needed to know those who came before and those doing it now alongside me. My ‘dancestors’ make it possible for someone like me to claim my place and make my work. I know now that my ‘dancestors’ are out there, have always been there, in the ether, in the history – both visible and invisible – in the passion of dancing that passes from their bodies to mine, through teachers, performances and the myriad communications of dance, over time and across continents – all the dancers who pushed ballet at the edges, blurred the boundaries and Queered ballet as they helped it mature, those who shaped it from the inside out, moved it forward, broadened it from its limited fifteenth-century European fashionable court dance roots and towards the rich field ballet is today, in the twenty-first century. Until I called my ‘dancestors’ in, I could not really hear the call that ballet was making to me … those dancers are my lineage … Bronislava Nijinska (and her brother Nijinsky), Ida Rubinstein, Agnes DeMille, Katherine Dunham, Raven Wilkinson, Maria Tallchief, and living legends Ernesta Corvino, Yvonne Rainer and Janet Panetta.
‘Ballet is Woman’, but not in the way Balanchine meant. The foundation for the work of ballet has happened in and through women’s bodies. Ballet has been carried through us: the dancers, teachers, rehearsal directors, designers, fundraisers, aficionados and choreographers who have spent our lives within the form. The emotional and expressive potential that lives within ballet’s steps, affects and ways of connecting is present because of our often-invisible labor. The intelligence and emotional expressivity of our work is at the heart of ballet’s expansive knowledge.
Contrary to the idea that women need men to shape our expression into something knowable, we know and can shape our own expression. Sadly, ballet historians and choreographers alike have painted a picture of women’s bodies as inexpressible and unknowable, and through that continual, willful ignorance have left us to feel alone and shamed in our isolation, cut off from the power we possess and that we could claim together.
This is also due to the proprietary nature of traditional ballet lineages and culture, which renders ballet the property of the elite and denies that, at its best, it is an artform that cannot be owned (as Adesola Akinleye effectively argues in Chapter 1 ). The history of ballet dancers being the literal property of the nobility paved the way for this false thinking, as countless dancers were repressed and oppressed throughout ballet history to serve the wills and desires of those in power. Yet, even inside that controlled world, dancers have communicated their humanity, their beauty and their truth, pushing the form of ballet far beyond its patrons’ and producers’ limited mindsets.
Sadly, the thinking used to maintain the racist, cis-heteropatriarchal status quo in ballet that designates the elite , standardized technique – what is truly classical and in line with tradition – makes clear who is inside and who is outside the center. And why should we pay attention to the fringes, to one another, when we all know the rules of who belongs and who does not, and why those outsiders don’t fit in? We all know , from our first ballet classes or performances, what is ‘correct’ and what is not. This applies to technical standards as much as dress code and classroom decorum. And we carry this lineage in our bodies right alongside our technique. These deeply internalized value systems do not just damage us, they also isolate and fractionalize us away from one another. Why should we waste our time connecting to more outsiders? Aren’t we all trying to get in? To curry favor with the king in the center of the palace? Everyone working in ballet maintains this system – e