The Ballerina Fallacy

Hi everyone,

I've been thinking a lot this week. It started when I noticed that the San Francisco Ballet's performance of the Nutcracker Suite was broadcast on PBS. I watched it, and I loved it. I don't often indulge in my secret love of ballet, and I couldn't resist. As a little girl, I took ballet classes like most little girls. I have some joint and lateralization issues that ballet was supposed to help. It was supposed to make me stronger, confident, and able to tell my right from left.

Sadly, nothing has been able to help me with that last one. Alas, I did not continue with ballet but have dabbled in dance ever since. My heart loves it. I admire and respect it as an artform, but the latest shenanigans in the world of ballet have left me feeling very cold.

As I watched the ballet this year, I did notice during the performance that more than one of the snowflakes in the Nutcracker stood out. One was very tall, another had powerful shoulders. They caught my eye, but they were lovely. They were completely lovely. They moved with grace and elegance befitting their art and it warmed my heart to see all different shaped ballerinas together showing that the dance is about the joy of dancing. I want to applaud both the San Francisco ballet and the New York ballet for their casting in that regard. Because here's the bottom line, it's time for ballerinas to be strong and powerful.

When I think of the history of ballet, the pinnacle of the art seemed to be in the late 1800's. That at least seems to be the time period where most of the lasting iconic ballets performed in modern times were written, including the Nutcracker. What was our expectation of women at this time? Women were expected to be quiet, lovely, trussed with corsets, proper, graceful, demure, the list goes on and on. In spite of the lengthy reign of Victoria, the role of women was one dictated by the world of men and the crushing scrutiny of other women determined to rank themselves through adherence to perfection. It is no wonder that ballet thrived here.

It is with this cultural history that we bear the weight of what it means to be feminine. We teach our daughters that the highest pinnacle of femininity is the princess, or the ballerina. Or in the case of the Nutcracker, a ballerina princess.

But what are we telling our girls? In order to be a woman, you should be like a fairy-tale princess? We expect them to constantly be a victim, locked away, abused, used, hurt, cursed, then saved by the glorious prince who makes everything better by marrying her. What? Where does this play out in modern life? Romance novels often are criticized for reinforcing this princess myth. I can understand that criticism when I look at old romances from decades ago where the heroines are horrendously abused. Why did this happen in our genre? I think the best theory going is that having the "princess" in the role of the victim allowed her to have sexual experience without condemnation for having that experience because she "didn't ask for it." This is where that severe judgment in the form of other women comes in. We will socially outcast her if she in any way acts "impure" or beneath our moral standards as a perfect princess. Therefore, she must be a victim.

She is a woman with no power. She is a princess who will never become a queen. If she has any power at all, it is through her frail and ethereal beauty and tears that somehow "tame" the wild nature of the abusive hero. Well, isn't it nice to be a doll he doesn't want to break?

I am so thankful that Romance has grown out of this. We have taken the frail princess and made her the queen. If she faces abuse, she is no longer the victim, she is the survivor, and you'd better believe that in a modern romance, not only are the heroines capable of saving the world, enjoying their own sexual agency and feminine power on their terms, but their probably more than likely to wipe out a horde of vampires with an antique blade and their spiked heels.

If my daughter is going to be a princess, I want her to be a princess in a modern romance.

Which brings me back to ballet. It seems to be that the aesthetic of ballet is stuck in a frame where the object was to portray the epitome of feminine quality as frail. I call on the modern ballet as a patron that loves the art to achieve a new era, the era of power. The Dayton ballet has advertised its Nutcracker performance with a series of images comparing their dancers with athletes. I applaud that effort. A dancer should be powerful. If we critique anything about her, it should be about the impact of her performance, not the outline of her body. I don't care about the outline of her body. I care about how she makes me feel. I care about seeing a dancer that loves what she does and finds joy in her dance instead of pain, pressure, and misery.

I want to see a ballet dancer with strength. That is a woman I would encourage my daughter to be. That is the ideal of modern femininity. Frail is breakable and anything that is ethereal is by its nature, dead.

Give me something real on the stage.

Give me a real modern woman.

I will stand with my ovation.

Happy reading,

Jess