Tradition VS Challenge
What do you imagine when you think of a traditional story ballet? It might be something like Cinderella where there is an elegant princess or majestic fairy who meets a handsome prince that spins and lifts the beautiful princess as they fall in love with one another.
That visual when imagining classical ballets is not uncommon. This is because in any well-known ballet, it is known for males to be the masculine hero and females to be feminine and dependent on that male role.
When discussing gender norms, men portray egotistical, dominant, physically strong, and authoritative qualities; whereas, women portray weak, fragile, shy, and dependent qualities. Those qualities can be easily spotted in almost any story ballet.
Dance is constantly evolving and reflecting our time, but the history of classical ballet has created an expectation that stereotypical gender norms must be reinforced, and ballet education continues to apply them; however, gender norms in traditional ballet are being challenged in new ballet repertoire.
Because of the history of ballet, ballet training continues to reinforce gender norms. The origin of classical ballet can be traced back to the Italian Renaissance in the sixteenth century. It was known as a sport for men where they showed off their strength and power through movement to entertain leaders such as Louis XIV.
Eventually it evolved and was used in between sections of operas where they started incorporating costumes and plot, and these performances were known for entertaining the upper class. In the nineteenth century, the Romantic era of ballet was introduced. Story ballets came into the picture at this point; the mythical creature fell in love with the handsome gentleman and go through the storyline to figure out how they hopefully live happily ever after.
Since the beginning of ballet there has been this expectation that male figures are to execute the physicality of a strong and masculine character, and once the Romantic era surfaced, when love stories were set and choreographed, that masculinity was emphasized even more.
La Sylphide is about a Scottish man, James and a sylph, La Sylphide. This heart breaking love story is about how La Sylphide confesses her love to James even though he is to be married. She disappears multiple times as he tries to prove that the sylph is real. Eventually he follows her into a forest to confess his love to her, and as soon as they embrace each other, she dies from his touch.
This star-cross love story follows the stereotypical gender norms based on how La Sylphide’s choreography is portrayed. Throughout the whole ballet, the sylph is tentative, curious, dainty, and as one might describe in ‘la la land’ where she is in her own world, and James tries to follow in the footsteps while still being portrayed as a strong, tough male figure who just wants to rescue her from their unknown tragic ending.
Another classical ballet is The Nutcracker, which is about a young girl, Clara who receives a Nutcracker doll at a holiday party. After the party is over, she finds her way into this majestic world, the Land of Sweets, where she initially is being attacked by the Mouse King. The nutcracker enters in life size form and battles the mouse king to save clara, where they then Adventure the Land of Sweets together.
Although this ballet has been interpreted of whether or not Clara and the Nutcracker fall in love when they meet, Clara is still being represented as weak and unable to protect herself from the Mouse King. The Nutcracker, a strong soldier, comes to life and takes hits for Clara. Now because of how ballet evolved, it created traditions of how ballet is to be executed, which also creates an expectation of how male and females are to be trained in ballet.
I personally attended a pre-professional ballet school, The Rock School for Dance Education, that has trained and produced countless ballet dancers that have been hired at ballet companies all over the world.
The Rock specifically focuses on giving the best classical education for young-adult students who want a career in ballet. Throughout my time there, the girls would have pointe class, the boys would have men’s class, and everyone had ballet class together. Once a week there was a pas de deux class where the students would learn how to partner.
In pointe class, girls learned steps such as fouette turns and hops on pointe, whereas the men’s class learned more jumps such as tour en l’airs, and double cabrioles. In partnering class, the men would specifically learn how to lift and turn the women who were dancing on pointe.
Ballet Master Justin Allen is known for choreographing contemporary ballet pieces to perform throughout the year, and even though it isn’t classical ballet, he continues to have the dancers follow the masculine and feminine roles, in addition to using proper male and female partnering throughout his work, such as Black Veil, a piece he recently created.
Ballet is a whole art form that is defined by its traditions, and because of that, gender norms are heavily influenced. If The Rock School For Dance Education didn’t train the dancers in traditional ballet, the success rate of the school would not be as high, nor would they be known as “The Best Dance Training in the Region Since 1963”. Therefore, because of the history of ballet, ballet training continues to reinforce gender norms.
Traditional ballet continues to reinforce gender norms, but there are new works that are attempting to challenge the stereotypes. Choreographic Associate of The National Ballet of Canada, Robert Binet, spoke about the process of his work “Orpheus Becomes Eurydice” on his TEDx Talk.
In Binet’s talk, he specifically states, “In the stories of classical ballet, the women are generally either rescued or destroyed by the men and the men tend to be insensitive, dim-witted, or both, quite frankly”. Binet then discusses how in his choreography he tried to focus on the intention and initiation of certain movements from the dancers in order to shift the roles to create an equality between the different characters.
Throughout the piece there are moments where the woman role creates the action and initiates their movements with intensity and strength, and the male role follows behind with a tentative and worthless feeling.
Binet did discuss though, how it is more difficult to physically shift the partnering roles because of how males and females are built. Because of that, Binet, as the choreographer, kept the males lifting and spinning the females, where he stays true to tradition.
In addition to Binet choosing to create “Orpheus Becomes Eurydice” to challenge gender norms in ballet, Lauren Lovett choreographed “Not Our Fate” for New York City Ballet. Lovett’s work incorporates the authentic concept of having dancers feel like they can be themselves.
Ballet’s gender norms of males being strong and authoritative personas creates this underlying assumption that all male ballet dancers must be heterosexual. Traditional story ballets reinforce that expectation, but Lovett’s work has two male dancers who fall in love on stage.
In “Not Our Fate” two homosexual male dancers run into each other and embrace one another, while same sex partnering with females and males occur throughout the ballet. Her concept of dancers being accepted as who they are is challenging the idea that males can be sensitive and different in a classical ballet. Therefore, gender stereotypes are being challenged in new ballets.
Overall, ballet is a beautiful art form that is slower to evolve and accept our current generation’s lifestyle when it comes to gender norms and treating everyone equally.
Story ballets have always had females being feminine and males being masculine. They are strongly known for sticking with traditions throughout history and have been unwilling to adapt and progress like other forms of dance such as modern and contemporary.
Ballet is defined by its traditions and ballet education continues to apply gender stereotypes to produce what most ballet companies are looking for. There is also great advocacy from choreographers and dancers from companies such as New York City Ballet and The National Ballet to challenge these gender norms and continue to discuss why it is important to transform and evolve with our generation.
While classical ballet still has a place in performance, the opportunity to create beautiful art through ballet can comprise of tearing down walls that would lead to an expansion of creativity and forge progress.
