DRAMA: The gender politics of ballet
By Rusty Thorne
How does ballet articulate a politics of gender?
Ballet, classical and contemporary, is a dance style into which polarised gender roles are deeply ingrained. Since being popularised as a feminine art form in the Romantic era, it regards female bodies as visual objects – displayed by men. Its well-established classical canon, including Swan Lake and The Sleeping Beauty, legitimises gender divisions through traditionalist plots and different movement vocabularies for male and female dancers. However, contemporary productions such as Matthew Bourne’s Swan Lake and Sleeping Beauty and the Beast by Ballez reimagine classical ballet via cross-gendered casting, alternative narratives, and non-traditional choreography. Understanding the definition of ‘to queer’ as “to reinterpret something from the perspective of queer theory… to make (more) relevant to [people of diverse sexual or gender identities]”, they queer the relationship between ballet and the gender binary.[1] By examining these adaptations alongside their source material, ballet’s normative construction of gender and sexuality becomes dramatised, hyperbolised, and rendered archaic.
Interrogating masculinity and femininity as social constructs, Judith Butler deems gender “a performance” which, through repeated acts, authenticates pre-established gender roles; their argument that “the various acts of gender create the idea of gender” shall form the basis for my own.[2] These social expectations maintain binary structures of gender and heterosexuality through involuntary cultural conditioning. As the stylisation of the body creates the image of gender, Butler posits that “bodily gestures, movements, and styles constitute the illusion of an abiding gendered self.”[3] From this concept emerges ideas of embodied identity: as we internalise social expectations of our assigned gender at birth, our mannerisms and movement quality evolve, matching those expectations. For instance, women usually sit cross-legged, occupying minimal space, whereas men ‘manspread’, physicalising social customs of dominant men and subservient women. Dance creates literal gender performances since dancers embody the ideal version of their gender. For this reason, Ted Polhemus names dance “the metaphysics of culture”, “[stylising] everyday movement qualities”.[4] His argument proves true when dance styles, like ballet, are gendered, as “the men’s dance style is a crystallisation of what it means to be a male member of their culture”, and the same sentiment applies to women.[5] Therefore, according to these ideas, ballet performance and gender performativity coalesce, conforming to the patriarchal gender binary.
Classical ballet, in training and performance, resolutely conforms to gender roles. The movement vocabularies for male and female dancers are “rooted in… “natural” gender differences”, determining “training, technique, narrative, and especially the pas de deux structure”.[6] The male repertoire is dynamic, emphasising feats of power such as pirouettes and allegro – especially grand jetés and batterie. They travel across the floor with large, sweeping gestures. Conversely, the traditional ballerina dances en pointe, rendered static by small travelling steps and jumps. She displays virtuosity through adage – slow, sustained leg extensions, sometimes supported by a male dancer, requiring simultaneous control and daintiness. These discrepancies are partly anatomical: women, rather than men, dance en pointe, levelling their natural height difference. Ballerinas restrict travel for safety – stepping onto pointe requires a straight supporting leg for stability, so steps are small. Because pointe shoes have a smaller turning surface than demi-pointe, women have fewer consecutive pirouettes but more travelling turns (such as piques and chaînes) where weight shifts between legs. Male strength allows for high, dynamic jumps; their flat shoes and streamlined physiques aid pirouettes.
Although these justifications are logical, reductive ideas of the gender binary underlie ballet’s male-female dichotomy. These differences are evident in The Sleeping Beauty’s consecutive ‘Prince Florimund’ and ‘Princess Aurora’ variations. Florimund’s variation features leaps and turns, including traditionally masculine steps like tours en l'air and cabrioles, accompanied by dynamic, staccato accents in Tchaikovsky’s score. Meanwhile, Aurora performs piqué steps and intricate pointework to legato music, moving fluidly.[7] Despite apparent equality, male “power” and female “fragility” “maintain the asymmetrical equilibrium of patriarchy, which does not offer equality at all”, argues Ann Daly.[8] In other words, men and women spend equal time onstage, showcasing an unequal dynamic. The style maintains patriarchal ideas of innate gender differences, forcing female submission to stronger male counterparts. Cynthia J. Novack ratifies Daly’s claim, as “sexual dimorphism” culminates in male dominance: “the pas de deux evokes romantic, heterosexual love… emphasising opposing characteristics and distinctions between male and female.”[9] In a pas de deux adage section, the male dancer showcases the female dancer, and she relies on him for stability, demonstrated in Swan Lake’s ‘White Swan Pas de Deux’.[10] Within the sequence, the Prince assists Odette’s extensions and pirouettes, catching her as she wavers between penchés and backbends, rarely upright.[11] The pas de deux characterises her as a swooning and vulnerable maiden, dependent on a strong man to support her. As such, Daly and Novack’s argument rings true: gender distinctions in ballet choreography perpetuate a “nineteenth-century image of gender.”[12]
The Romantic era shaped ballet culture today. Sarah Davis Cordova outlines the emergence of pointework as a feminine technique, resulting in ballet becoming “sharply gendered” and the emergence of “the female travesty dancer in lead [male] roles”.[13] As women entered male roles, displacing male dancers in the process, ballet was considered a ‘feminine’ stage art. However, “despite this feminisation”, many men were still employed “to dance and teach, to administer the institution and to hold the creative positions”, dominating the field through alternative means.[14] The female dancer dominated the stage, but at the command of male creatives who preserved traditional, patriarchal gender roles and binary distinctions. As such, the classical ballerina and gender roles became indivisible – female dancers existed to be displayed and directed by men.
Classical ballet narratives also reinforce gender roles, frequently inspired by male-authored traditional folk tales. Cordova identifies the Romantic construction of female protagonists who lack autonomy, “[don’t] infringe on male prerogatives”, with stories of “death or transformation”.[15] Swan Lake and The Sleeping Beauty fulfil these tropes – Odette is transformed into a swan and dies in the finale (the Prince saves her in some versions), Aurora’s consciousness is subject to the will of others, denied agency over her own story. These plots render women perpetual victims: both ingénue protagonists need their male counterparts to save them. Ivy Chow concurs with Cordova that ballet’s heroines “highlight a woman’s vulnerability” and “are often controlled and dominated by male characters”; she wagers that the predominantly male directors and choreographers “[fashioned] worlds according to their own fantasies”, reducing women to objects of desire.[16] Thus, following this argument, the patriarchal ideals of women as weak, and men as strong protectors, are deep-rooted into Swan Lake, The Sleeping Beauty, and ballet culture overall.
Whilst ideas of gender performativity elucidate ballet’s binarising tendencies, non-normative choreographic shifts can exploit its fallacies. Butler’s criticism helped form the foundation of queer theory – an approach with “contestation, revision, and political engagement” at its core, enabling performers “to press out the boundaries of criticism, conventional methodologies, and performance practice”, resisting tradition to create new, innovative theatre.[17] In this manner, Matthew Bourne’s modern Swan Lake defies the staunch gender normativity built into the 1877 ballet. Premiering in 1995, the controversial restaging of Tchaikovsky’s score is renowned for casting male dancers as the swans (traditionally comprised of an all-female corps de ballet); it is considered a ‘queer’ adaptation for this reason. The swans’ dances are famously feminine, with pointework and delicate arm movements – most productions incorporate identical choreography. True to form, both the 2020 Bolshoi and 1990 Mariinsky Ballet Swan Lake adaptations use canonised choreography with only subtle variations. These sequences are infamous beyond the ballet world, especially the ‘White Swan Pas de Deux’ and ‘The Dance of the Cygnets’, so profound is their entrenchment. Bourne’s redesigned choreography and cross-gendered casting were deeply transgressive since they highlighted the arbitrariness of this model.
In creating a homoerotic male-male pas de deux, Bourne transforms the classical sequence yet retains its intimate, romantic overtones. Opening a discussion on heteronormativity within ballet, Marianne Goldberg asks: “Is a pas de deux only a love story when a man initiates and the woman responds? If there were no princes and princesses, but instead two lovers whose differences are not based on gender but on their own specific yet shifting identities, what kind of story would they tell?”[18] A comparison between Bourne’s Swan Lake and traditional productions, drawing upon Judith Lynne Hanna’s research on homosexual and heterosexual movement patterns, answers Goldberg’s queries. Hanna investigates stereotypical male versus female movement styles, stating that men are allowed more personal space than women, initiate actions for women to respond to, and use large, sweeping gestures, whilst women avert their gaze and use small gestures.[19] Overall, male superiority and leadership define male-female interactions; the reverse is true of homosexual interactions, with an equal power balance. These stereotypes infuse ballet, as men travel more than women and lead the pas de deux. The traditional ‘White Swan Pas de Deux’ conforms to these distinctions, featuring an adage with Prince Siegfried assisting Odette’s arabesques, penchés and pirouettes,[20] wherein she responds to his movements.[21] Bourne appropriates the same choreographic structures as traditional adaptations, retaining some adage and lift elements, but with fast-paced, rather than sustained, extensions and increased allegro and travel.[22] Where the Prince traditionally leads Odette, Bourne equals their roles as they alternate lifts and assisted jumps – each supporting the other, they share control over the sequence. If anything, the Swan dominates the scene, carrying an enraptured Prince who follows him around the stage, inversing their traditional power dynamic. Where conventional productions use individual movement vocabularies, Bourne’s Swan and Prince perform mirrored choreography in unison and canon at different points – they dance in conversation. To answer Goldberg’s question, Bourne’s male-male pas de deux is ‘a love story’ precisely because it rejects the classical ballet ‘prince and princess’ duet style. As the Prince relinquishes control while the Swan gains it, their equal power dynamic establishes a homoerotic mutual interest. This pas de deux maintains romance as both dancers initiate and respond to movements: their tension builds through this equality and reciprocation. Their costumes, too, create a homoromantic effect. Traditional adaptations create contrast between Prince and Swan – in the Kirov production, Odette wore a white tutu with the Prince in black for the ‘White Swan Pas de Deux’, reversing the colours in the ‘Black Swan Pas de Deux’, meanwhile the Bolshoi’s Prince wears white with black details to contrast Odette’s block colour tutus. However, Bourne’s Swan Lake attires Swan and Prince analogously, wearing all-white for their first pas de deux and all-black for their second. This lack of differentiation suggests similarity and equality, communicating a queer love story.
Through further choreographic and plot changes, Bourne ‘queers’ the traditional ballet itself. Following ideas of queer theory, his adaptation resists convention, creating new possibilities for theatrical portrayals of gender and sexuality. The dance style is contemporary ballet, incorporating floorwork, contractions, isolations and non-traditional arm and feet placements, defying the rigid technique of classical ballet. Jane Feuer identifies conflict between classical choreography and Bourne’s, as “four male cygnets pound their way onto the stage” and “their foot-stomping is a parody of pointe-work”.[23] Indeed, Bourne’s ‘Dance of the Cygnets’ choreography appears to mock the female ballet repertoire. The sequence consists of sharp head and arm isolations, flexed feet, and fast footwork, and, as Feuer attests, an abundance of ‘foot-stomping’, in a display devoid of classical technique. Bourne’s choreography appears to insult ballerinas, yet it is more likely a caricature of traditionalism in general, without targeting women. The contrast between the dances of the cygnets and the older swans presents the previous sections as “a demonstration of masculine beauty”, argues Feuer.[24] As such, Bourne engineers this conflict to nullify the innate gender traditionalism within ballet. Likewise, Bourne alters the storyline of Swan Lake to criticise gender roles and heteronormativity. Swan Lake is a tragedy, culminating in the deaths of Prince and Swan at the hands of Baron von Rothbart. Bourne minimises von Rothbart’s role, depriving the plot of a villain, and the tragedy appears motiveless. Society becomes the villain as its complacency enables this tragedy to occur, vilifying the social norms of heteronormativity and the gender binary by proxy. Therefore, Bourne creates a social commentary rather than a folk story, queering the traditional, normative ballet of Swan Lake.
If Bourne’s modernisation of a classical ballet transgresses gender roles and expectations, Ballez’s Sleeping Beauty and the Beast is doubly transgressive. The ballet company, founded in 2011 by genderqueer lesbian choreographer Katy Pyle, seeks to reclaim ballet from its “wealthy, cisheterosexual white male patrons”, celebrating and sharing the untold histories of LGBTQ+ and ethnic minority dancers; to achieve this end, they create “new story-ballets that update old expectations”, wherein they “dance [their] identities, and subversively change” the genre of ballet.[25] Like Swan Lake, The Sleeping Beauty, first performed in 1890, is a Romantic ballet considered “a summation of the conventions elaborated over the course of the century”, featuring mime scenes, ballroom and classical choreography, and multiple pas de deux and variations which exemplify gendered movement vocabularies.[26] The Ballez adaptation transforms the classical ballet, telling the story of unionising factory workers who, after their one-hundred years asleep, wake up to the AIDS crisis and must once again fight for their rights. Using a fusion of Tchaikovsky’s original score and house music, blending the titles of Sleeping Beauty and Beauty and the Beast to create a hybridised, queer rejection of classical ballet, Ballez’s cast of LGBTQ+ dancers perform the tale of their own demonisation and acceptance. Some tropes remain from the original plotline, such as the villain, Carabosse, and the hundred-year reverie, to be appropriated for new, queer purposes.
This deviation from the original storyline is deliberately subversive, aiming to radically transform, rather than comment on, ballet as a genre. Goldberg suggests a method for dancing bodies to “exceed the representational frame of the patriarchal stage”, wherein “the body redefines itself in relation to others: those others need to allow shifts in the potential meanings of touch/initiation/response/strength/subtlety. The male body moves beyond the ‘masculine’ as patriarchally defined, just as the female body is not limited by the ‘feminine.’”[27] As Ballez develop a consciously queer retelling, many characters are cross-dressed or cross-gendered, resisting the binary framework of ballet – realising Goldberg’s ideas. For instance, the arrival of the fairies to Aurora’s christening, traditionally an all-female pas de six, is danced by three male-presenting dancers, whose costumes appear to be masculine period wear in feminine colours – each wearing a frock coat and tricorn hat in lilac, scarlet, and azure, respectively.[28] The ironic casting of queer men as the fairies, since ‘fairy’ has become a pejorative term for “an effeminate or homosexual man”, allows them to acknowledge and reclaim the insult, taking control from their oppressors.[29] Their sequence is thoroughly feminine, executing adage steps and bourrées – steps associated with the female repertoire – and the infamous Lilac Fairy variation, now danced by a man, duplicates this feminine style. Akin to Bourne’s Swan Lake, this casting choice breaches convention, but unlike Bourne’s dancers, a male dancer embodies feminine characteristics, performing a different gender to his own.
However, beyond transgressing gender roles, Sleeping Beauty and the Beast transcends gender, rendering it defunct. Butler posits that “gender can be neither true nor false… neither original nor derived”, yet by performing these qualities, “genders can also be rendered thoroughly and radically incredible.”[30] The production follows Aurora growing up and finding her identity. Initially, she is costumed head-to-toe in blush pink, dancing feminine choreography with arabesques, turns, and développés, but with her hair obscuring her face to signify a lack of identity. Her movement quality is clumsy and heavy, in a precocious and childlike, rather than delicate, display of femininity, as though the style does not fit her. Later, as a result, the Lilac Fairy and Aurora exchange costumes in an unaccompanied comedic mime interaction, wherein he wears Aurora’s skirt, and she takes his coat and hat. Replacing the ‘Rose Adagio’ sequence, they perform a pas de deux wherein Aurora dances the male role, leading the Lilac Fairy through a promenade and supporting him as he carries out adage steps such as arabesques, développés and attitudes, asserting their non-normative identities through movement. The scene gains an innocent quality as Aurora is much smaller than the Lilac Fairy, and their relationship is familial rather than romantic. By removing Aurora’s suitors, the pas de deux is no longer a love story but a process of identity-affirming exploration. As both characters become comfortable in their non-normative gender expression, Sleeping Beauty and The Beast is a ‘new story-ballet’ that ‘updates old expectations’; the ‘Beauty’ in its title stems from the discovery of queer identity. In summary, Ballez transforms the classical ballet, The Sleeping Beauty, ‘queering’ the story to create a celebration of non-normative gender identity; in appropriating and contesting balletic conventions, Ballez, like Bourne, presents the gender normativity of ballet as dramatic, hyperbolic, and archaic.
Thus, Ballez and Bourne ‘queer’ the traditionalist perspectives of gender and sexuality articulated by classical ballet, using ‘the various acts of gender’ to reinterpret ‘the idea of gender’ through performance, as Butler advocates for. Creating avant-garde adaptations of Swan Lake and The Sleeping Beauty, they breach the gender-prescriptive casting, choreographic, costuming, and plot conventions etched into ballet culture. Making the swans male, Bourne transforms a heteronormative fairy tale Ballez’s Sleeping Beauty and the Beast into one in which heteronormativity is the villain. Likewise, Ballez outright rejects classical ballet in their fairy tale rewrite, celebrating the queer identities it neglects. Both productions render ballet’s normative constructions of gender archaic whilst depicting non-normative gender identities through ballet. By representing gender as both imaginary and real, these adaptations articulate a politics of gender as ‘thoroughly and radically incredible.’
[1] ‘Queer, v.2’, OED Online (Oxford University Press) <http://www.oed.com/view/Entry/156238> [accessed 8 March 2022].
[2] Judith Butler, Gender Trouble: Tenth Anniversary Edition (London: Routledge, 2002), p.178.
[3] Butler, p.179.
[4] Ted Polhemus, ‘Dance, Gender, and Culture’, in Dance, Gender, and Culture, ed. by Helen Thomas (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1993), p. 8.
[5] Polhemus, p.12.
[6] Ann Daly, ‘Classical Ballet: A Discourse Of Difference’, in Meaning in Motion: New Cultural Studies of Dance, ed. by Jane C. Desmond (London: Duke University Press, 1997), p.112.
[7] The Sleeping Beauty (Classical Ballet and Opera House, 2010) <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EDFlRq5RnbQ> [accessed 6 April 2023].
[8] Daly, p.114.
[9] Cynthia J. Novack, ‘Ballet, Gender and Cultural Power’, in Dance, Gender, and Culture, ed. by Helen Thomas (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1993), p.43.
[10] Debra Craine and Judith Mackrell, ‘Pas de Deux’, in The Oxford Dictionary of Dance (Oxford University Press, 2010).
[11] Swan Lake (Bolshoi Ballet, 2020) <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BT_O0luUSGg> [accessed 5 April 2023].
[12] Novack, p.42.
[13] Sarah Davis Cordova, ‘Romantic Ballet in France: 1830–850’, in The Cambridge Companion to Ballet, ed. by Marion Kant, Cambridge Companions to Music (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), p.121.
[14] Cordova, p.121.
[15] Cordova, p.123.
[16] Ivy Chow, ‘Grace and Scarcity: Gender Disparity in Today’s Ballet Companies’, Journal of Dance Education, 18.4 (2018), p.177.
[17] E. Patrick Johnson, ‘Queer Theory’, in The Cambridge Companion to Performance Studies, ed. by Tracy C. Davis, Cambridge Companions to Literature (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), p.178.
[18] Marianne Goldberg, ‘Homogenized Ballerinas’, in Meaning in Motion, ed. by Jane C. Desmond (London: Duke University Press, 1997), p. 312.
[19] Judith Lynne Hanna, ‘The Sense and Symbol of Sexuality and Gender in Dance Images’, in Dance, Sex and Gender (London: University of Chicago Press, 1988), pp. 160-1.
[20] (Bolshoi Ballet, 2020)
[21] Swan Lake (Mariinsky (Kirov) Ballet, 1990) <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9rJoB7y6Ncs> [accessed 5 April 2023].
[22] Swan Lake (Matthew Bourne, 2012) <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BvMT5MblXX4> [accessed 4 April 2023].
[23] Jane Feuer, ‘A Mistress Never a Master?’, in Dancing Desires, ed. by Jane C. Desmond, Studies in Dance History (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2001), p. 389.
[24] Feuer, p.389.
[25] ‘Mission’, Ballez <https://www.ballez.org/mission> [accessed 11 April 2023].
[26] Lynn Garafola, ‘Russian Ballet in the Age of Petipa’, in The Cambridge Companion to Ballet, ed. by Marion Kant, Cambridge Companions to Music (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), p.158.
[27] Goldberg, p.316.
[28] Sleeping Beauty & the Beast, Act 1 (Ballez, 2016) <https://vimeo.com/katypyle> [accessed 17 March 2023].
[29] ‘Fairy, n. and Adj.’, OED Online (Oxford University Press) <https://www.oed.com/view/Entry/67741> [accessed 12 April 2023].
[30] Butler, p.180.
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