Feminist Dance Criticism and Ballet

Abstract

This article focuses on popular-press assessments of New York City Ballet principal dancer Wendy Whelan as a way to consider, first, how gender norms affect dance criticism, specifically in ballet, and, second, what might constitute a feminist approach to ballet criticism. In the reviews selected for analysis, critics return to three themes, all of which circumscribe Whelan's artistic agency: her onstage relationship to male partners, her relationship to choreographers, and her relationship to the iconic figures of femininity in ballet. Drawing upon the specifics of how each theme limits the representation of Whelan's agency, at least in print, I conclude by offering practical guidelines for practicing feminist dance criticism in mainstream publications.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I am grateful to Charlotte Canning for her feedback on early versions of this article.

Notes

¹Clare Croft, “Tensions and Curves,” danceviewtimes.com, June 6, 2005. http://archives.danceviewtimes.com/2005/Spring/09/nycb11.htm (accessed April 15, 2006).

For more on description as a mode of feminist interpretation, see Susan Sontag, “Dancer and the Dance,” in Reading Dance: A Gathering of Memoirs, Reportage, Criticism, Profiles, and Interviews, and Some Uncategorizable Extras, ed. Robert Gottlieb (New York: Pantheon, 2008), 334–38.

The 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s have been decades particularly rich in feminist ballet criticism. For major interventions in this conversation, see Ann Daly, “The Balanchine Woman: Of Hummingbirds and Channel Swimmers,” in Critical Gestures: Writings on Dance and Culture (Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan University Press, 2002), 279–88; Ann Daly, “Classical Ballet: A Discourse of Difference,” in Critical Gestures, 288–93; Angela McRobbie, “Dance Narratives and Fantasies of Achievement,” in Feminism and Youth Culture (Boston, Mass.: Unwin Hyman, 1991), 182–219; Ann Daly, “Dance History and Feminist Theory: Reconsidering Isadora Duncan and the Male Gaze,” in Critical Gestures, 302–19; Susan Leigh Foster, “The Ballerina's Phallic Pointe,” in Corporealities: Dancing, Knowledge, Culture, and Power, ed. Susan Leigh Foster (London: Routledge, 1996), 1–24; Sally Banes, Dancing Women: Female Bodies on Stage (New York: Routledge, 1998); Alexandra Carter, “Staring Back, Mindfully: Reinstating the Dancer—and the Dance—In Feminist Ballet Historiography,” in Proceedings of the Society of Dance History Scholars (Riverside, Cal.: Society of Dance History Scholars, 1999), 227–32; Jennifer Fisher, “Tulle as Tool: Embracing the Conflict of the Ballerina as Powerhouse,” Dance Research Journal, vol. 39, no. 1 (2007): 2–24; Karen Eliot, Dancing Lives: Five Female Dancers from the Ballet d’Action to Merce Cunningham (Champaign-Urbana, Ill.: University of Illinois Press, 2010).

The clearest call to bring historical context back into feminist ballet criticism was issued by Alexandra Carter in her 1999 address to the Society of Dance History Scholars. See Carter, “Staring Back,” 1999.

²Judith Butler, Gender Trouble (London: Routledge, 1993), 179.

Judith Butler describes the potential for performance to be performative—to be an action—in a larger social sphere in an application of Foucauldian analysis to drag performance. To read her full discussion of the entangled relationship between performance and performativity, see Gender Trouble (London: Routledge, 1993), 171–91. Butler focuses on drag performance, as she sees the parody inherent in that form as ripe for critique of socially embedded gender norms. Thus, applying her theory to ballet, particularly the ballets described in this essay, which are almost entirely absent of parodic critique, is not an exact fit. A more illuminating application of Butler's theory of performativity and performance is Gay Morris's discussion of Mark Morris's use of drag. See Gay Morris, “‘Styles of the Flesh’: Gender in the Dances of Mark Morris,” in Moving Words: Re-writing Dance (London: Routlege, 1996), 124–38.

This article charts critical reaction to Whelan primarily in the early decades of her career and in the years of Wheeldon's closest association with the New York City Ballet. In 2007, Alastair Macaulay became the chief dance critic of the New York Times, a post that made him—by far—the most powerful dance critic in the United States and the most frequent commenter on the NYCB. Macaulay frequently makes negative comments about NYCB's female dancers, making less than favorable writing about Whelan unremarkable. As a case in point, see “A Season on Point, High and Low,” an overview of NYCB's 2009 winter season, in which he describes Whelan as “a dynamic soprano who sings every note sharp.” Because this comment comes after negative comments about Darci Kistler, Megan Fairchild, Abi Stafford, Yvonne Borree, and, with slightly less ferociousness, Sterling Hyltin, Maria Kowroski, and Janie Taylor, it is difficult to see it as more than general antipathy for the company's women. (Macaulay does, however, laud Teresa Reichlen, Sara Mearns, and Tiler Peck.) Of the company's men, Macaulay writes, in the same article, “I cannot here do justice to the gifted male dancers—from principals down to the apprentice Chase Finlay—whose zeal illumined many works” (New York Times, March 1, 2009, AR9 [Proquest, accessed February 20, 2013]).

I viewed a live performance of After the Rain in New York on June 2, 2005.

³Jill Dolan, Feminist Spectator in Action (New York: Palgrave, 2013), 1.

For studies of the relationship between feminist analysis and modern dance, see Ann Cooper Albright, Choreographing Difference: The Body and Identity in Contemporary Dance (Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan University Press, 1997), and Susan Manning, “The Female Dancer and the Male Gaze: Feminist Critiques of Early Modern Dance,” in Meaning in Motion, ed. Jane C. Desmond (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1997), 153–66.

Ann Daly, “Classical Ballet: A Discourse of Difference,” Women & Performance: A Journal of Feminist Theory, vol. 3, no. 2 (1988): 57–66. Susan Foster offered a similar description of the pas de deux, also using “equilibrium” as her central theme (Foster, “The Ballerina's Phallic Pointe”). Deborah Jowitt, too, took up the idea of equilibrium to analyze the relationship between male and female dancer, although, in contrast to Daly, she argued that the pas de deux's equilibrium kept the male dancers in tow (Deborah Jowitt, Time and the Dancing Image (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989), 251.

Daly reconsidered and softened her critique of ballet from a feminist stance in her 1992 essay, just as the originator of gaze theory in feminist film theory, Laura Mulvey, later acknowledged that the theory limited feminist spectators’ agency. See Daly, “Dance History and Feminist Theory: Reconsidering Isadora Duncan and the Male Gaze,” in Critical Gestures: Writings on Dance and Culture (Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan University Press, 2002); Laura Mulvey, “Afterthoughts on ‘Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema’ Inspired by King Vidor's Duel in the Sun (1946),” in Feminist Film Theory: A Reader, ed. Sue Thornham (New York: NYU Press, 1999), 122–30.

⁴bell hooks, “The Oppositional Gaze: Black Female Spectators,” in Feminist Film Theory: A Reader, ed. Sue Thornham (New York: New York University Press, 1999), 307–320.

⁵Alexandra Carter, “Staring Back, Mindfully: Reinstating the Dancer—and the Dance—in Feminist Ballet Historiography,” in Proceedings of the Society of Dance History Scholars (Riverside, Cal.: Society of Dance History Scholars, 1999), 232; Angela McRobbie, “Dance Narratives and Fantasies of Achievement,” in Feminism and Youth Culture (Boston, Mass.: Unwin Hyman, 1991), 189.

⁶Ann Daly, “Dance History and Feminist Theory: Reconsidering Isadora Duncan and the Male Gaze,” in Critical Gestures: Writings on Dance and Culture (Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan University Press, 2002), 302.

⁷Ibid., 307.

Banes, Dancing Women, 4–5. For a recent extension of Banes's theories to women's performances in musical theater, see Stacy Wolf, Changed for Good: A Feminist History of the Broadway Musical (London: Oxford University Press, 2011).

⁸Sally Banes, Dancing Women: Female Bodies on Stage (New York: Routledge, 1998), 5.

⁹Ann Daly, “The Balanchine Woman: Of Hummingbirds and Channel Swimmers,” Critical Gestures, 279.

¹⁰Chip Brown, “In the Balance,” New York Times, January 22, 2006, 43 (Proquest, accessed 15 April 2006).

¹¹Marc Haegman, “A Conversation with Wendy Whelan,” danceviewtimes.com, September 28, 2002, http://www.danceview.org/interviews/whelan.html (accessed April 15, 2006).

¹²Robin Pogrebin, “Exuding Balanchine's Vision,” New York Times, April 23, 2004, 1 (Proquest, accessed April 15, 2006).

¹³Joan Acocella, “Footfalls: New York City Ballet,” Wall Street Journal, March 18 1997, A20 (Proquest, accessed March 1, 2013).

¹⁴Arlene Croce, “Our Dancers in the Nineties,” in Writing in the Dark, Dancing in the New Yorker (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2000), 724.

¹⁵Brown, “In the Balance,” 42.

¹⁶Hilary Ostlere, “After the Rain: New York Ballet,” Financial Times, 28 January 2005, 10 (Proquest, accessed February 25, 2013).

¹⁷Jean Battey Lewis, “NYCB Shines amid Plethora of Dance,” Washington Times, June 21, 2005: B05 (Proquest, accessed February 15, 2013).

¹⁸Robert Gottlieb, “Royal High Jinks at City Center; Peter Martins’ Minor Morsels,” New York Observer, March 3, 2006, 22 (Proquest, accessed April 15, 2006).

¹⁹Brown, “In the Balance,” 44.

²⁰Sara Medford, “The Originals: How Do they Do it? Five Artists Who've Delighted the Crowds while Reshaping the Culture. First Up: Ballerina Wendy Whelan,” 164.5356 Town & Country (January 2010): 15 (Academic One File, accessed February 25, 2013).

²¹Tobi Tobias, “Rain Date,” Seeing Things, January 30, 2005, http://www.artsjournal.com/tobias/2005/01/rain_date.html (accessed April 15, 2006).

²²John Rockwell, “With a Casting Change, a Duet Acquires a New Sensuousness,” New York Times, February 20, 2006, 5 (Proquest, accessed April 15, 2006).

²³Deborah Jowitt, “Duet to Me One More Time,” Village Voice, May 5, 2005, http://www.villagevoice.com/2005-05-03/dance/duet-to-me-one-more-time/ (accessed April 15, 2006).

²⁴Tere O’Connor, “Untitled Essay,” Movement Research Performance Journal: #25: Dance Writing, Fall 2002, http://www.movementresearch.org/performancejournal/ (accessed January 5, 2012).

For more information on how ballet disallows female desire, see Foster, “The Ballerina's Phallic Pointe.”

²⁵Anna Kisselgoff, “Portraying Tender Love as Four Saxes Call the Tune,” New York Times, May 25, 1996, 1 (Proquest, accessed April 15, 2006).

²⁶Anna Kisselgoff, “‘Sleeping Beauty’ as a Spectacle of Individuality,” New York Times, May 5, 1997, 1 (Proquest, accessed April 15, 2006).

²⁷Anna Kisselgoff, “A Farewell, with Panache,” New York Times, June 30, 1997, 11 (Proquest, accessed April 15, 2006).

²⁸Benjamin Skipp, “Out of Place in the 20th Century: Thoughts on Arvo Pärt's Tintinnabuli Style,” Tempo, vol. 63, no. 249 (2009): 2–11.

²⁹Brown, “In the Balance,” 43.

³⁰Daly, “The Balanchine Woman,” 282.

Susan Foster has argued that Balanchine valued individual difference in the rehearsal process in as much as individual dancers inspired him. However, she has also noted that the choreography emphasized the display of form rather than individuality. The feminist dance critic will have to surmount such challenges. See Susan Foster, Reading Dancing: Bodies and Subjects in Contemporary American Dance (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986), 14, 42–3.

³¹Daniel Jacobson, “Out There: Wendy Whelan,” Ballet Review, vol. 28, no. 2 (2000), 38.

³²Anna Kisselgoff, “A Debut and a Challenge in a Balanchine Work,” New York Times, January 29, 1996, 14 (Proquest, accessed April 15, 2006).

³³Pogrebin, “Exuding Balanchine's Influence,” 1.

³⁴Daly, “The Balanchine Woman,” 279.

³⁵Anna Kisselgoff, “The Breath of Balanchine Wafts Over a New Work,” New York Times, January 6, 2001, B9 (Proquest, accessed April 15, 2006).

Morphoses is also the name of the dance company Wheeldon created and in which Whelan danced.

³⁶Lynn Garafola, “Steps to the Music” Village Voice, January 2, 2002, http://www.villagevoice.com/dance/0227,garafola,36164,14.html (accessed April 15, 2006).

³⁷Joan Acocella, “Personal Matters,” New Yorker, May 30, 2005, 56 (Proquest, accessed April 15, 2006).

³⁸George Jackson, “Almost as It Ought to Be,” danceviewtimes.com, March 4, 2005, http://www.danceviewtimes.com/2005/Winter/10/N.Y.cb3.htm (accessed April 15, 2006).

³⁹Gottlieb, “Royal High Jinks,” 22.

For a discussion of how writing about women's body parts is a critical tradition dating back to the nineteenth-century French Romantic ballet, see Foster, “The Ballerina's Phallic Pointe,” 6.

⁴⁰Daly, “The Balanchine Woman,” 279.

⁴¹Jack Anderson, “Portraying the Female as Mate and Predator,” New York Times, May 23, 1991, 15 (Proquest, accessed April 15, 2006).

⁴²Anna Kisselgoff, “Serving Phillip Glass, in Classical Style,” New York Times, June 20, 2003, 3 (Proquest, accessed April 15, 2006).

⁴³Anna Kisselgoff, “A Martins and Others Take Roles in ‘Jewels,’” New York Times, January 28, 1991, 21 (Proquest, accessed 15 April 2006).

⁴⁴Mary Cargill, “Etoiles, Imported and Homegrown,” danceviewtimes.com, April 26, 2004, http://archives.danceviewtimes.com/dvny/reviews/2004/spring/nycb1.htm (accessed April 15, 2006).

⁴⁵Mary Cargill, “Peter Boal's Drosselmeyer Debut,” danceviewtimes.com, December 21, 2005, http://danceviewtimes.com/2005/Winter/01/nuts1.htm (accessed 15 April 2006).

⁴⁶Haegman, “A Conversation.”

⁴⁷Banes, Dancing Women, 69.

Most versions of The Nutcracker place the Sugar Plum Fairy solo in the Grand Pas de Deux near the end of act 2, thus following the usual sonata-form structure of ballet pas de deux: an adagio for the male-female couple, a solo for the woman, a solo for the man, and a coda for the couple.

⁴⁸John Rockwell, “It's Late November? Cue the Snowflakes,” New York Times, November 27, 2006, E1 (Proquest, accessed February 16, 2013).

⁴⁹Roslyn Sulcas, “Dance,” New York Times, November 24, 2006 (Proquest, accessed February 26, 2013).

⁵⁰Daly, Feminist Theory,” 302.

⁵¹Emily Nussbaum, “The Rebirth of the Feminist Manifesto: Come for the Lady Gaga, Stay for the Empowerment,” New York Magazine, November 7, 2011 (Lexis Nexis Academic, accessed March 1, 2013).

⁵²Ibid.

⁵³Dolan, Feminist Spectator in Action, 1.