All the (Dis)Comforts of Home: Place, Gendered Self-Fashioning, and Solidarity in a Ballet Studio

Abstract

This essay examines ballet as a vernacular landscape, a homeplace where solidarity and competition, surveillance, and self-fashioning come together for adolescent girls. First, the author argues that place itself is performatively produced. Next, specific examples of place in ballet are examined. The author then discusses a Southern California ballet studio as a generative home for a diverse group of young women who navigate the pressures of parental expectations and adolescence by tactically deploying the technique's disciplines and pleasures.

Keywords:

• Ballet
• Vernacular Landscapes
• Space
• Place
• Performativity
• Feminism

Notes

Judith Hamera currently serves as Acting Associate Dean of the College of Arts and Letters at California State University, Los Angeles, where she teaches courses in Communication Studies and Theatre Arts and Dance. She is the editor of Opening Acts: Performance in/as Communication and Cultural Criticism (Sage, 2006), and co-editor with D. Soyini Madison of the Handbook of Performance Studies (Sage, forthcoming). Correspondence to: Professor Judith Hamera, Departments of Communication Studies and Theatre Arts and Dance, California State University, Los Angeles, 5151 State University Drive, Los Angeles, CA 90032, USA. [email protected]

[1] Over the course of my research, Le Studio's resident company has changed. In June, 1996, Le Studio's sixteen-year relationship with the Pasadena Dance Theatre (PDT), its then resident company, was terminated by mutual agreement of the Fullers and the PDT Board. See correspondence between Charles Fuller (April 23, 1996), James Aguiar (May 16, 1996), and Charles and Philip Fuller (May 26, 1996) in the Le Studio newsletter (“News Flash”). Dance Corps was constituted and founded by the Fullers in 1996. There was considerable continuity of membership from PDT to Dance Corps; the major factor here, in my determination, was loyalty to the Fullers and to Le Studio as a training facility.

[2] With the shift in affiliated companies, the Nutcracker performance also changed. With the earlier company, a full-length version of the ballet was performed. Some of the informants quoted here are referring to this production and some to the hour-long The Story of the Nutcracker; virtually all of the major variations are included in the latter. In addition, Le Studio is the common denominator in both performances; both casts were composed of Le Studio students.

[3] All quotations from dancers and parents are taken from field notes spanning 1990–2005.

[4] Nonprofessional dancers, including the girls quoted here and parents, have been assigned pseudonyms, designated by quotation marks. While the parents with ambivalences about ballet were quite vocal about their concerns, they were more reticent about consenting to have their real names used. In part, I suspect, they did not want to appear unsupportive of their daughters' ambitions, even if they wished these ambitions were more “conventional.” “Mrs. A,” who reassured me that “of course” she was very proud of her daughter, was a particularly interesting case. She seemed anxiously poised between the role of ardent stage mother, critiquing her daughter's and other girls' performances as we watched company class, and a more ambivalent position of fretting that ballet would “put [her daughter] out of the running” for both an “A-1 college” and social position.

[5] One aspect of the body that is officially and explicitly not controlled at Le Studio is weight. Girls across four “generations” of company members attest to this. “It's not an issue,” Erica noted firmly when asked. Indeed, a number of Tech II girls and some company members across the years have been heavy, not only by ballet standards but by everyday ones. “It didn't get mentioned,” observed “Jennie,” a recent “graduate” from Le Studio who has moved on to another regional company. “The guys [Chip and Phip] were always on us to eat healthy.” This bears mentioning as accounts of anorexia in ballet circulate through both insider discourse at many studios and the popular media, leaving the impression that the bony dancer favored by Balanchine is automatically synonymous with ballet across all amateur and professional contexts.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Judith Hamera

Judith Hamera currently serves as Acting Associate Dean of the College of Arts and Letters at California State University, Los Angeles, where she teaches courses in Communication Studies and Theatre Arts and Dance. She is the editor of Opening Acts: Performance in/as Communication and Cultural Criticism (Sage, 2006), and co-editor with D. Soyini Madison of the Handbook of Performance Studies (Sage, forthcoming). Correspondence to: Professor Judith Hamera, Departments of Communication Studies and Theatre Arts and Dance, California State University, Los Angeles, 5151 State University Drive, Los Angeles, CA 90032, USA. [email protected]