Publicizing transgender ballet dancers: a pas de deux of inclusion and reiterative gender norms

ABSTRACT

Over the last decade, mainstream media sources from the US and UK have shown an increased interest in topics involving transgender and non-binary populations. Yet, their portrayals of such individuals tend to reaffirm rather than challenge cisnormative ideas surrounding bodies and gender. In this article, we consider this ongoing trend within the highly body-centric, traditionally-gendered artform—classical ballet. With a transgender studies and dance studies lens, we analyze current discourse surrounding the recent move for classical ballet companies and schools to adapt casting and training curricula to better include non-binary dancers. Through these analyses we reveal ways media sensationalizes the transgender body by focusing on information regarding hormone therapy and surgeries, and with the topic of ballet in mind, how this transphobic move becomes intertwined with ballet-specific processes of reshaping the body. We claim that although these popular press pieces contribute to a greater awareness of the lived experiences of transgender and non-binary dancers, they simultaneously reiterate ongoing balletic gender tropes that mark the artform as feminine and designate particular body types and movements to specific binarized genders.

KEYWORDS:

• Ballet
• transgender
• media
• non-binary
• gender

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. This article takes into consideration journalistic texts written from 2015 to 2020 as this is when public discourse on transgender ballet dancers most notably enters the space in the US and UK. Even then, because of classical ballet’s strict gender norms and body requirements that limit accessibility to trans dancers, the topic rarely arises, leaving us with only around 30 articles to study.

2. Regarding the term “cis-gender:” Trans studies scholar Susan Stryker explains the prefix cis- “is meant to mark the typically unstated or assumed privilege of being nontransgender. The idea behind the term is to resist the way that ‘woman’ or ‘man’ can mean ‘nontransgender woman’ or ‘nontransgender man’ by default. … [However] using the term too rigidly can foster another kind of gender binary, cis- versus trans-. It aligns binary and cis- with the cultural politics of normativity and nonbinary and trans- with notions of transgression or radicalness, when in fact the politics of normativity and transgression cut across both cis and trans categories” (Susan Stryker 2017, 13). With this in mind, aside from identifying our own embodiment here, we do not rigorously use the prefix cis- throughout our article.

3. For example, the TROCKS, who have had a significant presence in the ballet world since the 1970s, take on a type of double-drag throughout their shows. Their works not only expose the performativity of gender but, simultaneously, reveal the performativity (the repetitive stylized acts (Judith Butler 1988)) of ballet. Choreographing parodies, many of their shows use humor as a way to critique and endearingly nod toward ballet culture and history. More recently, Ballez has taken a different approach to queering ballet. Pyle, too, reworks classical pieces to challenge ballet’s normative gender roles, but instead of drag and parody, they focus on inclusion and telling queer narratives. Furthermore, while the TROCKS are known as an all-male company, Ballez’s roster includes a range of trans and non-binary dancers, with differing bodies, experiences, and training in dance. Any combination of dancers may pair up in Pyle’s work for a romantic duet, and dancers often switch partners and play roles that allude to queer iconography, such as the butch/femme couple or the Leather Daddy.

4. While including non-binary dancers on the traditional ballet stage is arguably a queering of ballet in its “critique of normativity” and “embrace of heterogeneity” (Clare Croft 2017, 8), situations and intentions vary drastically among companies and the dancers themselves.

5. For more on Sean Dorsey see works by Maxe Crandall and Selby Wynn Schwartz (2015) and Tikkun (2010), as well as Dorsey’s website seandorseydance.com.

6. This is not to say male dancers disappeared from the Paris Opéra stage (see Marian Smith 2007) or around the world; in fact, scholars argue that Italian and Danish ballet companies continued to prominently showcase their male dancers throughout the nineteenth century (Garafola 1997, 5; Giannandrea Poesio 1997, 131). Rather it seems that a particular public mindset, specifically in France and Victorian England, surrounding masculinity changed and affected how one saw the male ballet dancer (Karthas 2012, 963).

7. American popular culture certainly presents exceptions to this trend by positioning past and present dancers like Mikhail Baryshnikov, Ethan Stiefel, or Sergei Polunin as hyper-masculinized.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Mara Mandradjieff

Mara Mandradjieff earned her PhD in Dance at Texas Woman’s University. Her publications appear in Women & Performance: A Journal of Feminist Theory, Text & Performance Quarterly, Dance Chronicle, Journal of Dance Medicine & Science, Journal of Dance Education, and The Oxford Handbook of Contemporary Ballet. Mandradjieff currently teaches at Emory University in the Dance and Movement Studies Program, while instructing cross-listed courses for the Film and Media Studies Department and Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Department. E-mail: [email protected]

Gretchen Alterowitz

Gretchen Alterowitz is an artist-scholar whose research focuses on feminist, queer, and democratic dancemaking, performance, and teaching. Alterowitz’s writing appears in the Oxford Handbook on Contemporary Ballet, Dance Chronicle, Conversations Across the Field of Dance Studies, The Journal of Dance Education, and with the members of AGA Collaborative, in Choreographic Practices and Performing Ethos: International Journal of Ethics in Theatre & Performance. She is Chair and Professor of Dance at UNC Charlotte, where she teaches ballet technique, dance history, dance writing, and choreography.