The New York Times: One morning last August, the female dancers of Northern Ballet tried something most of them had never done before: partnering each other.
In one of the company’s studios in Leeds, England, there were giggles and some near falls. Carefully but eagerly, the dancers tried to steady their partners on pointe — in ballet, usually the task of men.
6 comments:
I was so excited to read this title because, as a person with a dance background and who took a lot of ballet, I always felt like ballet was very gendered, and the shows were basically the centerpoint was a male and a female, and that never really sat well with me. Especially with how strict the rules are in ballet about male versus female. For example, the dress code for a ballet class is very gendered and very strict. I never got the impression that there could be any mixing or the creation of a non-binary dress code or role. So reading about this queer performance where a female was playing the male role and using male costumes and techniques was so interesting to me. I was so excited to read about this piece. This is a very important piece that shows so many people that not everything has to be gendered and that we can make this progress and succeed.
This article really intrigues me because it demonstrates how ballet, a tradition, is beginning to evolve, particularly in terms of gender roles and narrative. The fact that women are partnering and lifting each other in Gentleman Jack is unfortunately a huge thing to change because ballet is often extremely rigorous about males lifting women and very traditional romance stories. It's fascinating to observe how choreography may alter dancers' perspectives on gender and movement in addition to the narrative.
Also, I find it intriguing that the ballet centers on a homosexual relationship and is based on Anne Lister, considering ballet typically doesn't depict stories like that. This production is subtly altering ballet from the inside out, not by outright rejecting tradition, but rather by making changes to partnering, costumes, and character roles. I think the most intriguing thing, in my opinion, is that the dancers claimed that taking on these roles really increased their self-assurance and allowed them to occupy more physical and emotional space.
I am really excited for this production and I am overjoyed to hear of something like it at all. I’m queer, and its no question that queerness and the LGBTQ+ community are underrepresented in many places in our world. Not only that, but so many things are so strictly gendered, and thats always been something I’ve struggled that as someone who didn’t want to be seen through the lens of any of the stereotypes and ideas pushed upon my sex. I used to dance ballet and tap and it is no question that ballet as an artform is very gendered. I can only recall one man being in my class, and then eventually he “grew out of it” and never came back. I had a guy friend too who also did ballet at a different company and he was also often harrassed or made fun of over it and people would assume things about his sexuality and gender despite him being completely cis and straight. I myself often struggled with a lot of internal issues with my gender and sexuality, and ballet contributed in its own way to these struggles. At first, I didn’t even want to participate in the class, as I knew ballet was often seen as a “girly” thing and when I was younger I was a lot more resentful and strictly against things that are often seen as feminine. However, I was convinced by the prospect that I would also get to do tap, and tap seemed really interesting and less gendered to me. I was always a better tapper than a ballerina. I just always felt out of place in ballet, and the inner resentment towards even slightly giving in to the feminine expectations that come with ballet just made it really hard to try and enjoy it fully. I am really happy to see a queer production that seems to throw those gendered expectations into the dumpster, I think ballet would certainly benefit from a shift like that in the modern day.
This ballet seems super intriguing to me, and I just know a bunch of people are going to be pissed off about it. Ballet is super traditional, and that’s part of its beauty; it's been developing for so long and serves as a classical art form. And that's great, but it doesn’t mean it can’t continue to push the boundaries of what has already been done. I love the idea of a ballet centered on a lesbian love story, and I love that they have chosen to use partnering done by two women, something that rarely happens in dance. From the photos of this production that the article showed, it also looks absolutely stunning. The costumes take some aspects of more traditional ballet costumes, both male and female ones, and combine and change them to fit the characters in this story. I can’t wait to read more about this ballet and see where it goes. I’m so curious what people’s reactions will be.
This article was so so so interesting. I LOVE ballet and even though I have never been a ballet dancer I have always had a love for watching ballet. However, because it's such a traditional art form I feel there are a lot of things that could be adapted and changed to fit today's morals and wokeness for lack of a better word. This show they’re talking about is really interesting because it breaks all of those ideals of the traditional ballet. I love when people use the structures or foundations of ballet to make new art forms, kind of like contemporary ballet being a variation of ballet but less formal and maybe that's not fully what this show is but using ballet as a term for the style of dance and not as much used as a word to describe those traditional values ballet originated as. I don’t know if any of that made sense but regardless, this show looks very interesting to me and this article was a great read.
Even the process behind this ballet is so exciting for what art can look like as we push past the constraints of gender roles. It feels a little bit like that game Little Alchemy to me. It is this game I played when I was younger, where you combine different things like water and land to create new things like a lake. We have all of these rules, like how men are the ones to pick up women in ballet, so then we only get what happens when you combine those things in that specific way. It feels like we are missing this whole piece of the puzzle by not thinking outside of the box, but now that we are starting to break down these rules we get cool stuff like queer ballet! I love including this historical perspective of an actual queer woman and her lovers. It feels like an homage to this history we haven’t been able to tell through art forms like ballet until now.
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