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Hello, from a balmy spring morning in Asheville!
Ever since I wrote about "balletcore" and its perennial appeal, my antennae have been extra attuned for examples of how the art form of ballet and its trappings-- the tutu, the pointe shoe, the habitual practicing-- appear to the non-dancer population. What do people think of when they see a ballet dancer or the image of one? What associations and assumptions do they make? And now more than ever, I wonder exactly why the concept of ballet and ballerinas lands the way it does on the world's consciousness. For the most part, a non-dancer who lives with simply a casual awareness about ballet forms one of two impressions: ballet as a light, fun, frilly pink pastime, or something completely different, with tinges of intrigue, shades of sacrifice, and even slightly sinister motives.
When I spoke recently to the writer Margaret Fuhrer about the latest ballet vampire movie (yes, that's right), we talked about why pop culture seems to love tying ballerinas to gore and using ballet as a vehicle for tales of violence, psychopathy, destruction and even death. Margaret was writing about "Abigail," the new film, for the New York Times. It is online now and in today's Arts and Leisure section. I've linked to the piece below.
There is a LOT behind all this, and I find it all very fascinating. I dug up an article about balletcore that had been languishing on my desktop for months, but it's not just about why people like to wear leotards in public. This piece, by Ruby Feneley in Refinery29, gets deep into what an obsession with the darker side of ballet and dancers says about the state of women in society today (this article is also linked below.) Some key reasons Ruby surmises that stuck with me have to do with the mournful feelings for the ease of childhood, desperation at the prospect of the loss of bodily autonomy, and the immense emotional power of having physical strength and finesse.
Margaret had specifically asked me to contribute comments on the sublimity of ballet from a (former) dancer's point of view, which I was very happy to do, as a sort of counterweight to the vampire ballerina movie's heavy coloring of the ballerina's delight in using her powers for evil. Though I must add that I recall times when I, while not driven quite as far as Abigail, the film's central character, did throw things (pointe shoes that wouldn't hold me up), scream in rage (alone in my car after a horrible show), and want to claw someone's eyes out (a partner whose pompous attitude sabotaged our pas de deux.)
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