A few weeks ago, with concert season upon us, we started a little series about the added complexity that putting a show on stage brings to the subject of INCLUSION. At that stage, the team had already been in planning and pre-production stages for a couple months, and all of these are topics that we need to discuss and issues to address, before the students even sign up to participate. 

This fortnight, we unpack a very specific issue that quickly turns into a much bigger problem:

BALLET TIGHTS AND SHOES.

If you think of ballet tights, it's very likely that the image that pops into your head is some form of light pink or salmon colour. It's just the ballet attire and that's the way it's been since forever. No questions asked.

To fully understand the extent of this issue, we need the historic background for context:

In the world of ballet technique, the goal is to achieve the most aesthetically pleasing shapes (within the language of this dance style) with elongated lines and a sense of effortlessness. There is a huge fixation in "the proper alignment and placement of the body" and ballet students will spend many hours in the years that they practice it sculpting and polishing the smallest details of their positioning and movement.

This requirement of ballet shaped what the class attire and stage costumes would look like and how they would evolve. Enter the tights and the shoes.

The initial (and traditional) intention was for the shoes and tights to match in colour in order to visually support that technique aspiring for an elongated extension of the legs. All good up to here. But the reason they are pink/salmon was to match the dancers skin colour. This of course, further established ballet as an elitist art form (don't forget it originated in the courts of European royalty) only accessible to white people.

When we place these thoughts and ideas about 200-300 years ago, they feel easier to digest. But when we think that it was only in 2015 that the American Ballet Theatre, one of the three leading companies in the world, promoted the first ever African American woman to be principal ballerina, things really get into perspective. We are talking about Misty Copeland, a now 41 year old woman who started ballet as a young girl wearing pink tights. And still to this day, Copeland has spent more years in pink tights than in the one that match her skin tone. How were pink tights helping Misty with her ballet lines? Yes, the shoes were matching the tights, but her whole lower body was in disconnection with the rest of herself, externally and internally.

Pictures of young (L) and adult (R) Misty Copeland wearing pink tights and shoes. (PC: abt.org)

It is only in the past couple of years that the tights and shoes colour has been questioned and, in part, it has been thanks to Misty's activism once she earned her position as Principal Dancer at ABT. She is just one ballerina out of the many darker skinned ballerinas impacted throughout history, but she has the platform and the voice to bring this issue to the mainstream and has chosen to use it.

BACK TO US, as a dance school that wants to make an effort to make dance as inclusive as possible, we have been having conversations about the topic for about two years now, always finding a huge road block when realising the market was not caught up and we simply couldn't stock tights in different tones to offer our students the option. THEY DID NOT EXIST in major worldwide retailers' catalogues. They were basically a very rare and limited thing to find, therefore a bit of a luxury item for recreational students.

This is a change that will take time and will develop slowly, but it is exciting to see that this year the market has reached a point that allow us to offer alternatives to our students that don't mean an extra cost.

However, just like any structural changes in the world, any dismantling of a system, will take extra work and extra effort at the beginning, but we believe it's an effort worth making for a better, more inclusive future in the world of dance in general. We are back to basics: a small change in everyday life can (and will) have a huge positive impact in the future of many people.

It won't all get done overnight and it will require a decent amount of communication and education, but that's how it is with all things worth doing, isn't it? We remain a small business and understand that we can't change the world alone, but we can change our world and are very excited to start this new era with our community.

Last week we started learning choreography for the End of Year concert in all our Middle School and Adult classes!

THAT IS OVER 70 CLASSES!! While preparing for all the events coming up, we've had a fair amount of dancers of all ages come in for trials and some even snatching the last spots in some classes! If you'd like to be part of the magic of concert season, it's important to note that participation cut off dates are coming up:

• MIDDLE SCHOOL: Saturday 9th September.
• ADULT SCHOOL: Saturday 5th October.

If you'd like to attend classes but performing is not something you are interested in at the moment, that is something you can of course do. Classes will remain open for all students for most of the year and we are currently working on suitable alternatives to offer to those opting out of concert during blockout periods, which are as follow:

• MIDDLE SCHOOL: Monday 7th October to Saturday 16th November
• ADULT SCHOOL: Monday 21st October to year-end

Wear-it-purple is coming up August 30th.

Every year, Wear-it-purple is held on the last Friday of August and we'd like to invite you all to wear a touch of purple at the studio for the week commencing on the 26th of August to support rainbow youth.

Click here to learn more about it.

We look forward to seeing you at the studio soon!

The Dance Habit Team
Move. Feel. Belong