-Deirdre Kelly
In the latter years of the 18th century and beginning the 19th century, the Ballet audience shifted to highly successful bourgeois class of industrialists, lawyers and financiers, or the elite of Parisian society. This marked a societal shift of ballerinas to be seen in a nearly completely positive light, as up until this time they were viewed either as the utmost definition of feminine perfection, or vulgar entertainment through prostitution. As the ballerina became this seemingly virtuous ethereal and unworldly creature, women also were expected to follow suit, or to mirror the ballerina in virtue and chaste fidelity. These were the women viewed by society as ideal, these were the women that sought after, protected and adored.
The romantic ballerina, with the addition of the pointe shoe, became something
of another world. Something created by men, immediately setting a pedestal
of expectation and satisfaction of the feminine ideal. The pointe shoes
gave the ballerina the ability to become delicate, light and ethereal or,
perfectly feminine, and the development of the tutu allowed for more leg, arm
and chest to be revealed and accepted without question under the careful
definition of “art”.
“a woman on her points [who],
because of the change in significant line and stress and action, ceases to be
significantly a woman. She becomes an idealized and stylized creature of
the Theatre… there is a kind of eternal virginity about her.
She is inaccessible. She remains unravished”
-Novelist and poet Rayner Heppenstall
“Theatre always reflects the culture
that produces it”
-Agnes de Mille
The opposite of this statement or, perhaps the cause
of it was observed by ballet historian Jennifer Homans, that “ballet first came
to Russia as etiquette, not art: [and] this mattered: ballet was not initially
a theatrical ‘show’ but a standard of physical comportment to be emulated and
internalized- an idealized way of behaving. The common character of
the romantic and classical ballerina was no exception to this observation by de
Mille and Homans, reflecting a clear picture of the expectations and lifestyle
of women of the time.
In the latter years of the 18th century and beginning the 19th century, the Ballet audience shifted to highly successful bourgeois class of industrialists, lawyers and financiers, or the elite of Parisian society. This marked a societal shift of ballerinas to be seen in a nearly completely positive light, as up until this time they were viewed either as the utmost definition of feminine perfection, or vulgar entertainment through prostitution. As the ballerina became this seemingly virtuous ethereal and unworldly creature, women also were expected to follow suit, or to mirror the ballerina in virtue and chaste fidelity. These were the women viewed by society as ideal, these were the women that sought after, protected and adored.
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