“Choreographers have
created images of women that are shaped by, and that in part shape, society’s
continuing debates about sexuality and female identity… that the dance stage
has often reflected and reinforced, but has also formed and in some cases
criticized cultural conceptions of… women’s bodies and identities- and that
through dance, men’s attitudes toward women and women’s attitudes about
themselves are literally given body on stage”
-Sally Banes
“Ballet is woman. Man is stronger, faster, why? Because we
have muscles, and we’re made that way. And woman accepts this. It is her business
to accept. She knows what’s beautiful. Men are great poets,
because men have to write beautiful poetry for woman-odes to a beautiful woman.
Woman accepts the beautiful poetry. You see, man is the servant- a good servant. In
ballet however, woman is first. Everywhere else the man is first.
But in ballet, it’s the woman. All my life I have dedicated my art to her.”
-George Balanchine
Balanchine wanted nothing more than to control his dancers, to make them
look, feel, move, and be as beautifully and perfectly as possible.
However this journey to ultimate beauty and perfection would be dictated and
enforced by him, based on his definition of perfect. He claimed, that this
obsession with and devotion to every aspect of his dancers was a portrayal of
his love for them. Although this self-proclaimed love could be replaced
with torture and perverted control proven by him when he said, “If you marry a
ballerina, you never have to worry about whether she’s running around with
somebody else or anything like that. You always know where she is- in the studio,
working.” Although the peak of Balanchine’s tyranny of success
was during society’s Women’s Rights Movement, he asked his dancers to “park
their brains at the stage door and submit themselves to his rule”.
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