The Moment When it all Comes Together’: Embodied Experiences in Ballet

ABSTRACT This article is both an elaborated critique on the one-sided analysis of the misogynist nature of ballet as a cultural practice, and a contribution to a more embodied feminist theory. Based on empirical material, that was brought together by observing the body practices in ballet and listening to the life stories of dancers, the author explores the contradictions that the body in ballet provokes. In describ-ing the embodied experiences of professional ballet dancers she shows that ballet offers women the possibility to transcend the discontinuity of body, mind and emotions. KEY WORDS aesthetics ◆ ballet ◆ cultural practice ◆ embodiment ◆ female agency ◆ objectification of the body ◆ physicality When it comes to gender relations, ballet is a fascinating subject. In the 1980s and early 1990s, most feminist scholars considered ballet an oppres-sive environment for women (Adair, 1992; Hanna, 1988; Klein, 1992). In her feminist introduction to dance history – the first of its kind – dance scholar Christy Adair criticized ballet as a social practice, stating that: Ballet upholds the dominant ideology, for example by continuing to select dancers on the basis of a classical ideal of beauty, by reinforcing traditional sex roles and by the hierarchical structures of both the training institutions and the ballet companies. (Adair, 1992: 88–9) Elaborating on this critique, dance scholar Cynthia Novack wrote: Stereotypes of gender which perpetuate representations of women as fragile creatures supported by powerful men are connected to a training system which is extremely technical and rigorous, and is offered to large number