What does queer ballet look like?
What does queer ballet look like?
It’s a strange question to some people, given the very strong association, in the public imagination, between ballet and gay men. Like, isn’t ballet already just super queer?
It’s true that the ballet world is, for a lot of gay men, a haven of sorts. It’s a place where they’re not a tiny minority — some research, which needs to be updated, suggest about 50% of professional male ballet dancers are gay — and where, as a result, they’re fairly unremarkable.
But that doesn’t mean there are stories about gay men being told in ballet, where the meatiest leading roles are straight romantic heroes. And because of that, and because ballet isn’t immune from homophobia, there’s pressure on all men — gay, straight, and otherwise — to make sure their style of movement isn’t too feminine. As one former dancer described it to me recently, he was always told to dance “more solidly.” In those straight romantic hero roles and elsewhere, men in ballet are required to perform masculinity — literally.
And, gay men are not the only queer people in the world: there’s far less writing and research about gay women, about bisexual ballet dancers, and about gender nonconforming dancers.
One person, Katy Pyle, wants to change that. Pyle, who was female assigned at birth and who now uses both she and they pronouns, grew up taking ballet very seriously, but was forever being told that their movement quality was just… off. Their jumps were too big, their dancing had too much attack, their gaze was too direct. And, Pyle remembers looking up the ranks at the ballet company where she was an apprentice and noticing that all the dancers who had bodies like hers — more muscular than willowy — were relegated to supporting roles and understudying. The realization, and the desire to avoid that fate, was one reason she started starving herself.
Twenty years later, Pyle is the founder of Ballez, a company that’s queering ballet: making it a place where the gender roles aren’t so rigid, where all kinds of queerness is acknowledged and valued, where gay men won’t ever be asked to butch up their dancing -- unless they want to.
From their mission statement:
Ballez welcomes the outcasts that have always been ballet’s secret muses; those whose identities have always been a part of ballet, but have been forced into the shadows. In the margins, we have still communicated who we are through the study and mastery of ballet’s coded gendered gesture, and we know how to dance our identities, and subversively change our genre. Now it’s time for us to step into the spotlight… We who have been deemed unworthy of the pride, nobility, and belonging in ballet’s centuries long hierarchical history… are coming back into the castle now, to take back the movements, magic, creativity and power that we have always been integral to creating.
In addition to their performances, Ballez runs classes in person in New York City and online for free. Because I’m planning to write a lot more about Pyle and their company in the book, I took one of those NYC classes last weekend, and my hamstrings have just about recovered. It was fascinating to observe Pyle messing with some of the conventions of ballet class, and to watch their students disobey some of ballet’s strict rules about gender and movement (yes, there was a cis man in pointe shoes, but that’s only the beginning of the subversion).
And, it was enlightening to interview some members of Pyle’s company, and hear their stories about how they felt like they had to compromise on a huge part of themselves in order to stay in ballet, and how dancing with Pyle is healing some of that trauma. So, maybe the bigger question is not what does queer ballet look like? but what does queer ballet feel like?
Ballet education doesn’t have to uphold rigid gender norms, and it doesn’t have to push out the people who can’t or don’t want to conform to them. Ballet doesn’t have to exclusively tell straight love stories, and accept gay men conditionally. Those are choices. It doesn’t have to be this way, and Pyle’s work is proof of that.
You can read more about Ballez here, here, and here. And, eventually, in my book.
That’s it from me. Thanks for reading, and see you next week.
P.S. Thank you to those of you who made donations to Australian bushfire relief efforts in exchange for a free signed copy of the book next spring. All ten of those copies have been claimed, but if you’d still like to donate, and you don’t know where, here is one good option, a hyperlocal fund for one small town where lots of locals who volunteered to help their neighbours and their firefighters now need help repairing their vehicles. Two dear family friends of mine live in this town, and their property sustained some fire damage -- but a lot of their neighbours are much worse off. Please help out if you can.