Friday, November 03, 2006
Dancing has been around for a long time and the origins of dance are hard to trace. However, ballet as we recognize it today can be traced to the early 15th Century during the Renaissance period. Then it was the ballet du cour (court ballet). Over the years, from spectacles much akin to pagan rituals, ballet has evolved into an elegant, perfection-driven art form. As Mersenne, a French polymath, wrote in his L’Harmonie Universelle (1636), “By using music that imitated exactly the proportions of the harmony of the spheres, sixteenth century man believed he could attract planetary influences. Dance in itself was an imitation of the movement of the heavens. To combine both would produce an art form of extraordinary power,” As ballet evolved, the dancers have also evolved.
The rise of ballet can be laid at Catherine de Medici’s door. The Queen of France, of Italian heritage, was a great patron of the arts and created the first ballet company—Le Ballet Comique de la Reine (The Queen's Ballet Comedy) “The first ballet for which a complete score survived, was performed in Paris in 1581. It was staged by Balthazar de Beaujoyeux, a violinist and dancing master at the court of Queen Catherine de Medici. It was danced by aristocratic amateurs in a hall with the royal family on a dais at one end and spectators in galleries on three sides.”
[1] However the participants in this first ballet were courtiers and the steps were from court dances.
In 1661, Louis XIV established the Academie Royale de Danse, a professional organization for dancing masters. By then the court ballet was already giving way to professional dancing. At first all the dancers were men, and men in masks danced women's roles. From these, we first see how the idealistic males stereotyped females, feeling that a woman’s place was in the house and not on the stage. As observed by Carol Brown on the histories of ballet of that period, “As elaborate ceremonial occasions, they [ballet performances] functioned as affirmations of the monarch’s power and the male status quo. Formalised through a succession of royal benefactors, the surviving treatises and notation scores were authorized by men, who also occupied the role of dance master and choreographer within the court.” All this shows how the female was excluded and marginalized in dance from the beginning.
It was during the 18th Century that society started to focus on the individual rather than the whole and, as a result, it was during this time that the male and female dancers came to represent the "ideal" man and woman, as they do today. Technical advancement in ballet reached a peak in France. “During the second half of the 18th Century, the Paris Opera was dominated by male dancers such as the Italian-French virtuoso Gaetan Vestris and his son Auguste Vestris, famed for his jumps and leaps. But women such as the German-born Anne Heinel, the first female dancer to do double pirouettes, also were gaining in technical proficiency.”
[2] To showcase their increased technique, female dancers began wearing shorter skirts and leaving off their corsets. This might have contributed to the rise in demand for women dancers as these fashions titillated male fantasies. Although some countries were tolerant of female ballet dancers, many people of the period considered women who danced beneath contempt.
With the coming of the 19th Century, a shift in the male predominance was more obvious in ballet. During this pre-Romantic period, ballerinas first started dancing on the very tips of their toes, or en pointe. The lady who is traditionally credited with being the first dancer to perform en pointe is the Italian Marie Taglioni (1804–1884), and it is recorded that she was en pointe when she was eighteen years old and danced in La Sylphide, choreographed by her father, Filippo Taglioni, to emphasise her otherworldly lightness and insubstantiality. The invention of the pointe shoe moved women to center stage and relegated the male to little more than a moving statue, present only in order to lift the ballerina. In most parts of Europe, male ballet dancers were no longer regarded as important, which led to less emphasis on technique. Thankfully in Russia and Denmark, men advanced alongside women, as ballet in those countries was still supported by the royal court, so not all technique for male dancers was lost. Russia also started importing French talent and thereby preserved much of the technical brilliance achieved by male dancers in the previous century.
During the Romantic era, female ballet dancers ruled the stage and many of the most renowned ballets were created, such as La Sylphide (1832), Giselle (1841), The Sleeping Beauty (1890) and Swan Lake (1875), with the female as the lead character. An exception to this was Coppelia (1870), choreographed by Saint Leon, but here the principal role was danced by a woman. During this period, the female character in ballet had become less inhibited in their dressing style and hence appealed a lot to male fantasy dressed skimpily portraying characters such as faeries, sprites, nymphs and other otherworldly creatures. This appeal to the male sex is in part a reason for the rise in popularity of ballet. Since then, ballet has become synonyms with willowy women dressed in tutus skimming the stage en pointe. Little or in fact no thought is given to their partners in classical pas de deux. Women had gained control of the stage in ballet and this control has yet to be relinquished.
From studying the history of ballet, we observe that the first feminist revolution actually occurred in dance, even before women got to vote or were free to burn their bras. As we saw, women gained dominance in the ballet world from as far back as the 1840s. While they did leave an impression on stage, it was probably because the female ballet dancer was cast as an object of desire that allowed the male ego to accept a female on stage. For that reason, many families were reluctant and discouraged their daughters from taking up this profession. Women who performed on stage were despised and regarded as little more than prostitutes. So, women still had to fight a battle to prove and be recognised as artistes in their own right. However, because ballet had become dominated by females, male chauvinism started to work in reverse; because men were not able to gain the success of women in ballet, they began to feel that ballet was meant for women and that it is degrading for a guy to do it. This highly questionable view almost caused men to be obliterated from ballet. Thankfully, in places like Denmark and Russia, ballet was supported by royalty and men dancers advanced alongside their female companions.
While women tried to establish themselves, new Russian ballets were bringing hope to both reviving the male dancer and the liberalising the female from classical ballet. The Ballet Russes which presented new and avant-garde one-act ballets, such as The Firebird (1910), Sheherazade (1910) and Petrushka (1911) was very different from those of the Romantic era in theme, staging and, most importantly, performer. In these ballets, the weight of the male role was equivalent to that of the female. The female characters in these dances are given less sexual discriminating roles even taking part in ensemble parts where the female and male dancers do the same things. This reopened the eyes to the value of male dancers. First making his debut in the 1909 season of the Ballet Russes programme was Nijinsky (Les Sylphide). He caused a storm in the ballet world with his astounding elevation and brilliant technique. From then, Nijinsky danced in many ballets and even choreographed some specially to showcase the technique of male dancers.
Since then, women and men have progressed rapidly in ballet which had spread to most corners of the Earth with pioneers such as Ninette de Valois, who established ballet in Britain, and George Balanchine, who brought ballet to America, to name a few. However, the female ballet dancer did not really gain full respect till the female revolution of the 1930s and was not established as an artiste in her own right until the rise of modern dance.
Although men have proved themselves valuable to ballet, now, very few men actually wish to do ballet. Because of the number of years ballet had been dominated by women, men feel that to do ballet is to be effeminate. A good example of this prejudice is seen in the movie Billy Elliot where a coal miner stops his son from attending ballet classes proclaiming,” No son of mine dances!” There is this perception that men who do ballet are gay. This speculation is further supported by facts such as Nijinsky being gay alongside several other prominent names in ballet. This aversion in males to dance might have an unhealthy impact on ballet and steps should be taken to either obliterate or at least reduce the effects of stereotypes.
It appears that the chauvinistic attitude of men no longer affect ballet. However, I still feel that the dominance is still present as although there are a few women who choreograph ballet, much of the choreography of ballet is done by males. Instead of dictating whether women should be allowed to dance or not, now the male dictates what the women does. So the influence though more subtle is still present. In addition to this point, the effects of male chauvinism are quite clearly shown by the attitude towards men who dance. This has a very negative impact on ballet as a whole. If ballet is to escape the strangulation of male dominance, it needs to undergo a revolution akin to that of modern dance.
keira:)
@ 12:03 AM
