How Male Dominance Fosters Female Exploitation in Dance

From the very roots of performance-based dance, women have been exploited time and time again. The dominance of male artistic directors, choreographers and managers of dance has led to this culture of female exploitation in dance. From the prostitution of Paris Opera Ballet dancers, to the recent firing of two male NYCB dancers for violating the privacy of female dancers, we see how the sexual exploitation of female dancers is an ongoing issue to this day.

The Paris Opera Ballet was the world’s first professional ballet company and was founded in the 17th century. Throughout the 19th century, it raised the standard of dance, however this was at the expense of many exploited young dancers. Part of a ballerina’s duties during the 19th century was “Sex work”. This was an era in which money, power and prostitution was at the very foundation of world of the Paris Opera. Dancers entered the ballet as young girls, and trained at the opera’s dance school until they could obtain a position in the corps. Until then, the dancers attended classes and auditioned for small, walk-on roles. These ballerinas also known as “petits rats” were vulnerable to social and sexual exploitation (Coons 2014). The wealthy male patrons of the Paris Opera were called “abonnés” or sponsors. These men subscribed to the opera for the beautiful ballerinas who danced twice per show. After the show the abonnés bought sexual favors from the women they lusted over on stage.

The abonnés were so powerful, they were part of the Opera’s very architecture. Opera house’s designs began to include separate entrances for season ticket holders. Charles Garnier, constructed the Palais Garnier to include the foyer de la danse, located directly behind the stage. This room was a place where ballet dancers could warm up and practice, however, it was designed with the abonnés in mind. The foyer was really just a place for them to socialize and have sexual relations with ballet dancers. For subscribers, the foyer de la danse was also seen as a place where they could meet with other powerful men to make business deals as well as relax in a highly sexualized atmosphere. For dancers on the other hand, it was a place where they were subject to sexual and verbal harassment. The petits rats were expected to be submissive to the attentions and affections of subscribers. This is because most of the men were nobleman or important financiers to opera’s operations (Coons 2014).

Since abonnés controlled the finances of the ballet, they had an influence over which dancers made it into coveted roles as well as who was terminated. The ballet subscribers even held the power to become a dancer’s “patron”. This meant they could sponsor a girl, who was possibly very poor, by setting her up in nice living quarters or paying for private lessons that could increase her status in the ballet. For many of the Paris Opera ballerinas who were from poor backgrounds, a “relationship” with a rich sponsor was their only chance at leading a stable life and career. But not only were men with power at the root of the exploitation of women in the Paris Opera Ballet, they are still at the root of the problem today.

The New York City Ballet was established in 1949 by George Balanchine and Lincoln Kirstein. As the head choreographer, Balanchine was recognized for producing phenomenal dancers. Balanchine's dancers were notable for their long limbs, simple carriage, strength, speed, clarity, animation, and technical and musical exactness (Morris 2005). In 1974, Kyra Nichols emerged as one of the New York City Ballet’s leading ballerinas. J. Dunning summed it up this way: “Some attribute Miss Nichols's gifts to the Russian heritage of her father, a professor of biophysics at the University of California at Berkeley. Others point to her early ballet training and the intensely competitive relationship with her mother who, as Sally Streets, was a member of City Ballet's corps de ballet from 1953 to 1955. Many suggest that her accomplishments are merely a reflection of George Balanchine, City Ballet's ballet master and the choreographer whose ballets are the company's raison d'etre (Dunning 1981).” Like the petits rats of the Paris Opera Ballet, Nichols stared dance as a child, and joined the City Ballet affiliated School of American Ballet, at the age of thirteen.

Years before his star ballerina, Balanchine also left his family behind at the young age of eleven, when he entered the Imperial Ballet Academy in St. Petersburg. It is because of this that Balanchine believes, ''Dancers have to be strong-willed,'' ''They must put all their mind and body into it. You can't be half and half (Dunning 1981).” It is this harsh mindset that, dancers can only be dancers and have no other lives, that makes Balanchine's influence so severe, especially on female dancers. The fact that, Balanchine held rehearsal on the wedding night of one of his dancers is proof of how serious he is for his dancers to eat, breath and sleep dance. It is no surprise that Balanchine wanted to control every aspect of his dancer’s lives after he had compared himself and his company with a lion-tamer and lions (Dunning 1981).

As stated before, Balanchine's dancers such as Kyra Nichols started young, and Balanchine said himself that he would “choose [dancers] who already have some ability, but after 12 they may grow enormous if their father or mother is enormous”. Statements like this are probably why many of Balanchine’s female dancers were known to have eating disorders. It is known that Balanchine is accused of creating the concept of the “ideal ballet body”. Gelsey Kirkland, a dancer at City Ballet in the late 1960's, wrote that she was told by Balanchine that he wanted to ''see the bones.'' This would probably be a good time to edit my previous statement about Balanchine “wanting his dancers to eat, breathe, and sleep dance” to “not* eat, breathe, and sleep” dance. Even Kyra Nichols admitted to dieting for Balanchine to notice her, ''I'd been on a diet. I was pudgy when [first] I got into the company but I had gotten real thin by then. Balanchine noticed. 'It looks good,' he said. 'I have a tummy, but you don't need one.'”

However, not only were men such as Balanchine at the root of the ill-treatment of women in the NYCB, even now, nearly 40 years after Balanchine’s death, the NYCB is still immersed in the culture of exploitation. Just last month a 20-year-old woman filed a lawsuit stating that “a principal dancer at New York City Ballet, whom she had been dating, shared sexually explicit photos and short videos of her that were taken without her knowledge or consent with others affiliated with the company.” The ex-boyfriend and two other principal dancers of the company were suspended without pay until next year because of violating unspecified “norms of conduct.” In her lawsuit, Alexandra Waterbury accused her ex of sending nude photos of her to another male dancer, who sent back an image of a “bare-chested female ballet member”. In her suit, Ms. Waterbury, who, like Nichols, initially studied at the academy affiliated with the company, the School of American Ballet, blames the company for disregarding a “fraternity-like atmosphere” that “permeates the Ballet and its dancers and emboldens them to disregard the law and violate the basic rights of women” (Cooper 2018). The lawsuit gave an example of NYCB condoning the fraternity-like behavior by saying that the company was aware that one of the male dancers had hosted a party earlier this year that caused extensive damage to his hotel room. Instances like this show the imbalance in power of male and female dancers in the NYCB. A quote from the New York Times Article “City Ballet and Chase Finlay Sued by Woman Who Says Nude Photos of Her Were Shared” really stood out to me. Waterbury said that she worried for young girls who want to be ballerinas when they grow up. “Every time I see a little girl in a tutu or with her hair in a bun on her way to ballet class, all I can think is that she should run in the other direction,” she said, “because no one will protect her, like no one protected me.” This is extremely hard to hear because, most dancers would envy Waterbury for dancing with the NYCB, but they are so unaware of the exploitation of women dancers that happens there and possibly in other professional dance settings.

It is clear that the origins of professional ballet fostered the exploitation of women. This atmosphere in the professional dance world lingered for years all the way to the emergence of the New York City Ballet. The dominance of male artistic directors, choreographers and managers in the dance field has only has strengthened the culture of female exploitation in dance. From the prostitution of Paris Opera Ballet dancers, to the recent suspension of a few male NYCB dancers, the sexual exploitation of female dancers is an ongoing issue to this day.

Works Cited:

Coons, L. (2014). Artiste or coquette? Les petits rats of the Paris Opera ballet. French Cultural

Studies, 25(2), 140–164. https://doi.org/10.1177/0957155814520912

Cooper, M., & Pogrebin, R. (2018, September 5). City Ballet and Chase Finlay Sued by Woman

Who Says Nude Photos of Her Were Shared. The New York Times. Retrieved November 11, 2018, from https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/05/arts/dance/nyc-ballet-alexandra-waterbury.html

Dunning, J. (1981, February 8). The Creation of A Balanchine Ballerina. The New York Times.

Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/1981/02/08/arts/the-creation-of-a-balanchine-ballerina.html

Morris, G. (2005). Balanchine's Bodies. Body & Society,11(4), 19-44.

doi:10.1177/1357034x05058018