Beyond the Ballet Idea: Embodiment, Labour, Music

Abstract

This thesis takes an embodied, dancer-led approach to the academic study of professional ballet. Previous scholarly critiques have centred on ballet as inherently flawed for a host of reasons: in its reification of the gender binary; objectification of women; whiteness; and the bodily harm it causes dancers. While these feminist-led critiques have been central to providing insights into some of ballet’s systemic issues, they tend to background the complex experiences of dancers themselves. As such, I am interested in moving away from critiques of ballet-as-idea, towards ballet as a material practice. Using a multi-sited ethnography, I seek to amplify and enrich the literature on professional ballet dancers, as well as give voice to the dancers I worked with. The three phases of my research involved an autoethnography of dancing at home via Zoom, interviews with classically trained dancers on Zoom, and observations and interviews with professional dancers at two ballet companies in Australia. The thesis draws on embodied theoretical approaches, most prominently critical feminist phenomenology allied with the work of Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, as well as sensory studies and cultural labour studies. In bringing a cultural studies perspective to ballet, I seek to engage with the “everyday” of professional ballet as a complexly patterned field of practice. Moreover, I focus on behind-the-scenes areas such as the company morning class—the spinal cord of the ballet dancer’s daily practice—to deliver insights into this everyday. The significance of this study is in providing an experience-driven analysis of professional ballet that is sensitive to its generative capacities and structural problems.