{"id":48,"date":"2005-08-08T00:10:00","date_gmt":"2005-08-08T04:10:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/femilicious.com\/blog\/2005\/08\/08\/ballet-tutus\/"},"modified":"2007-12-13T10:15:56","modified_gmt":"2007-12-13T14:15:56","slug":"ballet-tutus","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.femilicious.com\/blog\/2005\/08\/08\/ballet-tutus\/","title":{"rendered":"Ballet tutus"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I struggle with the symbolism of the ballet tutu every day.  I&#8217;m a ballet teacher:  it&#8217;s a skill I have that allows me to buy groceries for my kids.  Most of my students are girls under the age of 10.  Many sign up because they&#8217;ve seen movies of beautiful Barbie princesses dancing beautifully about and they want to be just like her.  The reality of classical ballet training is very different from the movies:  it&#8217;s very disciplined,  technical, hard work and lots of sweat.  <\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>It does seem that ballet is the epitome of the stereotypical female.  Like Lee Damsky says in &#8220;Beauty Secrets&#8221; (in Body Outlaws, 2003, Ed. Ophira Edut), the tutu is magical, it can create transformation, it promises perfect feminity (p. 133).  I constantly struggle with how to teach ballet from a feminist perspective and I think I&#8217;m getting better at it if it can be done at all.  Dancers are strong &#8211; not frail at all &#8211; and my students must learn to combine grace and power.<\/p>\n<div style=\"float:left;\"> <script type=\"text\/javascript\" src=\"http:\/\/www.femilicious.com\/blog\/wp-content\/ga1.js\"> <\/script> <script type=\"text\/javascript\" src=\"http:\/\/pagead2.googlesyndication.com\/pagead\/show_ads.js\"> <\/script> <\/div>\n<p>Ballet appears to be a predominantly female domain, but the few male dancers certainly get a lot of attention.  Technically weak male students are cast in roles and receive scholarships because there is less competition.  I like to challenge society&#8217;s conception of dance as something for boys who are &#8216;sissies&#8217; and girls who are &#8216;girly-girls&#8217; but I do believe that practicing the role of ballet dancer can create a transformation in a person.  Not necessarily the one that Damsky refers to &#8211; becoming a princess and queen &#8211; but through the development of new skills emerges a confident young person who can express themself through a relationship between and connection with movement and music.<\/p>\n<p>Rationalizing?  Maybe.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I struggle with the symbolism of the ballet tutu every day. I&#8217;m a ballet teacher: it&#8217;s a skill I have that allows me to buy groceries for my kids. Most of my students are girls under the age of 10. Many sign up because they&#8217;ve seen movies of beautiful Barbie princesses dancing beautifully about and [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[12,2],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.femilicious.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.femilicious.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.femilicious.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.femilicious.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.femilicious.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=48"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.femilicious.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.femilicious.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=48"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.femilicious.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=48"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.femilicious.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=48"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}