Misty Copeland for Underarmor "I Will What I Want" (2016)
Misty Copeland has turned the ballet world into her own personal empire, shattering stereotypes and expectations on her way to the top.
To become a professional ballerina there are unspoken rules you must follow.
You must look the part.
Ballerinas are petite.
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Regardless of the strength required to perform on pointe, being muscular is NOT considered grateful and is generally frowned upon.
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Ballerinas should be strong, but strong in a lean and toned way, like this dancer.
Bulky muscles break up the smooth elegant lines of the arms and legs.
Misty was told this very thing time and time again.
Despite her talent, she didn’t have the right look. End of story.
But she fought hard, and eventually her skill and abilities in ballet were enough to win her success.
Ballet requires tremendous athleticism.
Not only is strength required to hold the limbs in the desired positions for hours on end, stamina is key as well.
Rehearsals often last hour after hour if not full days. Just as basketball players have to keep their energy up for entire games, dancers have to have the endurance to practice relentlessly.
In fact, a team of researchers recently discovered that dancers have higher endurance than team sport athletes, as they are slower to fatigue.
Why do we see dance and team sports as different then?
The answer lies in their purpose. Sports are grueling competitions where the athlete’s desire to win is impossible to miss, it is the key aspect that drives them to push themselves.
Dance is meant to be perceived more artistic, so when we watch dancers, we want their technique and skill set to be unmatched, but portrayed beautifully and elegantly.
The simplest way to achieve this is to have dancers be light, appearing borderline frail from afar.
While this dancer clearly has muscles and is probably very strong, the muscles are not bulky, they are lean and elegant.
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Misty showed the world that you can have the strength and musculature of an athlete and still look athletic and graceful. She has allowed there to be a slight shift in perception of ballerinas.
But focusing just on Misty as an athlete in dance fails to recognize one key point. Her expertise is in ballet- a style of dance meant to be beautiful and artistic.
While that doesn’t make her any less of an athlete- ballerinas are athletes without question- it does give her the advantage in striking a balance between athleticism and beauty.
Audiences want to see beauty when they see ballet, so even though Misty shows more strength than your typical ballerina, she is still functioning within the realms of a very specific and artistic style of dance.
She is still a breathtaking artist.
In many modern dance and hip-hop styles however, the artistry is decreased in importance.
It is in these cases where the question of dancers as athletes can be fully explored.
Elizabeth Strebs' Action-Hero Choreography (2015)
In Elizabeth Strebs' company, we find an example of dance that has isolated athleticism and excluded art as much as possible.
Art is about molding the perception of viewers, the artist gives you what they want you to see.
With dancers, this is often seen in the beauty and effortlessness.
The dancers smile and float their arms lightly to mask the effort, and the music covers up any loudness their feet may make crashing into the floor.
Strebs wants to eliminate this completely. She sees it as a lie, which in some senses is true.
Dancers cover up the harsh cold truth of what they are doing to their bodies so that the audiences can perceive elegance.
Streb wants to highlight this physicality. She finds beauty in the noise the body makes as it smacks the ground.
Often, this is a turn-off for audiences.
It goes against what we expect of dance, and it looks brutal to watch. Why would we want to watch people performing acts that LOOK painful and SOUND painful?
The overwhelming and brutal physical force of these dancers scares away the common audience interested in dance.
Regardless of whether you think of it as a lie, dance is expected to be artistic and have a level of elegance that isn’t possible when its stripped to it is physical core.
You want to see impeccable technique and skill, but the appeal of dance is in its perfect presentation.
Example of death scene: Roberto Bolle and Ambra Vallo (2005)
When I watched the American Ballet Theatre perform Romeo and Juliet, this scene in particular stood out to me.
It is an extreme example of the purpose of ballet.
In this scene, Juliet is dead. The ballerina is playing the part of someone who is no longer living or able to move.
Essentially, she is portraying a lifeless rag doll.
Yet the athleticism doesn’t die with her character. She is still doing incredibly difficult moves.
They are made more difficult by the fact that she must go above and beyond the usual need to be graceful and effortless.
She must show no effort.
As viewers of dance, this epitomizes what we expect dance to be.
We are uncomfortable when too much of the effort is shown, or when the artistry is too intense and overwhelming.
We want a balance of the two.
We want dancers to be athletes and expect them to have the ability, endurance, and strength to perform the moves.
But we don’t accept dancers as athletes because these components are covered up and hidden behind the artistry.