Is Ballet Stuck in the Past?

Ballet has long been heralded as the pinnacle of dance. Seemingly, as the front runners of the art form/sport, the public images of the art form itself, ballerinas should be held in high esteem by not only their peers but by their employers as well. However, when we peel back the gilded exterior of ballet, an all-consuming culture of normalized sexism and assault is uncovered.  The sport has been changing for many people, but is ballet changing enough for the women that it claims to idolize? I have been dancing for thirteen years now and ballet especially is very near and dear to my heart. Ballet is a dream for many young girls, but little do they know of the harsh realities of the sport. 

The reality of ballet, especially for women, is that dancers are overworked, underpaid, and undernourished. I am fortunate enough to attend a company that does not care what our bodies look like; however, this is not the norm. Professional companies monitor dancers' weight vigorously and often a dancer's weight is equated to a dancer's potential. In an article from The New York Post, one ex-dancer remarked that she “passed out on the subway due to her anorexia. She spent her first season at the New York City Ballet dancing eight shows a week with a broken foot, her toe shoes stained with blood. When – sick and vomiting with a temperature of 104 degrees – she didn’t think she could finish a performance, one of the older dancers pulled her into a dressing room and offered her cocaine so she could power through. It still wasn’t enough: She was let go in her second year.” These are alarming glimpses into the culture of overworking and undernourishment in dance. Not only do these dancers exhaust themselves mentally, but they regularly push the physical limits of the human body. For example, professional ballerinas dance for eight-plus hours a day with all of their body weight on their toes and achieve leaps with 180-degree angles consistently, for six days a week. After performing these feats daily many ballerinas are still considered incompetent by their companies. 

In an excerpt from The Cosmopolitan, Julianne Pepitone recalls that she “was making a sixth of [her] salary at Miami City Ballet. [She] was on food stamps for a few years before [she] got a minimal raise, which made [her] ineligible.” Dancers are also only employed for part of the year but are expected to keep their bodies in peak condition during the off-season without pay. The women are not paid for their overtime whether they are taking time out of their lives in season or out season because there is no standard for overtime in ballet. This is before the gender wage gap is even factored in.

Additionally, the ballet world is often credited as a space for women to express themselves freely. However, this could not be further from the reality that men hold most positions of power within the ballet community. From creative directors to choreographers, ballet remains a male-dominated industry. In a study done by the Dance Data Project, it was found that out of the hundreds of works announced for the 2022-23 season, only 22.9% of pieces were choreographed by women. This is a significant decrease from last year. The study also found that ballerinas make 68 cents to every male dancer’s dollar in comparison to the national average of 83.7 cents to the dollar. The women in the corps are constantly paid less than their male peers and it is not likely to change any time soon. 

Many argue that ballet has moved away from its past of sexual exploitation. Sadly, this is not the case. The most notable of these examples is the continuation of one of ballet's longest traditions: prostitution. In an article discussing the harsh realities of 18th-century ballerinas, Julia Fiore of CNN writes: “The brothel culture of the ballet was so pervasive, as historian Lorraine Coons remarks in her essay ‘Artiste or coquette? Les petits rats of the Paris Opera Ballet,’ that even successful dancers who did not resort to prostitution would likely have been suspected to have done so anyway.” Even today, ballerinas are taken advantage of by the people around them, especially their male counterparts and wealthy benefactors. Often the dancers are part of the Corps and are told that a wealthy benefactor can be their ticket to stardom. However, most women never achieve this promised fame and have been abused by their benefactors. Their employers, who are complicit in their prostitution, often rely on this cycle of abuse to generate funds for the company. Additionally, ballerinas are harmed by their male peers. In 2018, the ballet industry was upturned by a 19-year-old dancer by the name of Alexandra Waterbury. Waterbury “accused Amar Ramasar of sending (Waterbury’s then boyfriend) Mr. Finlay explicit photos of a corps de ballet dancer and encouraging Mr. Finlay to send him images of Ms. Waterbury. Zachary Catazaro was accused of sending Mr. Finlay intimate photos of a former School of American Ballet student,” the New York Times reports. Due to the multitude of reasons mentioned above, ballet is stuck in the past when it comes to its treatment of women and shows few signs of moving towards a more feminist future. 

By Leah Medeiros