{"id":68781,"date":"2016-12-28T13:25:12","date_gmt":"2016-12-28T18:25:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/?p=68781"},"modified":"2016-12-28T13:56:07","modified_gmt":"2016-12-28T18:56:07","slug":"misty-copeland-and-the-newness-of-the-ballerina-body","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/2016\/12\/28\/misty-copeland-and-the-newness-of-the-ballerina-body\/","title":{"rendered":"Misty Copeland and the Newness of the Ballerina Body"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"1\"Many hope that Misty Copeland<\/a>\u00a0is ushering in a new era for ballet. She is\u00a0the first female African American ballet dancer to have the role of Principal Dancer at the American Ballet Theatre. She has literally changed the face of the dance.<\/p>\n

Race is a central and important part of her story, but in A\u00a0Ballerina’s Tale<\/a><\/em>, the documentary featuring her career,\u00a0she describes herself as defying not just one, but three ideas about what ballerinas are supposed to look like:\u00a0“I’m black,” she says, and also: “I have a large chest, I’m muscular.”<\/p>\n

In fact, asked\u00a0to envision\u00a0a prima ballerina,\u00a0writes<\/a> commentator Shane Jewel, what comes to most of our minds is probably a “perilously thin, desperately beautiful, gracefully elongated girl who is…\u00a0pale as the driven snow.” White, yes, but also flat-chested and without\u00a0obvious muscularity.<\/p>\n

It feels like a timeless archetype\u00a0—\u00a0at least as timeless as ballet itself, which dates back to the 15th century — but it’s not. In fact, the idea that ballerinas should be painfully thin is a new development, absorbing only a fraction of ballet’s history, as can clearly be seen in this<\/a> historical slideshow.<\/p>\n

It started\u00a0in the 1960s — barely more than 50 years ago —\u00a0in response to the preferences of\u00a0the influential choreographer George Balanchine. Elizabeth Kiem, the author of Dancer, Daughter, Traitor, Spy<\/em>, calls him<\/a> “the most influential figure in 20th century dance,” ballet and beyond. He co-founded the first major ballet school in America,\u00a0made dozens of dancers famous, and choreographed more than 400 performances. And he liked his ballerinas wispy:\u00a0“Tall and slender,” Kiem writes, “to the point of alarm.” It is called, amongst those in that world, the “Balanchine body.”<\/p>\n

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Embed from Getty Images<\/a><\/div>\n