This thesis is a study of race and ethnicity in culture and the arts. It discusses whiteness and racism in ballet and addresses a gap in the literature for both disciplines Ballet and Race and Ethnic Studies. Even if ballet is a privileged art form that for centuries has served statecraft, survived revolutions, and political instability the problem of race in ballet is jeopardizing its validity and acceptance in the contemporary world. I ask if racism in ballet is more than behaviors, if it designates ideology, or if it is a matter of visuality and aesthetics. I do this to provide insight into how race is projected in and through the art form in question. The need to transcend the scope of a single discipline brought me to adopt interdisciplinary research to analyze ballet right at the intersection with crossing perspectives linked to the body, aesthetics, performance, privilege, race, and gender. The thesis shows that ballet gives material expression to whiteness as ideology and is compliant with an exclusive approach to an idea of the body and beauty that presupposes racist attitudes and behaviors. At the institutional level, the experience of ballet is whiteness -unnamed, unmarked, universal. But for those bodies outside the constructs of whiteness, the experience is marked by racism and objective barriers. The study informs that an exclusive discourse of the body, often disguised as aesthetic discourse, translates into limited access to ballet education, body shaming, harassment, and fewer job opportunities. However, ballet is an art form, it is more than whiteness or racism. It creates beauty in the body of the dancer which is both instrument and object of art. Ballet dancers invest their lives learning and performing an art form that some other people cherish, but how come a space of whiteness and racism is perceived as beautiful? The thesis elucidates the importance of this reflection also.

Extensive research into the lives of professional ballet dancers has been conducted by the psychological and medical fields, but much of this research has focused on problems in the environment, sometimes in a way that further pathologizes dancers. Professional ballet is a highly demanding performance area, yet little research into ballet dancers’ performance lives has been conducted, which further shapes perceptions about this population. This study explores how South African professional ballet dancers’ performance lives are shaped by discourse, and how they draw on available discursive resources to construct their subjectivity and create meaning, and to what ends, in relation to performance. Findings suggest that dancers are caught up in several powerful, dominant discourses, some of which may position them in ways that cause subjective harm, but that alternatives do exist. Insights into the complex web of intersecting discourses surrounding ballet are offered, and questions posed to create possibilities, but ultimately, dancers must decide which positions they want to claim or resist, as they continually form their subjectivities. / Mini Dissertation (MA)--University of Pretoria, 2017. / Psychology / MA Counselling Psychology / Unrestricted

Tesis para optar al Magíster en Artes con Mención en Composición Musical / Este documento corresponde a mi proyecto de tesis para optar al grado de Magister en Artes con mención en Composición Musical, del programa de Post-Grado de la Facultad de Artes de la Universidad de Chile. La Tesis está orientada a la composición de una obra para ensamble instrumental (10 instrumentistas) destinada al ballet moderno o danza contemporánea, inspirada en la obra de teatro mímica “Acto sin palabras” de Samuel Beckett. Es una obra que persigue una estética contemporánea de carácter escénico, que articula, por medio del uso de las tres familias de instrumentos, aspectos rítmico, de color, atmosférico y la emotividad que se desprende de la comprensión o asimilación de la obra escrita de Beckett. La obra de Beckett, efectivamente sin palabras, nos muestran un hombre en medio de su soledad, no se sabe de dónde viene y no puede ir a ninguna parte. A base de símbolos se descubre la lucha del hombre por lograr algo en la vida. Las oportunidades se le brindan siempre a medias y en cada una de ellas el hombre fracasa en su intento de aprovecharlas. Impotente, el hombre está a merced de su destino paulatinamente agotando su fe, intenta el suicidio y fracasa de nuevo pues tampoco la muerte depende de su voluntad. Otra oportunidad se acerca a él y está su alcance, pero el hombre ya no tiene interés en nada y permanece derrotado esperando su fin. Esta pequeña, pero contundente obra, con su contenido existencial capturo mi atención y decidí tomarla como base simbólica para mi composición y también porque me parece, en su conjunto, muy apropiada para el trabajo colaborativo entre música y danza, cuestión que se investiga en la tesis.

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京都大学 / 0048 / 新制・課程博士 / 博士(人間・環境学) / 甲第19793号 / 人博第764号 / 新制||人||184(附属図書館) / 27||人博||764(吉田南総合図書館) / 32829 / 京都大学大学院人間・環境学研究科共生人間学専攻 / (主査)教授 神﨑 素樹, 教授 森谷 敏夫, 教授 石原 昭彦 / 学位規則第4条第1項該当 / Doctor of Human and Environmental Studies / Kyoto University / DFAM

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Male ballet dancers are often constructed as being feminine or homosexual (Bailey & Obershneider, 1997; Phillips, 2008), attributes that do not conform to the broader social ideas of what it means to be a masculine male in South Africa. Therefore, the space occupied by male ballet dancers in South Africa is one that contradicts the patriarchal ideas of masculinity and provides further insights into constructions of masculinity that do not conform to essentialist understandings. Therefore, the aim of this research report was to investigate the ways in which male ballet dancers construct their gender identities, sexualities and bodies within this contradictory space. A purposeful sample of four classically trained male ballet dancers over the age of 18 from Johannesburg, South Africa, was invited to participate in the study by means of snowball sampling. Data were collected using semi-structured interviews and were examined using narrative analysis. It was found that male ballet dancers construct their gender identities through their bodies by virtue of their performances. They believe that by linking ballet to other masculine activities, such as sport, they can better negotiate their gender identities in a context where their profession is viewed as inferior, feminine and homosexual. The findings of this research have contributed to a better understanding of gender in an alternative domain, where the ways in which male ballet dancers construct their gender identities are challenged.

In this dissertation, I explore why the male dancer became an object of derision in the French romantic ballet and evaluate the implications of this rejection. I ask what it meant for critics to claim that the male dancer had no right to dance on the stage, over which the newly exalted ballerina was imagined to reign, by accounting for the legal history with which dance remained imbricated. This research addresses a gap in historical gender scholarship of the nineteenth-century ballet, which has overlooked the importance of the male dancer and masculinity, and it brings dance studies into dialogue with law. In these analyses, source materials consulted include official records of the Parlement of Paris, representations of the king and of the other performers under consideration in visual art, dance treatises, jurisprudence, dance criticism, and contemporaneous memoires and literary works. Observing that the male dancer was often understood as a vestige of the monarch of the ancien régime and was therefore seen as a trespasser of the romantic stage, I first examine the performing king as a juridical figure. This is done by way of an analysis of theatricality as a force of law in the king’s representation of himself in the context of the early-eighteenth century lit de justice under Louis XV. The dissertation then examines cases of exceptional masculinity on the French stage on the cusp on the romantic era, initially by exploring androgynous performers in cognate performing arts, opera and pantomime, in the figures of Giovanni Velluti, a castrato, and Jean-Gaspard Deburau, a fairground mime, in the 1820s through 1840s. Repercussions of changes with respect to the theatrical articulation of juridical authority in the male figure identified in the lit de justice are drawn on to account for the affective but contrary public receptions of these two performers. The vilified male dancer is then examined in light of these findings as an intruder of the stage owing to the monarchical sovereignty which he could not help but evoke, yet which was ostensibly denied in the romantic aesthetic. Finally, Jules Perrot is considered as an exceptional performer who, amidst such condemnation, successfully rearticulated the juridical authority of the ancien régime king in his dancing at the Opéra. I argue that Perrot became a theatrical sovereign by means of his femininity and technical mastery, indicating the subsistence of monarchical sovereignty in the balletic form and the enduring imbrication of dance and law. / Dance

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