With Harry Styles blurting “this doesn’t happen to people like me” when accepting his Grammy award for Album of the Year, and Gina Prince-Bythewood’s 2022 film “The Woman King” being denied recognition at this year’s Academy Awards, it’s time we re-address the systemic racism that exists in the world of the arts.
A pattern of excluding Black artistry is weaved through all creative industries, allowing for racism to be preserved through prejudiced traditions that perpetuate white privilege. The world of ballet is a pervasive example of an art that has been predominately white and westernized historically. While art forms like music and fashion owe some of their roots to Black culture, ballet’s roots in uniformity and whiteness have made it difficult for other cultures to participate at all. Ballet can no longer be excused for its racism.
Ballet is an ancient practice that began in the 15th and 16th centuries in Italy as court entertainment for white ‘noble’ men and women. Since modern ballet was born upon the visual aesthetic of a petite, thin-waisted, long-limbed, white woman, white exclusivity is foundational to the art form. The competitive nature of ballet begins with the artists’ bodily appearance. The art was founded on exclusionary racial parameters and went on to develop the rigor of competition.
The uniformity and lack of diversity is so ingrained, people rarely stop to question the pink-colored tights and pink ballet slippers, all marked as “nude.” In fact, it wasn’t until the 2011 film, First Position—when the prodigious Michaela De Prince, a Sierra Leonean-American ballet dancer, is shown hand-dying the straps of her tutu to match her skin color—that the overbearing whiteness of ballet was displayed in mainstream media. Still, it took another seven years until renowned pointe shoe companies like Freed and Gaynor Minden released pointe shoes specifically for dancers of color, yet it is still common for ballerinas to use darker foundations to color match their pointe shoes.
Recently, many major ballet companies have made several strides towards inclusivity, including The New York City Ballet (NYCB). This year’s NYCB’s winter season, which ran until Feb. 26, featured a contemporary work choreographed by Keerati Jinakunwiphat, a thai-american member of the Black-led dance company, Abraham.In.Motion (A.I.M.). As one of the most prestigious ballet companies in the world, co-founded by the father of American ballet, George Balanchine, the NYCB has attempted to be more active in their response to inherent racism in ballet, however only following the peak in the BLM movement in 2020; the company has yet to make a pledge toward diversity.
An emphasis on diversity is only a fraction of what needs to be done for racism in this art form. The lack of diversity in both the audience and the dancers reinforces the white exclusivity that has defined ballet throughout history. In an 2018 article by TIME Magazine, acclaimed African-American ballet dancer Misty Copeland emphasizes the stagnant progression of the ballet world. “A lot is still the same … the one difference is that the world outside ballet has changed,” Copeland said.
In other art forms, the growing recognition of Black culture has prompted an increase in audience interest. In music, Beyonce’s 2022 album ‘Renaissance’ returned to the top 10 sales chart after the Grammy Awards, selling 5,500 copies in the U.S. at the end of the week of February 9th. Despite being snubbed of the Album of the Year Grammy win, her album sales increased by 138% after the award show.
In film, audiences respond positively to diverse casts, as proven in box office sales. According to a study done by UCLA researchers in 2021, “big-budget films lacking in diversity make about $27 million less on their opening weekend,” in comparison to films which rank above average for diversity.
The small initiatives for implementing diversity taken by the ballet world have provoked similar audience responses. NYCB’s Fall 2022 season, the dance “Play Time” by Gianna Reisen featured an original score by Solange Knowles – American singer-songwriter and the second Black woman to ever compose for the NYCB. For Knowles’ debut of “Play Time” last fall, 73% of the single-ticket sales were first-time attendees, alluding to an audience that is celebratory of change and diversity. Because of the show’s success in broadening NYCB’s audience, “Play Time” will run again this spring.
Audiences seem ready to embrace an integration of Black artistry and culture, so what stops ballet towards refashioning its practices?
The competition in ballet stems significantly from the idea of the ideal ballerina body – a thin white woman – which limits accessibility and excludes non-white ballerinas. This white-exclusivity not only affects Black and Brown women, but also Asian women, and women from all other ethnic backgrounds. According to Zippia, from 2010 through 2019 only 3.8% of ballet company members are Black and 9.1% are Asian, reinstating racial marginalization within the institution.
The art form needs reframing. We are no longer in the 15th century, where ballet was an ornament of class instead of an expression of creativity that all bodies should be able to take part in. As it has been upheld, ballet is an antiquated, elitist white space.
Traditional ballets of Swan Lake, Giselle, or even The Nutcracker may linger as staple story ballets, but only through acts of reinvention will they remain relevant to broadening audiences. There have been some instances of successful reinvention, such as the Dance Theatre of Harlem’s Creole Giselle, which takes the classical story-ballet from medieval Europe to Lousianna in the 1840’s and is performed with an entirely Black cast. While this was a monumental achievement for the ballet world, it is one of very few.
Art is an emblem of culture—it is the footnote to how society lives and has lived throughout history. In terms of Creole Giselle, the reinvented ballet works to rewrite what we know about Black history and expand it from the confines of slave narratives. In this way, redefining art forms proves to matter outside of the art world as well.
A reframing of art forms like ballet not only corrects the underrepresentation of marginalized communities, but inspires the expansion of creative horizons for artistry by way of cultural collaboration. Diversifying art forms can no longer be something to strive for or something seen as an achievement, but rather be a normality. George Balanchine famously said, “ballet is a woman,” in 2023 – it shouldn’t matter what color or body it comes in.