The Travesty Dancer in Nineteenth-Century Ballet
Year: 1985
Type: article
Abstract: More than any other era in the history of ballet, the nineteenth century belongs to the ballerina. She haunts its lithographs and paintings, an ethereal creature touched with the charm of another age. Yet even when she turned into the fast, leggy ballerina of modern times, her ideology survived. If today the art of ballet celebrates the danseur nearly as often as the danseuse, it has yet to rid it aesthetic of yesterday's cult of the eternal feminine. Like her nineteenth-century forbear, today's ballerina, an icon of teen youth, athleticism, and anorexic vulnerability, incarnates a feminine ideal defined overwhelmingly by men.
Source: Dance Research Journal
DOI: 10.2307/1478078
Author: Lynn Garafola
Language: English
Subfield: Experimental and Cognitive Psychology
Field: Psychology
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2090741585