Todays Impact
Many of the issues of the Georgian and Victorian era persist to this day in top ballet companies and schools around the world. Much of the ballet world requires modernization that allows schools to value their dancers health: mentally, emotionally, and physically. History is the closest form of divination that we have for predicting the future. By taking a long look back, we can begin the long trek toward understanding the needs of the present.
Modern Examples
These issues have not gone away.
A culture of dancer abuse and exploitation continues to fester within dance schools and companies all over the world, weather they are well-known or not. If this misconduct can happen in other sports, it can happen in ballet too.
A lasting legacy
A modern realization
For two years, I have danced at a ballet studio in the town I was born in. Over the course of those two years spent in once-a-week ballet classes and a splash of other styles, I have walked past this picture on the wall hundreds, if not thousands of times. However, it wasn't until I started this project that as I sat in the waiting room, watching the higher level dancers (no older than 14, maybe 15-16 years old) in their rosin coated pointe shoes and recital costumes, did my eyes come into focus at the charcoal portrait in front of me.
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It seemed uncanny that I had walked past this portrait so many times, likely admiring it's beauty once or twice in passing thought, and hadn't realized it's significance until just a few weeks ago.
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The girls dancing alongside this portrait are the same ages as Marie Van Goethem and numerous other girls who trudged through the streets of the 9th arrondissment of Paris despite their hunger and their ache to earn money for their families. This portrait, in all it's blue-hued beauty, is a silent remnant of ballet's Victorian heritage, a metaphor that shows us we are never so far removed from history as we might think. Prior to beginning this project, I had never truly thought about ballet from the perspective of the dancers in this painting, and I hope to never make the mistake of ignoring or not thinking about the perspectives of dancers around me. This portrait serves as a reminder to hold ourselves, our studios, and our communities accountable when we notice inappropriate or abusive behavior and to deconstruct the harmful Victorian attitudes that pervade the ballet world today for future generations of dancers, young and old.
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"Mankind are so much the same, in all times and places, that history informs us of nothing new or strange in this particular. Its chief use is only to discover the constant and universal principles of human nature."
David Hume