I was fascinated by the following article, posted by dirac in today's LINKS section:

http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/standard-spo...iers/article.do




The man seems to be slightly overwrought and a bit confused as to the point he is making. However, it seems like I've heard this kind of sneering use of "ballet" as a put-down before.

How do you suggest that a ballet-lover (or -- worse! -- a ballet dancer) respond to such a position? Reason? Rage? Sarcasm? Just ignoring it?

As an expat South African, that is exactly the kind of ignorant remark one can expect from the uber-manly Rugby fraternity.

Boy, are they in for a rude awakening!

Personally I've had some stupid questions/remarks thrown at me regarding ballet...
Honestly, I don't really care WHATSOEVER to clarify ANYTHING that borders stupidity...
I'm better off letting the subject's question rudely unanswered or clearly ignored. Believe me, they DO GET the message...
Or maybe a despective look can go with it...

I'm afraid this coach has been amusing the South African public for a while with his speeches. Sometimes he says something clever, but most of the time it is just confused, contradictory or even ludicrous.

As to how to deal with it, I think he should just be sent for a couple of ballet classes. In fact something like it was tried a while ago (it wasn't Springbok rugby players, unfortunately), and what the audience found most amusing was that the rugby players were quite unable to lift the petite ballerinas around.

These comments are typical of someone who has no idea of what being a Dancer requires. They are not only blinkered but insulting. It is a great pity how biased people can be about the art. But can be refrershing when a lay person who has not much knowledge of The Arts,finds to their surprise, what it entails,
aned comes to appreciate the enjoyment of seeing a live performance.

Returning to the question of sport versis dance, one should consider the beauty and vertiuosity of some of the Athletes, especially Gymnasts who participate in floor excercises to music and tumbling. Who possibly have taken Ballet classes to perfect their performances.

It makes me wonder what has happened to fair play, sportmanship, and winning without resorting to foulling the opponent. It not only happens in Rugby but also in Football at the highest level. In one sense it would do these people good to experience the disapline and routine a ballet class would give them.


And how then to a Dancer's response to this kind of ignorance, challenge them to do 32 turns, just laugh at them, or simply treat them with contempt, as they more than anyone know the phySical and artistic demands they have to endure.

It's the same sort of mentality that uses insults like, "You run like a girl" or "You do (some manly activity) like a girl." Anybody who's had a baby, had their period, or even undergone a waxing knows, you've got to be pretty tough to be a woman Yet the "bloody toes" aspect of ballet has been well publicized. It's kind of silly these days. We know that dancers are some of the greatest athletes around. Yet they have to mask that physicality in a perfect veneer. Cavaliers can't been seen grunting when lifting ballerinas. They can't have their tongue hang out (like basketball stars) when jumping. After a great variation, ballerinas can't lay back on the stage in triumph, the way winners of Wimbledon do. There's no grunting.

:ermm Dancers are simply not really allowed to show any effort, they must hold their mouth in a slightly open smile, and breath through the gap, when they are out of breath. On many occasions after say the Bluebird Pas de deux from Sleeping Beauty, I have had to open the back of the male dancers costume, so they can breath.
It is not unusual to find dancers laying flat on their backs in the wings to recover from an extra strenuious solo or vartiation. Without spoilling the illusion, of what you see from the audience, very often the dancers are running in persparation, their costumes covered in make up, and pretty near to exhausion. That is why the intervals are so necessary during a performance.

There was a program about Edward Villella that used to be available on VHS that showed just that. I saw it a long time ago, but the one thing that struck me most was the scene in which Villella came offstage after one of his riffs in "Rubies", fell to the floor in complete exhaustion, got up, and proceeded to dance the next section as softly as a cat.

Well, there are certain ballet "players" who might be better off trying soccer......

This might be a good idea, actually. I see it as a kind of "alternate sentencing." One proviso, however: they have to do this in private, with no reality-show tv cameras to allow them to get laughs. Then they have to write an essay -- which will be published -- describing just how difficult, serious, and (one hopes they see this) beneficial ballet can be.

I think I like the "ignore" option best -- possibly accompanied by a little bit of mime. Just look at them, tilt your head a little to the side quizzically, and then break out into a BIG smile ... and say: "What an ... interesting idea."

If you keep up the ballet and live long enough, you are guaranteed to be one of the only people in your generation who can walk straight, touch your toes without bending the knee, balance on one leg, and even turn a few leisurely pirouettes now and then. The scoffers, slumped in their recliner-chairs or on bar stools, will look at you with envy and respect.

Certain ballet "coaches" too!

Not any response at all, unless 'just ignoring it' is the same thing as 'no response'. It wasn't directed at ballet lovers or ballet dancers, so it has no effect on them. That's normal macho talk in pro sports, I don't even object to it, why would I? Just because it's stupid and redneck doesn't quite make it 'hate speech'? It doesn't even exist!

Right. Ballet is perceived as unmanly not because it is seen as non-athletic or easy but because it is commonly identified with women, the inferior sex. It is something girls do. The qualities of ballet in the popular mind (in the US, anyway) – grace, beauty, delicacy, – are traditionally associated with femininity.

-sigh-
Just as you have said; femininity = inferior.

What a strange notion, really.



-d-

Yes, it's exactly that sort of mentality, pure ignorance and redneckery, it's just that it doesn't mean anything at all if you consider the source, which is light-years away from ballet and doesn't care a fig for it. Probably has no effect beyond this thread. I'm surprised they even knew what it was. But those people don't have any real effect on ballet, which does have real problems continuing to propagate itself; I just don't think that the problem is with the omnipresent rednecks, unless perhaps it is some budding dancer who gets thwarted by them, as in the sticks, a boy who might become a dancer if trained early might as well forget it. This article is just another document of the same old backwoods mentality, what Marx (not one of my heroes, God knows) might refer to as 'the idiocy of rural life'. Oh well, yes, at first I 'threw like a girl', so I had to fix that, but my sister was told by our father that she 'threw like a boy', and she didn't like that either, because she was a beauty queen.

I don't buy that at all. Did someone say that or is this just an interpretation of a different set of words that someone else said? Frankly, I doubt this rugby coach, and certainly most his players, would agree to "femininity = inferior".

I agree with the sentiments expressed above that dismiss this rugby coach's remark as......my words now.......essentially ignorable,even somewhat humorous, common enough type of remark made in the male sports world that means little, and is certainly said in ignorance of ballet dancers, attenders, or anything else ballet. It's nuts to take seriously such off hand comments by rednecks, uber-liberals, or anyone else who clearly doesn't know what they are talking about.

I, on the other side, think that yes, the prevalent feeling regarding toughness, speed, power, strength and the like is commonly identified, CONSCIOUSLY AND/OR UNCOUNSCIOUSLY, with the male gender as matters of its supremacy/superiority. Not that everyone agrees with that, IMO...

Thank you, Sandy. And the thing is that rednecks (who whatever the limits of their cultural education are as likely as the rest of us to be perfectly decent people) and uber-liberals (by which I take it you refer to people who object to ballet because its old world manners reflect pre-feminist attitudes) are hardly the only people with no idea of how physically demanding ballet is.

I don't think it's so bad that a lot of people stereotype ballet as a girl's thing, a woman's thing. How many ballet dancers would know that, say, hunting, appeals to a lot of women as well as men? I don't think ignorance is always prejudice.

Ashley Montague, way back in the 60s, wrote a book called 'The Natural Superiority of Women'. He said even physically, in every way but MUSCULARLY, that women were stronger than men. But men ARE muscularly stronger. I don't necessarily agree with any of this except that distinguishing muscular strength, which does have its own kind of power, is not the same as many other kinds of physical strength. The rest is probably caca, but I thought that was pretty good. And it doesn't even mean that women cannot use their OWN muscles as effectively as men do, with ballet being the perfect proof, among many other things. It DOES, however, mean, that at this stage of evolution, that men are by far the more important football players...and RUGBY players..and BOXERS. It is not really a feminist issue at all.

(How did you get that word...? )

Yes, indeed, diane. In this particular instance, as sejacko says earlier in the thread, one must consider the source.

Just for the record, I had nothing against 'uber-manly' in and of itself, prior to its violent impingement on the ballet consciousness, nor do I intend doing so in the foreseeable future. Otherwise, we are just going to have to start using 'uber-womanly', and it's unlikely that that will be tolerated exclusively.

I like Christian's "despective glance."

I've been practicing, and i think I'm getting good at it. Next time this guy says something like this, let me know, I;'ll give it to him. You stick with me, don't worry about him.

Go for it!!...and don't worry...I'll be backing you up...
and BTW, now that I remember, I've always found the perpetual story-telling of the boy-raised-in-tough-Queens-turned-boxer-turned-dancer-so-there-you-see-that-not-all-of-us-are-part-of-the-bunch-of-sissies kind of...-(hum-how should I say it so it doesn't sound politically incorrect...)-way too forced...(or worn off...?..)

I was making clear who said 'consider the source'. Is that what you are talking about? That's why I put the quotes down and played with it, just like one of the commenters had played with the quotes. That is legitimate, I'm fairly sure. Maybe you weren't referring to what I said, but I wasn't talking about 'boxers', et alia, 'who aren't sissies' (I'm certain some of them are.). Just wanted to make that clear, although the other part of the partial quote of my own ought to by itself. What's a 'despective glance'? Anyway, this isn't really the kind of board where someone else's quotes ought to be taken out of context and attributed to someone slse, unless subsequent commenters can do it as well. If there is some perception i was trying to make it 'not too politically incorrect', that is not the case. I don't care if it was politically incorrect.



You can also just say 'consider the sourec', that's cool...ho ho ho...

No, no, no, Patrick...I wasn't referring at all to your post... I just suddenly remembered that too often told story of the boxer/dancer-(which I'm sure you know pretty well, as well as the rest of the ballet fans in America), and I was just not sure that it would be correct for me even to mention it here-(hence sounding "politically incorrect", as this is a frequently used phrase within this board)- due to the likeness of the subject within the ballet world...(me included...)
Oh, and a despective glance to the bad guys would be-(just be imaginative, because I don't have the right emoticon, ok...?)-sort of plus

Okay.

This comment got a lot of air time in the UK, not because of what this guy said, but why he said it. He was defending one of his players who was guilty of gouging. In other words, defending the indefensible and for that reason he is beneath contempt. Rugby can be an extremely dangerous sport and the injury rates are high, including the occasional death, but deliberately injuring a player is another matter and had this happened in Britain it could have resulted in a criminal charge of assault.

Is Rugby such a manly game? A gay American dancer who used to live in London was fascinated by it and I can remember him exclaiming to me whilst watching a scrum on TV, “just look where he put his hand!” He was quite right and when things like that go on, forgive the rest of us when we find this talk of tutus and cissies a matter of people in glass house throwing stones.

For the record, Patrick, I hadn’t realized you had used the phrase ‘consider the source.’ I was referring to the gist of sejacko’s post, not the literal wording. So your post was neither taken out of context nor misattributed by me.

Mashinka, your friend's comment reminded me of this.

Okay, sorry. Also, for the record, I don't find the rugby players all that 'uber-manly', if you must know. Sweaty, yes, but anybody can do that. I just meant that either uber-manly (anyone's choice, maybe some think Lord Byron) nor uber-womanly (maybe Garbo or Fonteyn) would neither one be terrible, because somebody's got to do it--that's where stars go. I don't think it necessarily means gentlemanly or ladylike either (although these could be), but I definitely don't think some crude professional sports macho jocks would qualify. And although I clearly may not take what they say as seriously as some, because I don't think they are very bright, I certainly don't find them paradigms of maleness--at least not these, God knows.