Angela Pickard, Ballet Body Narratives Pain, Pleasure and Perfection in Embodied Identity

Ballet Body Narratives
Pain, Pleasure and Perfection in

Embodied Identity
A�� P��
Peter Lang
Ballet Body Narratives is an ethnographic exploration of the social world of
classical ballet and the embodiment of young ballet dancers as they engage
in ‘becoming a dancer’ in ballet school in England. In contrast to the largely
disembodied sociological literature of the body, this book places the corporeal
body as central to the examination and reveals significant relationships between
body, society and identity. Drawing on academic scholarship as well as rich
ballet body narratives from young dancers, this book investigates how young
ballet dancers’ bodies are lived, experienced and constructed through their
desire to become performing ballet dancers as well as the seductive appeal of
the ballet aesthetic. Pierre Bourdieu’s critique of the perpetuating social order
and his theoretical framework of field, habitus and capital are applied as a way
of understanding the social world of ballet but also of relating the ballet habitus
and belief in the body to broader social structures. This book examines the
distinctiveness of ballet culture and aspects of young ballet dancers’ embodied
identity through a central focus on the ballet body.
Angela Pickard is Director of Teaching, Learning and School Experience in the School
for Music and Performing Arts and Subject Lead for Dance at Canterbury Christ
Church University. She has performed, created, taught and presented dance as a
dancer, choreographer, teacher, advisor, consultant and academic. She has worked
with a number of choreographers and artists in a range of projects across a multitude
of venues in Kent, London and Europe and she is currently Artistic Director and
choreographer of Canterbury Dance Company. Her research on ballet, the body,
Bourdieu, identity, gender, talent and pedagogy has been widely disseminated. She
is also Editor-in-Chief of the international journal Research in Dance Education.
www.peterlang.com
Angela Pickard

Pain, Pleasure and Perfection in
Embodied Identity
PETER LANG
Oxford • Bern • Berlin • Bruxelles • Frankfurt am Main • New York • Wien
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A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Pickard, Angela.
Ballet body narratives : pain, pleasure and perfection in embodied identity / Angela
Pickard.
pages cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-3-03-431786-3 (alk. paper)
1. Ballet. 2. Ballet--Social aspects. I. Title.
GV1787.P53 2015
792.8--dc23
2015006242
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ISBN 978-3-0343-1786-3 (print)

ISBN 978-3-0353-0717-7 (eBook)
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Contents
Chapter 1
Ballet, Bodies and Becoming 1
Chapter 2
Ballet, Body and Bourdieu 21
Chapter 3
Thinking through the Body 45
Chapter 4
Body, Capital and Habitus61
Chapter 5
Ballet Bodies in Pain 81
Chapter 6
Gendered Experiences of Pain 101
Chapter 7
Ballet Bodily Pleasures 125
Chapter 8
Pleasure, Power and Perfection 143
vi
Bibliography159
Index183
Chapter 1
Ballet, Bodies and Becoming
I Am a Dancer
I have become a dancer through a process of construction that began in

early childhood. I was taken to ballet classes at a young age by my mother
who claimed it was because I was always moving or ‘jiggling around’, as she
put it. I remember that I started to really enjoy it at about 9 years old. At
this time I was participating in a number of other activities – gymnastics,
theatre group and swimming – but I preferred ballet. I do not remember
wanting to be a professional dancer but ballet (and other genres of dance)
did eventually encompass every aspect of my leisure time as I decided to
reject the other activities and engaged in an increased number of classes,
preparation for examinations, rehearsals, performances and an ongoing
practice of steps and combinations. I do not remember being persuaded
or coerced overtly to do this; I believe that it was my choice. The codified
vocabulary of ballet steps were taught in French and English, with classi-
cal music played to accompany the class. I learned particular ways of being
through ballet. I learned about the ideal ballet aesthetic of perfection and
the discipline that is involved in attempting to achieve this. I experienced
teaching methods that treated my body as a ‘petite fighting machine’; I
pulled up, extended and stretched my body to achieve the necessary and
purposeful tension and softness to carry the illusion of weightlessness and
to express vulnerability. I learned about the ideal ballet body; I was deemed
to be ‘naturally petite and slim’ by my ballet teacher at age 11. This physique
fitted with the pre-requisites for ballet training. Such a physique was unob-
tainable for some of my peers so some were engaged in a daily struggle to
reconcile the ideal ballet body shape with their own body shape and size
2 Chapter 1
through a regime of restricted food intake from about age 12 onwards.

I never dieted or even contemplated it. As I became a teenager and moved
onto pointe work I witnessed that many of my peers were engaging in
patterns of disordered eating behaviour so that they felt lighter en pointe.
I remembered questioning this on many occasions. Now I realise that I
could not have possibly known how they felt or how they viewed their
bodies because my body fitted with the expected dimensions and propor-
tions of the idealised ballet body in shape and size.
In ballet class there was a uniform of a tight fitting leotard that accen-
tuated my body shape in a particular colour that signified the structured
system of teaching and learning and the level of ballet that I had achieved:
pink, then light blue, dark blue, cerise and black. The leotard was worn
with pink ballet tights that accentuated the shape of the legs. My long
hair was pulled away from my face and worn in a bun hairstyle that took
a long time to do and involved using numerous hairgrips and hairspray as
I had fine hair. The shoes that I wore were soft ballet shoes that I had in
pink leather, red leather and black leather (I loved my red leather shoes
because I loved the film The Red Shoes and my black ones because they
were the most comfortable) and, of course, my pink satin pointe shoes.
I loved the smell of my ballet shoes and the ritual of getting them out of my
bag, unravelling the ribbons, putting them on, dancing and then putting
them back into my bag. I remember receiving my first pair of pointe shoes
as a Christmas present from my parents. I spent a long time just looking
at them, touching them, smelling them and trying them on, dancing a bit
and then taking them off again. Pointe shoes signified an achievement:
that I was a ballet dancer.
I felt that I fully committed to ballet after being told by an examiner
at age 13 that I was ‘naturally talented, with good feet and lovely, expres-
sive arms’. This afforded me much attention from my teacher, which
again many of my peers could not obtain. I was highly successful in
assessments and auditions. I considered myself good at ballet – I could
do it; I was alert and enthused by ballet, I picked up movement patterns
and new vocabulary easily into my movement memory. I could execute
the movements easily and express them fully. I looked forward to my
classes. I was doing a lot of ballet at this time so I had to be organised

in order to make sure that I could fit in my homework and occasionally
see non-ballet friends, go to parties and so on. I was often invited to do
social things with non-ballet friends, which I had to decline due to ballet
commitments. I was not as interested in pop music, the cinema or parties
or shopping as they were. In my mind I had more in common with and
plenty of social interaction with my ballet friends at ballet class and at
the theatres during performances. I enjoyed this social aspect before and
after the class or performance, which involved getting changed together,
giggling over costumes and make-up, chatting and sharing snacks and
drinks. My ballet friends and I were also very tactile with each other, for
example, often hugging and kissing each other when we met or when
we said goodbye. There were no boys in my ballet classes as they were
taught separately, although I did interact with boys during rehearsals and
performances and when I did pas de deux work.
I used to ritualistically bash my pointe shoes to soften them so that
they might be more comfortable and would often put resin on the soles
to stop them slipping on the floor. I do not remember anyone preparing
me or warning me about the discomfort and pain that I would feel once I
started pointe work but they also did not tell me about the pleasure either.
I could not possibly have known the consequences of regular, intensive
training on a body so young and that aches and pains would be with me
into adulthood. Occasionally I hated the way ballet class went because I
felt clumsy and uncoordinated if I was having a ‘bad’ day. On these days
I did not want anyone to watch me at all. Other times I loved the ballet
class and felt as though I could do anything. Once I was using pointe shoes
regularly they signified both the pleasure and pain; the pleasure of the
achievement of being able to dance on my toes, the amazement that my
family and non-ballet friends expressed when I showed them, and the
euphoric feeling when I jumped and turned and moved through large
spaces was incredible; then there was the pain of blisters, rubs and strain.
The hard, physical and painful process of learning ballet and especially en
pointe was actually, often, not at all beautiful or perfect. Nevertheless, I
was sure that the love/hate relationship that I had with ballet meant that I
4 Chapter 1
enjoyed the challenge and that I wanted to do it: after all, I was good at it.
I loved the way it made my body feel, what I could do with my body and
how my body looked. I did not complain or question why it was painful
and uncomfortable, why I was regularly looking forward to doing some-
thing that was painful and uncomfortable; I just accepted that this was
an important part of the activity and being me. Eventually my feet and
body seemed to harden and I did not feel any pain. My body was pulled
up, I was flexible, muscular with amazing posture and verticality with a flat
stomach, my spine could arch, my legs could unfold with long lines, my
pointed feet showed a banana-like curve, my arms and hands were expres-
sive and my jumps were high and elegant. When I watched ballerinas on
stage or screen I imagined that they were me. I lost myself in the fantasy of
ballet. I was driven to dance; when I performed the feeling was addictive
and seductive, as was the audience applause. I felt that I was demonstrating
what my body had achieved and it felt powerful.
Ballet became engrained in my body. My body is ballet, it is in my pos-
ture and alignment and in my mannerisms, in the way that I carry myself, sit,
stand, speak and eat; I am precise. The world of ballet that I inhabited was
predominantly white, middle class and feminised. Geometric ‘perfection’
was evident at my core. Ballet shaped my body and my mind as it shaped my
perceptions, motivations and actions. I saw myself as different to non-ballet
female friends because I was not interested in the things that they were; I
would not have dreamt of putting a poster of a pop group on my wall as
a symbol of who I ‘fancied’; I was not interested in ‘getting a boyfriend’; I
did not wish to imagine or talk about a future ‘when we’re married with
children’. I developed focus, determination, self-discipline, resilience and a
high pain threshold. Ballet was all encompassing and I could not imagine
myself in a domestic capacity, cleaning, cooking or looking after others;
ballerinas do not do these things.
I had an intense relationship with ballet and performed as a dancer for
over twenty years. During this time I suffered emotional and physical pain
and injury as well as elation and joy. However, I also had opportunities to
train in and perform a range of other dance styles, such as in the field of
contemporary dance, which widened my understanding of what my body
could do, how my body could look and how my body could be treated. I
suggest that my description and reflections on my embodiment as a dancer
are not unusual or unique. They will resonant with those who also com-
mitted and specialised in an activity from an early age and continued this
commitment through to adulthood. Others will have also engaged in rig-
orous training and body modification, as I have, and will have experienced
intense pain and pleasure along the way.
However, there did come a time when I decided that I did not want
to do as much ballet anymore, I did not want to be constantly told what
to do, where to be and how to act or feel. I have not rejected ballet, as I
still engage with ballet – I teach ballet technique, lecture, watch, research
and occasionally perform ballet. After dancing, performing and teaching,
I have now developed a career as a dance academic. My position as an ex-
performing ballet dancer and now a lecturer and spectator of ballet is that
my construction of self is deeply embedded in the social world of ballet.
I suggest that now, however, I can also examine ballet with greater aware-
ness and a more critical eye.
This book began as reflections on my own embodied identity.
Through such thinking I became interested in how the social world of
ballet shapes the young ballet dancer’s body because commitment to
ballet tends to begin early in life. So this book offers an exploration of
the relationships between the social world of classical ballet, the bodies
of young ballet dancers and embodied identity. I suggest that this book
is unique in that it is an account of a longitudinal empirical study of the
lived experiences of twelve young ballet dancers as they engage in ballet
training and develop as dancers. The embodied practices of dancers afford
aesthetic and skilled accomplishment, but more critically they provide
a powerful means for analysing the existing cultural and social ideas in
the construction of self and identity and how dancers attach meaning
and value to experiences. I have undertaken this study as someone who
knows about the social world of dance and, in particular, the social world
of ballet as a dancer but also as a dance academic. It is hoped that this
book will interest and contribute to sociology of the body, ethnography,
dance and cultural studies.
6 Chapter 1
Ballet, Dance and Body Studies
The body is of paramount importance in ballet. The body matters in ballet,

so there is a strong relationship between the dancer’s body and identity.
The ballet aesthetic has a long historical tradition and is embedded in the
Western devotion to the aesthetic of beauty (Stinson, 1998; Vincent, 1981,
1998; Adair, 1992; Novack, 1993; Hamilton, 1997; Benn and Waters, 2001;
Aalten, 2014). The beauty in ballet is not in the presentation of the human,
material body as it is – sweating, struggling, straining in the process of
being shaped – but in the seduction of the stylisation of the aesthetic of
perfection within a physical, theatrical and social performance.
Traditional classical ballet technique consists of a set of standardised
bodily poses and movement patterns that construct and inscribe particu-
lar physical stylisation. On the one hand this could be deemed the logic
of ballet; the succession of poses and positions that could be combined
and recombined in various ways. On the other hand, it takes many years
of practice where the material body of a dancer is transformed into the
body that represents the ideals of preciseness and perfection because ‘noth-
ing in ballet is natural: not the turned out feet, not the straight back,
not the pointe shoes. It is precisely the unnaturalness that makes ballet
an art form’ (Aalten, 2014: 49). Indeed classical ballet thrives on being
exclusive. Mazo (1974) referred to the professional ballet sub-culture
as the ‘Chosen People Mystique’ and Gray and Kunkel (2001) describe
ballet dancers as ‘not ordinary people with ordinary desires’ but ‘a breed
apart’. From my own experience, I suggest that with each achievement in
pushing the boundaries of the body ballet dancers feel physically unique
and special, particularly when an audience is paying to see them perform
such physical feats.
Traditional ballet also prescribes clear definitions of gender on the body
in performance (Cohen Bull, 2003; Foster, 2003; Wolff, 2003; Claid, 2006)
with set roles and behaviours for male and female dancers. Developing the
idealised, gendered ballet body based on socially constructed aesthetic
ideals of beauty and perfection is central in ballet schooling or training.
Ballet then is both a process and product in the form of the ballet body
in construction and the ballet body in performance. In this way the ballet
body is both the subject and the object of ballet and the ballet dancer is
an embodiment of an object of and a creator of desire: the ballet aesthetic
of beauty and perfection.
Considering that the body is the means of expression in dance, aca-
demic dance literature is strangely disembodied in its approach. Dance
studies tend to draw on theoretical and methodological insights generated
from anthropology, history, sociology and cultural studies. The moving,
dancing body has warranted relatively little attention in academia. However,
there have been some sociological studies of dance such as Francis Rust’s
(1969) functional analysis on the history of dance, Janet Wolff ’s (1975)
study of the sociology of art included views and arguments on the sociology
of dance, Edit Cope’s (1976) account of group dynamics in a small dance
troop and Peter Brinson’s (1983) Scholastic Tasks of a Sociology of Dance. One
study that was directed at performance dance was Peter Woolen’s (1987)
work Diaghilev’s Ballet Russe Productions to the Aesthetics of Modernism.
Susan Foster (1986) drew on Foucault and Barthes for her intertextual work
of four choreographers, Ann Daly (1987) discussed the dancer’s body as
developed by George Balanchine and relied on both feminist and semi-
otic notions of representation, Novack’s (1990) anthropological analysis
of contact improvisation was influenced by cultural studies and Christy
Adair’s (1992) book Women and Dance also drew from cultural studies,
feminism and sociology. Helen Thomas’s (1993, 1995) empirical studies on
the sociology of Western theatre dance have been influential and in her
2003 contribution to the sociology of dance, The Body, Dance and Cultural
Theory, Thomas integrates cultural studies with the sociology of the body.
Generally though, the majority of work in relation to dance and the body
is dominated by work that emphasises history and gender (Burt, 1995) and
especially post-modern readings of dance as texts (Adshead-Lansdale, 1999;
Fraleigh and Hanstein, 1999). Overall, the majority of work in existence on
dance and the body tends to lack materiality. The body seems to continu-
ally be displaced by language or discourses of calculation and measurement
of the body (Stacey, 1999; Redding and Wyon, 2003; Kadel et al., 2005).
The relationships between body, society and identity have been exam-
ined through notions of representations of bodies and ‘performing’ bodies
8 Chapter 1
in terms of body symbolism (Hertz, 1909; Douglas, 1966, 1973), ‘techniques

of the body’ (Mauss, 1934), ‘bodily presentation’ (Goffman, 1959, 1971,
1979), ‘performativity’ (Butler, 1990; 1993; Jagger, 2008) and performing
masculinity(ies) and femininity(ies) (Halberstam, 1998, 2005). The body
as a site of production and reproduction of particular cultural norms and
gendered identity has also been examined by, for example, Bordo (2003)
and Connell (1987, 1995, 2000, 2005). Connell (1995) recognised that
external factors influence directly or indirectly in the construction of gen-
dered identity but she also argued for a stronger theoretical position that
recognises the role bodies have in social agency and the influence they
have in generating and shaping social conduct. Research on the body can
be characterised as a theoretical study of the nature of the body and has
tended to ignore the practical experiences of embodiment (Watson, 2000)
with little attention given to the ways in which ‘specific social worlds invest,
shape and deploy human bodies’ (Wacquant, 1995a: 65). Bryan Turner
(1984), in Body and Society, argued that there is much theorising about the
sociology of the body but little empirical research. Furthermore, within
‘body studies’, dance has largely been neglected, with recent exceptions
from Morris (2005) and Sheets-Johnson (2014).
The historical evolution and emergence of classical ballet and its con-
tinual development has been well documented. However, investigation of
ballet dancers, from the perspective of dancers themselves and their lived
and bodily experiences, has had limited examination and has largely been
ignored. I have found three exceptions in the work of Helena Wulff ’s (1998)
ethnographic study of four ballet companies – The Royal Ballet School,
American Ballet Theatre, Royal Swedish Ballet and Ballett Frankfurt –
where she examined the social organisation and cultural norms, values,
rituals and practices that are transnational (Wulff, 1998). However, one
limitation in Wulff ’s study is that she gives very little attention to the body
and does not explore the dancer’s relationship with the body. Anna Aalten’s
(1997, 2004, 2005, 2007, 2014) anthropological and empirical work of body
discourses and body practices in adult female professional ballet dancers in
the Netherlands is useful as it begins to explore the enactment of cultural
norms but also the contradictions of the female ballet body. Finally, Steven
Wainwright and Bryan Turner’s study (2006) of the ageing dancer’s body
offers some insight into the vulnerability of professional ballet dancers.

I have not found any sociological studies of young ballet dancers as they
develop as dancers.
The Ballet Aesthetic
The ballet aesthetic is embedded in a love for the Western aesthetic of beauty
(Stinson, 1998; Vincent, 1989; Adair, 1992; Novack, 1993; Hamilton, 1997;
Benn and Waters, 2001; Aalten, 2005). This has its philosophical begin-
nings with Plato and developed as the artist’s role to imitate and represent
the ‘beautiful’ in music, dance and poetry. Levinson (1980) argued that
the body is something to be transcended through the discipline of learning
ballet: ‘To discipline the body to this ideal function … it is necessary to
begin by dehumanising him, or rather by overcoming the habits of ordinary
life’ (Levinson, 1980: 300). Levinson also asserted that ballet, in evolving
from court etiquette to the present art, ‘has gradually become exalted and
transfigured until it is now called upon to express the loftiest emotions
of the human soul’ (Levinson, 1980: 299); and that ‘when a dancer rises
on her pointes, she breaks away from the exigencies of everyday life, and
enters into an enchanted country – that she may thereby lose her in the
ideal’ (Levinson, 1980: 300). Ballet depends on selection and construction
of bodies that will embody the vertical line that is a symbol of idealised
beauty in Western culture.
The Greeks clearly set the vertical in opposition to the bent and crooked … To see
straight, to speak straight – all this is at once pictorially sensible and heroic. Only
in ballet do we possess all aspects of the vertical in its exact mathematically formed,
universally perceptible expression … everything … is the direct heritage passed down
to us by the sublime, proud, and pure antiquity. (Volinsky, 1925, cited in Copeland
and Cohen, 1983: 256–257)
The process of ballet training has been discussed by Claid (2006) in rela-
tion to how it conforms to the vertical line and that ‘the static positions,
10 Chapter 1
set vocabulary and mathematical virtuosity of the language embellish the

beauty myth’ (2006: 20). My own ballet teacher was constantly telling
me to ‘forget that there is a floor when you are dancing’ and that ‘in ballet
there is no floor.’ Ballet focuses on defying gravity,
disciplining muscles, bones, tendons and joints to push outwards and upwards from
the ground. The ballet body is never present to itself but is always seeking perfection
outside itself. In the process of training the ballet body, any signifying connections
to humanness are magically sidestepped. The physical, linear, proportioned form of
the dancer’s body evokes the concept of perfection. (Claid, 2006: 20)
Plato’s idea of perfect beauty is also associated with goodness and morality
in the arts. There is perceived to be good and bad art, high and low art. For
Plato, low art evoked the physical passions and moves its audience emotion-
ally. It is corrupt and vulgar. Furthermore, pleasure appeals to an inferior
part of the soul and therefore to an inferior class of being, so low art appeals
to those who have no inclination to strive towards higher knowledge of
beauty. Claid (2006) drew on the work of Beardley (1975) to summarise:
The abstract imagery of the upward vertical line moving from the ‘lowly and bad’
pleasures of the body to the ‘high and good’ conceptual pleasures of the mind is
a concern that travels through the centuries of Western philosophy and culture.
Followed through in the philosophy of Hegel, Schiller, Descartes, Baumgarten and
Kant, the vertical line elucidates the notion of an absolute knowledge attainable only
by the educated and encourages the hierarchical binary oppositions of mind/body,
thought/feeling, white/black and beauty/ugliness. (Claid, 2006: 21)
The art of ballet upholds this classical tradition, the language and aesthetic
signifying not only beauty but also goodness, supposedly triggering some
innate memories of spiritual beauty. Conventional aesthetics assume that
artistic expression exists to reflect society, but that this reflection should
be understood from within a disinterested ‘aesthetic attitude’ (Alderson,
1997: 121). Furthermore, that the social orientation toward art must still
come to terms with the actual experience of beauty: ‘when we are moved by
the beauty of something, it is difficult to see it also as expressing a specific
social interest’ (Alderson, 1997: 122). One of ballet’s charms, it could be
argued, is the overtness with which it propagates socially charged imagery
as a form of the beautiful from the past to the present. The ideological per-
suasiveness of ballet then operates at a deep level of the art form, one that
is inextricable from its aesthetic values. For ballet audiences, this illusive
transcendent image of perfection and goodness, surfacing through the
real flesh and blood bodies of the dancers, draws them into the seductive
engagement.
The ballet aesthetic is expressed by the male or female ballet dancer.
Bakhtin’s (1990) essay Author and Hero in Aesthetic Activity offers some
insights into understanding the ballet dancer’s aesthetic experience in
the examination of the spatial relationship between the dancer and the
audience. The hero (or dancer) is placed in a physical space within which
Bakhtin focused on the hero’s external appearance, external boundaries
and acts and claimed that ‘we can never create ourselves as others see us’
(1990: 23). The dancer’s formation is dependent on the seeing of the other,
or on the development of the ballet aesthetic, and such images are created
for others. A dancing body, then, refers not only to the physical body, but
also to the social constructs regarding gender, race and sexuality that are
inherent in body and movement.
The social world of ballet perpetuates its signifying status of aspiring
to a higher truth and the notion of beauty. Beauty is associated with good-
ness, morality and perfection and these constructed perceptions are embed-
ded in the technical, stylistic and aesthetic principles of ballet. Particular
bodily appearance, technical and stylistic ability are deemed to hold high
corporeal, physical and cultural capital, to use Pierre Bourdieu’s terms, and
these forms of currency are what the dancers in the field aspire to gaining.
Ballet is a performance art, so to be appreciated by an audience and gain
critical acclaim and fame nationally and internationally is the ultimate
goal for the professional dancer. Ballet audiences are allured by the illu-
sive, transcendent image of goodness and perfection that surfaces through
the bodies of dancers and draws the audience into seductive engagement
(Claid, 2006: 21). In this way, ballet dancers are positioned as both objects
of and creators of desire; the theatrical illusion of perfection, beauty and
seduction is a multi-layered construction of the idealised ballet body. The
more technical skill and artistry the body demonstrates, the more engaging
the performance becomes. I argue, from a Bourdieusian perspective, that
12 Chapter 1
the field of ballet includes the spectators of ballet or audience, as they are
as responsible as the performers for maintaining the performing presence
and visual spectacle that is ballet.
Ballet critics carry power and influence in their role as ‘the evaluating
gaze’ (Banes, 1994; Banes, 1998; Gere, 1995; Daly, 2002) as they may pro-
vide dancers with the recognition they have been striving for or indeed a
negative response. Reviews serve to confirm positions of dancers or add to
loss of recognition. Even if a dancer decides not to read a review they live
in a social context where other people such as parents, friends and ballet
directors will read reviews and will immediately console or congratulate
them. Reviews are difficult to avoid, as they are often pinned on a notice
board, often next to rehearsal schedules in a theatre. Critics are generally
feared rather than respected because critics review dancers in public and
have an obvious impact on their identities and careers. Although the focus
should be on dancers’ skills and performance in relation to the execu-
tion of the choreography; personal criticisms of the size and shape of the
dancer’s body have often been the focus with comments such ‘she has a
long neck’, ‘a well-proportioned figure’, ‘she has chucky legs’ or there were
‘lots of wobbly bottoms’ (Van Camp, 1980). Critics describe, interpret and
evaluate through their writing performances of idealised ballet bodies and
balletic imagery and in so doing they perpetuate notions of what bodies
mean and what bodies do in the social world of ballet.
Ballet and Bourdieu
I have used Pierre Bourdieu’s conceptual schema as a way of thinking about

and making greater sense of the relationship between the body and identity
in ballet. I am interested in how the social world of ballet shapes the young
ballet dancer’s body and in exploring the facets of embodied habitus. I accept
that the work of Michel Foucault does offer some useful ways of think-
ing about how ideas in society are historically and culturally specific, that
power is embedded in discourses and the concepts of discipline and resist-

ance, which I do also acknowledge again later in this book. Nevertheless, I
suggest that Bourdieu’s theory of belief and practice offers a powerful and
persuasive conception of social practice that can account for its regularity,
coherence and order without ignoring human agency and therefore the
negotiated, strategic and less predictable nature of social practice. I wish
to challenge the portrayal of the body as ‘docile’ that ignores the active role
of embodied agents in social practices and ‘the difference between texts
which prescribe ways of acting and the more messy and complex reality of
those ways of acting’ (Crossley, 2004: 41). I am aware that what happens
in the ballet class in the contexts of ballet schools is shaped by the dynamic
relationship of discourses, practices and social relationships; however, the
practices which a Foucauldian might claim invest the body are actually
done by the body. I explore the complexity of actions, meanings and ways
that knowledge is developed, because ballet is done by embodied agents.
Secondly, Bourdieu’s concepts are grounded in the body; he sought
to show how ‘the body is in the social world but the social world is also in
the body’ (1990a: 190). Bourdieu was concerned with bodily hexis, how
embodied actions structured how a person thought, felt and acted, and
how these become ingrained in an individual’s psyche and body so that
such actions become habitual, intuitive and unconscious. Significantly,
hierarchical gender relations are also embedded in the bodily hexis, accord-
ing to Bourdieu. Thirdly, Bourdieu was, essentially, an empirical social
researcher. Theory and research were not discrete activities for Bourdieu
who advocated ‘the fusion of theoretical construction and practical oper-
ations’ (Bourdieu and Wacquant, 1992: 34), claiming that ‘one cannot
think well except in and through empirically constructed practical cases’
(Bourdieu and Wacquant, 1992: 34–35). To use Bourdieu’s metaphor of
game playing, in order to understand and explain actions, a consideration
of players’ dispositions and competence (habitus) with knowledge of the
state of play of the game and the players’ individual locations in it (field)
is necessary. Finally, my choice to use the work of Bourdieu was influenced
by his significant contributions to the sociology of the arts, particularly
Distinction (1984), which is a critical study of art and taste.
14 Chapter 1
Previous work that has sought to link social theory with dance has
made little reference to the work of Bourdieu (Thomas, 1995; Carter, 1998;
Adshead-Lansdale, 1999; Fraleigh and Hanstein, 1999; Desmond, 2003). I
have chosen to use Bourdieu’s ideas in relation to understanding ballet as
social practice as I draw upon his critique of the perpetuating social order
and the three main concepts developed by him in relation to social practice:
habitus, field and capital in my examination of young ballet dancers and
their embodiment. The work of Bourdieu then is a productive approach
to both theory and research on the body (Turner, 1992; Shilling, 1993).
Bourdieu links agency (practice) with structure (via field and capital)
through the process of habitus. For when ‘habitus encounters a social world
of which it is the product, it is like “a fish in water” … it takes the world
about itself for granted’ (Bourdieu and Wacquant, 1992: 127). Secondly, ‘the
way people treat their bodies reveals the deepest dispositions of the habitus’
(Bourdieu, 1984: 190). In this book I argue that an acknowledgement and
acceptance of physical and emotional pain and pleasure are powerful as key
processes in the acquisition of a balletic bodily habitus. I also suggest that
the acquisition of various forms of capital – for example, cultural, physical
(development of and application of ballet technique) and artistic (expres-
sion) – interrelate and all contribute to a young dancer’s habitus. Thirdly I
also generate insights into young dancers’ own perceptions and meanings
of their bodily habitus in relation to gender, pain and pleasure and how
these perceptions and meanings influence how their body is treated and
experienced inside and outside the ballet context. The concepts of habitus
and capital are embedded in the discussion. As an empirical investigation
of embodied practice and the active role of social agents in relation to these
practices, this book will contribute to Bourdieusian sociological investiga-
tions of the body. Studies of boxing (Wacquant, 1995a, 1995b), working
out in gyms (Sassatelli, 1999a, 1999b), bodybuilding (Monoghan, 1999,
2000), running (Smith, 2001) and circuit training (Crossley, 2004) have
each explored the dual nature of the embodied agent, as both subject and
object of change, in projects of body modification. This study of the body
in ballet employs Bourdieu’s notions of habitus and capital and so extends
Wacquant’s (1995a, 1995b) use of Bourdieu’s concepts in his ethnographic
study of the bodies of boxers. The body is always ‘made social’ and exists
within a network of ties, obligations and duties; however, as Shilling (1993)

argued, one of the important insights of Wacquant’s (1995a, 1995b) work
was that the body was seen as an unfinished entity and that bodies can,
will and do change and transform, given a particular set of circumstances
within which they are socialised. Habitus structures practice and prac-
tice structures habitus but I recognise the capacity of embodied agents to
extend and transcend their existing repertoire of habits. The purpose is to
illuminate the embodiment of ballet through an ethnographic study of
young ballet dancers that examines four key aspects of this archetype of
embodiment: habitus, pain, pleasure and gender.
This book is the outcome of a longitudinal, sociological ethnography. I

spent four years as a participant observer in two elite ballet schools with
a sample of twelve young dancers as they developed as ballet dancers. The
dancers were between the ages of 10 and 15 years at the start of the study.
I focused on the culture of a specific social world: the young, developing
ballet dancer in an established ballet school. Descriptive in nature, eth-
nography pursues understanding through the layering of the specific and
highly complex context of human experience. The context, then, is the
defining component of ethnography as it is the examination of culture in
context and an attempt ‘to reveal cultures as dynamic processes, made up
by individual actors who represent a complex weave of voices and view-
points’ (Frosch, 1999: 260). Therefore, ethnography can be contradictory
as multidimensional ideas are likely to emerge. Significantly, ethnography
‘reveals not only the weave of cultural tapestry studied, but the weave of the
ethnographer’s cloth as well’ (Frosch, 1999: 262). The focus of ethnography
is, in Bourdieu’s words, ‘to make the mundane exotic and the exotic mun-
dane’ (Bourdieu and Wacquant, 1992: 68), or to make the strange familiar
and the familiar strange.
16 Chapter 1
The Young Dancers
Here I introduce the young dancers who feature in this book. Pseudonyms
are used.
Megan was 10 years old at the start of the study. She is a white, British
female from the South of England. She started ballet and tap at 3 years old
when she was taken to dance lessons by her mother. She was deemed highly
talented by her private school ballet teacher who recommended that she
audition for the elite ballet school. Megan auditioned twice and started
at the elite school when she was 9 years old.
Tracey was 12 years old at the start of the study, a white, British female
from the South of England. She started ballet and modern dance at 3 years
old when she was taken to dance lessons by her mother. Tracey heard of the
elite school via a friend and went for a taster day before auditioning twice,
getting waiting list and finally gaining a place. She was still only 9 years old
but nearly 10, when she started at the elite ballet school.
Lie was 13 years old at the start of the study. She is a mixed heritage,
black African and white, British female from the South of England. She
started ballet at 4 years old when she was taken to dance lessons by her
mother. Lie was recommended to audition by her private school teacher
and successfully gained a place after two attempts. She was 10 years old
when she started at the elite ballet school.
Leah was 11 years old at the start of the study. She is a white, British
female from the North of England. She did ballet, tap and jazz and was
part of a participatory youth group before joining the elite ballet school
in the North of England at 10 years old.
Sima was 12 years old at the start of the study. She is a white, British
female from the North of England. Similar to Leah, she did ballet, tap and
jazz and was part of a participatory youth group before joining the elite
ballet school in the North of England at 11 years old. Leah and Sima are
friends and see each other outside the elite school context.
Anna was 15 years old at the start of the study. She is a white, British
female from the North of England. She did ballet, jazz, tap and summer
schools and performance projects as well as youth groups. She also studies
contemporary dance. She started at the elite school in the North of England
at 12 years old.
Jon was 11 years old at the start of the study. He is a white, British
male from the south of England. He started ballet at 10 years old because
his sister was doing it and he wanted to try. Jon auditioned at 10 years old
and gained a place at 11 years old.
Gary was 12 years old at the start of the study. He is a white, British
male from the south of England. He started ballet at 10 years old and gained
a place at 12 years old.
Milan was 13 years old at the start of the study. He is a white, British
male from the south of England. He started ballet at 11 years old and gained
a place at 12 years old.
Kenzi was 11 years old at the start of the study. He is a British black,
African male from the North of England. He did street dancing and had
an outreach workshop from the education department at the elite school,
after which he was encouraged to apply to audition. He started at the ballet
school in the North of England at 11 years old.
Nick was 14 years old at the start of the study. He is a white, British male
from the North of England. He has tried a number of different workshops
and classes in a different dance styles. He attended a performing arts centre
and was taught ballet and jazz but was the only boy. He wanted a boys’
class. He started the ballet school in the North of England at 12 years old.
Rich was 14 years old at the start of the study. He is a white, British
male from the North of England. He did ballet and jazz since 10 years old
and started the ballet school in the North of England at 13 years old.
In order to explore and examine the young dancers’ formation of per-
ceptions, experiences and understandings of the body in their process of
‘becoming’ a ballet dancer, alongside the sources and workings of social
construction and power relations in the ballet school contexts, I employed
a range of methods with the intention of giving the young ballet dancers a
voice alongside observing their moving, dancing body and actions. I was
most interested in identifying and analysing ballet body narratives. Ferber
(2000) suggested that narratives do not transparently reflect experiences
but give meaning to them.
18 Chapter 1
Alongside an investigation of the embodied identity of young ballet

dancers I attempt to offer a reflexive account of my relevant experiences
as a dancer. In undertaking this study I could not absent myself from the
world of ballet, but instead identified with and reflected on the world. My
experiences of the world were therefore interwoven in the research process
(Alvesson and Skoldberg, 2009). I have a multi-faceted range of experi-
ences, roles and identities, none of which are more or less important or that
could be falsely hidden or objectified. I am a white, heterosexual woman; I
consider myself middle-class. I am a dancer, a University lecturer and Head
of Dance, an editor of an academic journal, a researcher and a wife and
mother. McNamara (1999) considered the importance of acknowledging
who the researcher is in research and claimed:
an interpreter’s presence, then, is one that embodies his or her inner world of per-
ceptions, pre-understandings, lived body, space, time, relations and those thoughts
and ideas not yet expressed or written, as well as an outer world, comprising the
space where all actions expand into a social realm through written or verbal or non-
verbal communication. Both of these realms are experienced in the lived moment.
(McNamara, 1999: 167)
My own background and current experience in dance, my interests and my

constructed systems of beliefs and values all contribute to how I interpret
the world of dance and, in relation to this book, the world of ballet. In the
introduction to this book I expressed my involvement in ballet culture and
how this experience constructed knowledge and understanding of the social
world of ballet. I suggest this is an advantage in undertaking a study of ballet
dancers. I could identify with some familiar ideas, values and symbolism
with regard to a constructed theory or ‘belief in the body’ (Bourdieu,
1990a: 66) and I possess the kinds of cultural and physical capital that are
traded in order to succeed in a ballet world. I was able to draw from and
reflect on my own experiences that have been managed and remembered
through language but primarily through ‘experience, practice, sights and
sensations’ (Bloch, 1992: 130). Ballet is inscribed on my body and lives in
the forms of significant memories, visual imagery and learned practices.
However, through the process of writing this book, I have learned more
about myself and aspects of the social world of ballet which I had been
blind to, or perhaps I was not able to see clearly or understand because I
had taken some aspects of the social world of ballet for granted. For exam-
ple, when I was dancing and performing I had some understanding that I
was doing something different and something that not many other people
that I knew were doing, or indeed found interesting, but I did not see how
inaccessible, impenetrable or exclusive the ballet world appears to be for
many people. The social world of ballet can be viewed as a closed world but
also one that has reached across country borders since its inception in the
fourteenth century at Italian courts. Reflexivity was very important for this
study as, according to Bourdieu and Wacquant (1992) ‘a scientific practice
that fails to question itself does not … know what it does’ (Bourdieu and
Wacquant, 1992: 236).
Now that I have introduced myself, the ballet aesthetic, the twelve
young ballet dancers and the ethnography, in the next chapter I examine
the background and conceptual framework of Pierre Bourdieu in greater
depth. Then, I explore three dominant and differing perspectives that are
central to the academic field of body studies: the naturalistic body, the
social constructionist body and the phenomenological body. I also set the
context for meaning making in becoming a dancer. The central chapters
focus on the experiences, voices, actions and meanings of the young danc-
ers represented as their ballet body narratives. Ballet schooling, acquisition
of capital, the power of the ballet aesthetic, physical and emotional pain,
memorable engagements of bodily pleasures, the blurring of the boundaries
of the gendered body, the complex and messy reality of the social world
of ballet and development of embodied identity in pursuit of perfection
as a performing dancer are explored. I conclude this book by suggesting
that the reciprocal relationship between pleasure, pain and perfection is
powerful, seductive and embedded in the ballet dancer’s habitus.
Chapter 2
Ballet, Body and Bourdieu
In this chapter I examine Pierre Bourdieu’s conceptual framework. I begin

with a brief discussion of the background to Bourdieu’s work. I then discuss
Bourdieu’s key concepts of field, habitus and capital and his acknowledgement
of gender hierarchy. I summarise Bourdieu’s two significant works in relation
to this book: Distinction (1984) and The Logic of Practice (1990a). Next, I
examine the main strengths and challenges of Bourdieu’s conceptual frame-
work. Finally, I argue that the work of Bourdieu provides a useful approach
to examining and understanding the ballet body and embodied identity.
Bourdieu’s Conceptual Schema
There is a great deal of critical appraisal of the work of Pierre Bourdieu.

Important commentaries by David Swartz (1997), Bridget Fowler (1997)
and Derek Robbins (1999; 2000a; 2000b) have drawn out his many
strengths and contributions to sociological theory. Robbins (2000a) stated
that Bourdieu has had a ‘paradigmatic life of creative conceptualisation’
(p. xxiv). Indeed Bourdieu has made significant contributions to sociology
(1988, 1990b, 1993a, 1997b, 2001; Bourdieu and Wacquant, 1992; Bourdieu
et al., 1999) but also to anthropology (Bourdieu, 1962, 1977, 1990a), cultural
studies (1984, 1993b, 1996, 1997a, 1998) and philosophy (1992, 1996, 2000).
Key works on Bourdieu have also recognised the major contributions he
has made to anthropology and sociology ( Jenkins, 1992; Calhoun et al.,
1993), education (Grenfell and James, 1998), cultural studies (Fowler, 1997;
Lane, 2000; Robbins, 2000a, 2000b) and philosophy (Shusterman, 1999).
22 Chapter 2
Bourdieu has made seminal contributions to the sociology of the arts and
cultural studies eliciting and illuminating first-hand accounts of the social
world. His focus, however, has been on literature and painting (Bourdieu,
1993b and 1996) with the occasional reference to the theatre (Bourdieu,
1984, 1996) and classical music (Bourdieu, 1993c). He neglected dance as
an art form, therefore this book can contribute to Bourdieusian studies in
the neglected area of dance.
In his theory of agency, Bourdieu formulated the concept of habitus
as a way to steer a way through some of the key theoretical binaries he felt
inhibited the social sciences, such as the division between structure and
agency, which largely ignored the role of active interpretation and decision
making in social action. At the same time, Bourdieu wished to avoid the
kind of subjectivism represented by Sartrean phenomenology and its idea
of a self-designed life (Bourdieu, 1990a, 1992). Structuralist approaches to
the social world focus on the official picture of social relations where indi-
vidual actors can appear to be no more than mere puppets that mindlessly
realise structure and rules. However, Bourdieu argued that this concep-
tion is often very different from the ‘messy and strategic nature’ (Crossley,
2004) of social life. He acknowledged that structures and rules exist but
significantly, that rules are often negotiated, subverted or broken as inter-
ests and desires come into play: ‘that social agents obey the rule when it is
more in their interest to obey it than to disobey it’ (Bourdieu, 1990a: 76).
Furthermore Bourdieu argued that rules are often not applied consistently,
appropriately, at the right time, in the right place and in the right way. In
this way individuals have a certain amount of agency: ‘individuals make
choices, so long as we do not forget that they do not choose the principles
of these choices’ (Bourdieu in Wacquant, 1989: 45). Bourdieu was also
critical of what is termed social phenomenology approaches because these
approaches remained focused upon the interpretative nature of the agent
so failed to step back from that horizon and locate the interpretation in
the structural context from which it emerged (Bourdieu, 1992). This leads
to a failure to identify differences among the interpretations of different
groups, failure to examine the conditions that give rise to differences in
interpretations and a failure to identify power relations (Crossley, 2000: 85).
Key Concepts
In order to overcome the agency-structure dualism, Bourdieu developed

a set of key concepts that are linked together in a distinctive approach
to social research, social theory and social philosophy. Firstly, I will talk
through Marcel Mauss’s (1979) notion of habitus. Marcel Mauss (1973: 104)
described ‘techniques of the body’ as highly developed body actions that
embody aspects of a given culture. He demonstrated how even the most
mundane bodily activity is a cultural technique and explored this through
techniques of digging, marching, walking, sitting, throwing and sleep-
ing. He suggested that in particular styles of everyday movement such as
walking, that are assumed to be natural, social dimensions that are socially
constructed are exhibited. Ways of walking form a social idiosyncrasy ‘they
are not simply a product of some purely individual, almost completely
psychical arrangements and mechanisms’ (2006: 80). Mauss introduced
the term habitus explaining that the Latin word habilis is helpful as tech-
niques are a craft that are learned and this encapsulated greater meaning
than the French term habitude (habit or custom) (1973: 101). He argued
that it is important to designate metaphysical habitudes: ‘these habits do
not just vary between individuals and their imitations, they vary especially
between societies, educations, proprieties and fashions, prestige’ (2006:
80). Furthermore, he drew on the cultural importance of ‘techniques of the
body’ that is ways in which, from society to society, people learn through
education and imitation to use their bodies in a variety of instrumental
ways: ‘in their corporeal and technical habitus, individuals are ‘total’ human
beings, setting in motion the biological, psychological and sociological
dimension of their being’ (Mauss, 2006: 77). The actions Mauss explored
could be seen as being institutionalised with regard to socially normative
patterns of behaviour, so techniques may be properties of, not necessar-
ily consequences of, a system of relations constituted by the existence of
human beings within richly structured environments.
Pierre Bourdieu took Marcel Mauss’s notion of habitus, the non-dis-
cursive aspects of culture that bind people into groups, including unspoken
24 Chapter 2
habits and patterns of behaviour as well as styles and skill in body tech-
niques, and further developed the ideas with ‘field’. Here he placed attention
upon systems of habits and predispositions that become inculcated in the
body in everyday life, along with the use of instruments and technologies
(Bourdieu, 1988). In essence Bourdieu links agency (practice) with structure
(via capital and field) through the process of habitus. He ‘locates the role
of objective structures in setting limits to agent’s choice of goals as well as
blinkering their perceptions of reality’ (Fowler, 1997: 17). Practice ‘is the
result of various habitual schemas and dispositions (habitus) combined with
resources (capital), being activated by certain social structured conditions
(field) which they, in turn, belong to and variously reproduce and modify’
(Crossley, 2001: 96). The concept of habitus accounts for the dispositions
and competences that both generate and shape action. The concepts of
field and capital add an account of the context of action, the resources
that are available to that actor within the context and the particular role
these factors play in the shaping of action. I will now outline and discuss
Bourdieu’s key concepts.
Field
According to Bourdieu, societies are differentiated into interlocking fields.

Some of the fields coincide with institutions, such as the family or the media
but they also assume sub or trans-institutional forms (Crossley, 2000: 86).
Rather than simply considering societies in terms of classes (as Karl Marx),
Bourdieu used the idea of a field as a social arena within which people com-
pete for resources. A field (Bourdieu, 1990a) is a structured system of social
positions with three key areas of analysis: power, the objective structure of
relations and the habitus of agents. The field for Bourdieu was a dynamic
space of objective relationships among positions, which can only be under-
stood by viewing agents occupying each position in relation to all of the
others. This network of relations is independent of individual control so
the field is one of struggle for status and domination. In order to compete
the agents will draw on various forms of capital, which include economic
(financial), cultural, social and symbolic (Bourdieu, 1986).
In analytical terms, a field can be defined as a network, or a configuration of objective
relations between positions. These positions are defined objectively in their existence
and in the determinations that they impose on their occupants, agents or institutions,
by their current and potential situations (situs) in the (wider) structure of the distri-
bution of different currencies of power (or of capital), possession of which provides
access to specific profits that are up for grabs in the field, at the same time, by their
objective relations to other positions (domination, subordination, equivalents, etc.).
(Bourdieu and Wacquant, 1992: 72)
Fields are much more than the positions of the actors as they are also
defined by the distribution of different currencies of power. Bourdieu
related fields to games and markets and in doing so drew attention to
their culturally distinct and arbitrary forms. The ‘invisible hand’ of the
market captures the importance of fields as social spaces in which capital is
increased, decreased and exchanged. Fields are also like games that groups
and individuals play and success in the field depends on mastery of the game.
Players have a stake in the game, they chase goals and adhere to particular
distinctions and norms that are deemed to matter and have meaning for
those involved. The deep seated and unconscious ‘belief in the game’ that
ties an agent into a specific field of practice is termed as ‘illusio’ (Bourdieu,
1992). Furthermore, players’ beliefs and actions that ‘effectively constitute
the field, fail to perceive their own constitutive work and misrecognize the
field as an external and given reality’ (Crossley, 2000: 86). Investment in
‘playing the game’ moulds the habitus, which in turn shapes the actions of
the actors that reproduce the field. Furthermore, the field is governed by
objective relations as well as its own history and is reproductive in nature;
agents and institutions assimilate and respond.
The learned, deep-founded, unconscious and apparently spontaneous
beliefs, and values, taken as self-evident universals, that inform an agent’s
actions and thoughts within a particular field are described by Bourdieu as
‘doxa’ (1980) Actors internalise formal and informal structures alongside
spoken and unspoken assumptions. For Bourdieu it is the informal and
unspoken structures that constitute the most effective constraint on action
26 Chapter 2
because they operate at the level of the unconscious or semi-conscious.

They constitute what he defined as the prevailing ‘doxa’: the ‘silent experi-
ence of the world’ (1980: 111–112). Terry Eagleton described the concept of
doxa as ‘that which goes without saying’ (1990: 158). The ‘doxa’ is a set of
presuppositions that are cognitive as well as evaluative, conditioning the
actor’s responses to external stimuli at an almost instinctive level. At the
same time, these presuppositions are rarely subjected to scrutiny because
they are rarely acknowledged. ‘Doxa’ tend to privilege the dominant, favour
the particular social arrangement of the field and shape people’s view of
the world on the basis of a reciprocal relationship between the ideas and
attitudes of individuals and the structures within which they operate.
Regardless of how autonomous a field is, however, its struggles are
never completely free of external factors. Although change is difficult and
action is weighted towards maintaining the status quo, Bourdieu looked
to art as a catalyst for change since it is through struggles within the field
and as agents compete with one another, that change is most common.
Agents occupy positions in the field that they seek to protect or change
through position-taking. For Bourdieu, position taking consists of strate-
gies an agent or institution employs to change or maintain position. An
agent develops strategies or produces work within the field based on what
is possible at the moment, what is seen as the agent’s best interest and on
the position the agent already occupies in the field. Nevertheless, it should
be emphasised that strategies are not necessarily consciously calculated.
Rather, they are based on dispositions attained through practice that has
become like a second nature.
Habitus
The concept of field is inseparably bound to that of habitus. Habitus com-

prises structures or systems of durable and transposable dispositions, which
take account of the relationship between objective structures and subjec-
tive preferences for experiences of social practice. The habitus, ‘as the word
implies, is that which one has acquired, but which has durably been incor-
porated into the body in the form of permanent dispositions’ (Bourdieu,
1993: 86). Agents’ action are shaped both by their habitus and by the logic
of the game as it unfolds and importantly, it is because of the way in which
the habitus shapes the perceptions, motivation and action that the player
is disposed to recognise and play in that field in the first place. The field
and habitus are locked in a circular relationship as involvement in the field
shapes the habitus that, in turn, shapes the actions that reproduce the field.
Habitus is, according to Bourdieu, the means by which the ‘social
game’ is inscribed in biological individuals. Bourdieu’s (1990a) phrase
‘feel for the game’ gives an accurate idea of the encounters between the
habitus and the field. The ‘feel for the game’ gives the activity in the field
a subjective sense, a meaning.
Social reality exists, so to speak, twice, in things and in minds, in fields and in habi-
tus, outside and inside social agents. And when habitus encounters a social world of
which it is the product, it is like ‘a fish in water’: it does not feel the weight of the
water and it takes the world about itself for granted … It is because this world has
produced me, because it has produced the categories of thought that I apply to it,
that it appears to me as self-evident. (Bourdieu and Wacquant, 1992: 133)
The habitus is reproductive and productive so the rules are learnt through
explicit teaching as well as practise. The experience of meaning in the field
depends on when and how the game of the field was learned; and it depends
on how, in what context, and how often it is played (Bourdieu, 1986). This
recognition is tacit because broad parts of the dispositions are internalised
through unreflective socialisation; the earlier the player enters the game, the
greater the ignorance of all that is taken for granted in the field (Bourdieu,
1990a). The dispositions are durable so habitus tends to continue to generate
practices and perceptions that maintain the environments that construct
them. The habitus therefore not only reproduces itself but also it has the
potential and ability to generate and organise other practices and repre-
sentations. Bourdieu claimed that because the habitus is a practical sense
derived from experience, it tends to operate below the level of conscious-
ness. He compared the difference between habitus and rational thought to
that between instantaneous decisions a tennis player makes in the midst of
28 Chapter 2
a volley and the analysis the coach makes of the game when it is finished
(Bourdieu, 1984). It is important to note, however, that this does not mean
that agents do not think, but that thought is filtered through the habitus.
The only way then, to circumvent habitus, and then only to some degree,
is through an understanding of how it operates.
Symbolic power – for example prestige, status and attention – is a
crucial source of power. When a holder of symbolic power uses the power
against an agent who holds less, in order to alter their actions, they exercise
symbolic violence. This may be in the form of disapproving looks or ges-
tures: symbols that serve to convey particular coercive meanings but may
not make the meanings explicit. Such symbolic power, symbolic violence
and systems of meanings within the habitus is experienced as legitimate and
accepted. Therefore those involved will be bound by their sense of duty and
social order and will be complicit in their own subordination. Symbolic
violence is seen to be more powerful than physical violence because it cap-
tures how discrimination and forms of oppression do not have to be solely
enacted in the physical realm. The notion of violence being manifested in
a symbolic realm centralises that the positioning of certain bodies as more
deficient and in need of transformation becomes the very modes of actions
and structures of individuals and this therefore imposes the social order.
Bourdieu argued that schools are sites of institutional symbolic violence
but that their violence is symbolic because it is invisible and unrecognised.
Habitus then is both a medium and an outcome of social practice.
The source of historical action, that of the artist, the scientist, or the member of gov-
ernment just as much as that of the worker or the petty civil servant, is not an active
subject confronting society as if that society were an object constituted externally.
The source resides neither in consciousness nor in things but in the relationship
between two stages of the social, that is, between the history objectified in things,
in the form of institutions, and in the history incarnated in bodies, in the form of
that system of enduring dispositions which I call habitus. (Bourdieu, 1990a: 190)
On the one hand, each individual’s habitus will be different as no two

biographies are the same and in this way each habitus is unique. On the
other hand, biographies are strands in a collective history. The individual
belongs to a group or variety of groups and develops his or her habitus in

these groups.
Significantly, the habitus is not simply a state of mind but it is a bodily
state of being. The style and manner of social performance, the body and
its demeanour, and gestures and stance are referred to as hexis (Bourdieu,
1977, 1990a). This mastery is acquired not through formal instruction, but
through habitually carrying out activities and actions involving character-
istic postures and gestures:
a way of walking, a tilt of the head, facial expressions, ways of sitting, and of using
implements – all of these, and more, compromise what it takes to be an accomplished
practitioner, and together they furnish a person with his or her bearings in the world.
(Bourdieu, 1977: 87)
Habitus is a residue of the past that functions within the present and
shapes thought and perception. It therefore provides regularity and coher-
ence to action and consists of dispositions and competences acquired in
structured social settings whose patterns and principles are incorporated
as habitual ways of being. Bourdieu sought to show how ‘the body is in
the social world but the social world is also in the body’ (1990a: 190). He
argued that the core values of the dominant culture become inscribed in
the apparently insignificant details of dress and physical and verbal man-
ners whereby the body becomes a memory and acts as a repository for
the principles ‘embodied’ within it. This demonstrates the importance
of the body and the individual within the habitus because bodily hexis
combines with the social and mediates a link between an individual’s
subjective world and the cultural world. For Bourdieu, the body is the
device upon which the culture is imprinted and encoded in a socialising
process ( Jenkins, 1992).
The body is not seen as being infinitely malleable, nor is it completely
free; bodily hexis ‘is political mythology realised, em-bodied, turned into
a permanent disposition, a durable way of standing, speaking, walking
and thereby thinking and feeling’ (Bourdieu, 1990b: 70). Even if it is not
sought to make particular ways of moving habitual, time alone will lead to
the laying down of a compendium of capacities and actions through the
30 Chapter 2
frequent repetition of acts. These acts become a fundamental and intimate

part of the self; how one walks, holds oneself, how one talks, gestures and
sits; these all leave their mark on the body.
Forms of Capital
Capital is anything that counts, however tacitly, as afforded with an exchange

value in the particular field. Capital ‘serves both as a resource for action
and as a ‘good’ to be sought after and accumulated’ (Crossley, 2000: 87).
Capital may also be converted within and across fields for example in the
form of success being converted into cash. Bourdieu lists as main forms of
capital: social capital, which is defined as the network of influential people
an agent or institution can draw on for support; symbolic capital, the form
that capital takes when it is known and recognised; and cultural capital,
which is related to education and habitus. Cultural capital may manifest in
the form of educational qualifications, dispositions and manner or in the
possession of highly regarded artefacts and goods. Capital largely defines an
agent’s social position, which in turn shapes life experiences and therefore
habitus. Capital also shapes the possibilities for action as agents can only
do what they can afford to do.
The body can be viewed as a form of physical capital as manage-
ment of the body is central to the acquisition of social status and can be
expressed as cultural capital where a particular type of body appears to
carry more cultural weight in a particular context or habitus (Bourdieu,
1986). Bourdieu has also referred to habitus as an ‘embodied history’
(Bourdieu, 1990b: 56) putting the body at the heart of agency; ‘the body
plays what it believes and it “enact (s)” the past, bringing it back to life’
(Bourdieu, 1990b: 73). The body is the primary means of expression and
representation in dance so obviously dancers experience and engage in
dance with their bodies. Given that ‘the meanings and implications of
dance, indeed of all art, are embedded in the experiences of the art itself
– learning, teaching, creating, performing and watching’ (Cohen Bull,

2003: 270), individuals achieve understanding of the social world of ballet
through bodily practice.
Bourdieu and Gender
Although gender is a key theme throughout this book, here I summarise

Bourdieu’s consideration of gender. Bourdieu (1992: 170) discussed gender
inequality as a fundamental form of symbolic domination. He drew on
his research of the North African society of Kabyle and suggested that
male domination assumed a natural status through its inscription in the
objective structure of the social world, which was then incorporated and
reproduced in the habitus of the individuals. The masculine and feminine
division was particularly evident in the structuring of the social space that
confined women, predominantly, to domestic and pastoral locations as
opposed to the public space of the males. The women realised the negative
identity that had been imposed on them but they naturalised it. Although
Kabyle is a peasant culture, Bourdieu (1992) claimed that this exemplified
the ways that sexual hierarchies are maintained in modern industrial society.
Hierarchical gender relations were viewed by Bourdieu to be embedded
in the bodily hexis.
Bourdieu’s work does lack sustained consideration of the gendered
habitus in relation to the field. He suggested the engrained nature of gender
norms but failed to expand on the complexities; ‘he significantly under-
estimates the ambiguities and dissonances that exist in the way that men
and women occupy masculine and feminine positions’ (McNay, 1999:
107). Bourdieu claimed that contemporary masculinity is construed as an
enactment of games of masculine competition and assertion of virility. The
principles of equality in honour that govern such games exclude women.
However, Bourdieu asserted that such masculine privilege is a trap in that
‘the dominant is dominated by his domination’ (1992: 173). Women are
32 Chapter 2
in a subordinate position and excluded from masculine privilege; this

accords women a certain critical insight into masculinity: ‘the lucidity
of the excluded’ but that women remain complicit with these masculine
games. In so doing they participate in their own subordination and serve
as ‘flattering mirrors to the games of men’ (1990a: 26). This alignment
was regarded as so stable and deeply engrained by Bourdieu (1990a) that
he claimed that only a complete rejection of the gendered habitus would
dislodge the phallonarcissistic view of the world. There is however no rec-
ognition that apparent complicity can conceal potential alienation on the
part of individuals in Bourdieu’s theory (McNay, 1999: 107/8).
One of Bourdieu’s last texts before he died; La Domination Masculine
(1999) was subsequently translated and published in English in 2001 as
Masculine Domination. Here Bourdieu turned to the female sporting
body and considered how there are relational and generative possibili-
ties for change and continuity. Brown (2006b) claimed that Bourdieu’s
perspective is useful because of ‘the way in which he makes connections
between everyday practice, experience, and feeling of being a “gendered
body” and the symbolic worlds of image and discourse that this body
generates’ (2006b: 165). Rather like Connell’s (1995) notion of ‘body-
reflexive practice’, Bourdieu (2001) claimed that masculine domination
remains a practical produce and a symbolic feature of everyday life. The
issue of the pluralized forms of gender or, ‘multiple masculinities and femi-
ninities’ (Connell, 1995) is significant because both Bourdieu (2001) and
Connell (1995) articulate a central masculine ideological core; Connell
as ‘hegemonic masculinities’ and Bourdieu as ‘masculine domination’,
which is apparent in bodies and in practice, but is ‘constituted largely
as a symbolic dichotomy between masculine and feminine in Western
culture’ (Brown, 2006b: 165). Bourdieu’s consideration of masculine
domination is not necessarily intended to be read as ‘male domination’
or as a single form of masculinity, but rather acts of gender relations that
draw upon the gender binary in symbolically significant ways. However,
multiplicity is still generated out of variations around a ‘binary ideo-
logical continuum that serves to perpetuate patriarchal gender relations’
(Brown, 2006b: 166).
I am interested in how the structures within the social world of ballet

shape young dancers’ perceptions and understandings of their bodies as
they develop as dancers. I will now consider two of Bourdieu’s works that
I found most relevant for this book: Distinction: A Social Critique of the
Judgement of Taste (1984) and The Logic of Practice (1990a).
Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste
In his study Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste (1984)

Bourdieu identified differences in the aesthetic dispositions of different
classes through an examination of the French class system. He explored
how class was literally written into the bodies and minds of the middle
and working classes engendering certain entitlements, status and restric-
tions. Through examination of social stratification based on aesthetic taste,
Bourdieu conceptualised differential class distinctions as capital including
social, symbolic and cultural capital. The forms of capital are acquired,
learnt and formed through social practices and manifest through bodily
dispositions. The difference in habitus, between the working class and the
upper class was summarised by Bourdieu in his description of the habitus of
the petit bourgeois as being: ‘strict and sober, discreet and sever, in his dress,
his speech, his gestures and his whole being, he always lacks something in
stature, breadth, substance, largesse’ (1984: 338). Bodily dispositions are
ways of talking, walking, eating and conducting oneself. Working class
women for example, are likely to walk, talk, eat and participate in differ-
ent sports or physical activities than middle-class women as evidenced by
Beverley Skeggs (1997, 2004), in her volume of work exploring how class
is lived, embodied and enacted by those positioned as ‘other’ to middle-
class rationality. Bodily appearance, its fashion and stylisation then are
also a salient form of corporeal capital. Physical capital ‘is the ability of
dominant groupings to define their bodies and lifestyle, as superior, worthy
of reward, and as metaphorically and literally, the embodiment of class’
34 Chapter 2
(Shilling, 1993: 140). The lifestyles of the different social classes become
inscribed on their bodies. Habitus, which reflects class position, produces
distinctive bodily forms that are accorded different social, cultural and
economic value.
The Logic of Practice
It is the interaction of the three concepts of field, habitus and capital that
produces The Logic of Practice (1990a). Bourdieu’s theory of practice can
offer insights into the practical mastery that young dancers carry in their
bodies, which cannot be accurately formulated in terms of a system of
representations. Dancers, from this perspective, actively engage in tasks
involving characteristic ways of moving that are situated in the nexus of
relations between people and the distinctive contexts of dance. According
to Bourdieu rules cannot determine actions. So, thinking and learning do
not occur in the interior space of representations, but in people’s actual
engagement in the context of practical activity: ‘The body belief is in what
it plays at’ (Bourdieu, 1990a: 73). The habitus exists only as it is revealed
in the activity itself (Ingold, 2000).
I am particularly interested in Bourdieu because he placed the body
at the centre of his powerful, complex and persuasive theories of class dis-
tinction and of practice. In order to grasp the materiality of the body in
bodily theory, Bourdieu’s work is helpful as the body is seen as a material
one that does not become lost in discourse. The strategies social agents,
as opposed to Foucault’s ‘subjects’, employ depends on their position in
the field, that is, the amount of capital they possess. If agents possess a
great deal of capital (manifested in status and power), they are likely to
want to preserve the current structure, perpetuating the existing rules of
the game. If agents have little capital they are likely to want to subvert
the rules. Furthermore, Bourdieu introduced a temporal dimension to
an understanding of the body. He saw time as involving ‘a practical ref-

erence to the future’ (1992: 129), and that praxis or a living through the
embodied potentialities of the habitus is a temporal activity; social being
is not therefore just a repetition (McNay, 1999). Practice generates time
and that ‘time is engendered in the actualization of the act’ (1992: 138).
This relates to Bourdieu’s assertion that the habitus ‘is an open system of
dispositions that is constantly subjected to experiences, and therefore
constantly affected by them in a way that either reinforces or modifies
its structures’ (1992: 133). Struggles do not depend only on the present,
they also depend on ‘the space of possibilities inherited from previous
struggles, which tends to define the space of possible position-takings
and thus orient the search for solutions and, as a result, the evolution of
production’ (Bourdieu, 1993a: 183–184). The social agents’ relationship
to power relations does not negate agency in Bourdieu’s work. Rather
than the notion of domination-resistance, Bourdieu developed a more
differentiated concept of ‘regulated liberties’ (1991: 102).
The idea of ‘regulated liberties’ has important implications for a femi-
nist understanding in relation to women and dominant representations
of femininity according to McNay (1999). She asserted that the notion of
‘regulated liberties’ provides a framework for understanding some of what
have been perceived as significant recent assertions of women’s autonomy.
such as:
the tentative renegotiation of heterosexual relations beyond the institution of mar-
riage … the claims made in studies of ‘girl culture’ that highly feminized cultural
icons, notably Madonna, provide teenage girls with a set of symbolic tools with
which to subvert patriarchal definitions of femininity … Such changes cannot be
understood through binaries of domination and resistance but rather involve more
complex processes of investment and negotiation … In this view, gender identity
is not a mechanistically determining structure but an open system of dispositions.
(1999: 104–105)
However, it is important to recognise that just because individuals do

not simply reproduce the system, this is not a guarantee of the inherently
resistant nature of their actions.
36 Chapter 2
Bourdieu’s Critics
The work of Bourdieu has attracted some criticism. The main criticisms
encompass the views that Bourdieu’s work is vague and within this vague-
ness that there is a theoretical contradiction. A second main criticism is
that Bourdieu’s work is deterministic. Firstly, in relation to the vagueness
of Bourdieu’s work, Alexander (1995) argued that the habitus concept
constitutes one of two mutually incompatible theories of action that co-
exist, somewhat uneasily, in Bourdieu’s work. Alexander claimed that the
habitus concept explained action in terms of inherited cultural traditions
but that Bourdieu also identifies a strategically, rational purpose behind
every action. For Alexander, a theoretical contradiction exists between
the two versions of Bourdieu’s practical action theory: ‘one stresses the
role of non-rational action and objectively constructed habitus, the other
the role of rational motivation having an objective result’ (1995: 153). This
is seen as problematic for Alexander as it reduces action to nothing more
than instrumental self-interest. Similarly, Prior (2000) claimed that the
concept of field is vague:
the concept has an almost chameleon–like quality in that it can mean all things to
all people: determined and determining, structured and structuring, strong and
weak, modern and post-modern, promoting reproduction and change, Marxist and
Weberian. (2000: 144)
However, Bourdieu’s conception of habitus is not about blind adherence

to rules, norms and traditions but as Crossley (2000) asserted the habitus
forms ‘the practical-social basis for innovative and improvised action. It
consists of forms of competence, skill, and multi-track dispositions, rather
than fixed and mechanical blueprints for action’ (2000: 88). Furthermore,
the strategic rationality of action is always relative to specific fields and is
only possible on the basis of assumed know-how and skill that is consti-
tuted by the habitus. Therefore, in relation to Prior’s criticism, it may mean
specific things to specific people depending on the field in question.
These points can be illustrated with reference to team sports and the
actions of players in games such as football, rugby or hockey. Here players
act strategically to maximise the game specific capital of their team, such
as goals, and their actions are ‘strategically rational.’ However, there are
also traditional ways of maximising interest in the form of rules that are
specific to the game that they are playing so action combines strategic and
traditional elements. Both the strategic and the traditional orientations
of the player’s action are achieved without reflection; the player does not
think about the game whilst they are engaged in playing it because there
is no time but sees and acts in accordance with the logic of the game. ‘The
game is taken for granted, affecting every slight gesture of the player with-
out ever once becoming an object of thought’ (Crossley, 2000: 90). The
player is in the game, believing in it and experiencing it for the duration
of play. In this way, contrary to Alexander’s view, tradition and strategy
are compatible.
A further criticism of Bourdieu is that he is a determinist. Jenkins
(1992) referred to the notion of habitus as a structuring but also a struc-
tured structure and argued that Bourdieu defined the subjective structures
of habitus as generative of objective practices but that he also claimed that
those subjective structures, in turn, are the product of external and objec-
tive conditions. Jenkins (1992) asserted that ‘it must be recognised that
such a model constitutes nothing more than another form of determina-
tion’ (1992: 272). It is true that Bourdieu viewed all agents as born into
a structured world and incorporating objective social structures, such as
language, before they can become social agents. Objective structures do
shape subjective structures in this biographical sense. In a broader historical
sense though objective and subjective structures work in a circular manner
and in this way Bourdieu explained that prior objective structures are gen-
erated by subjective structures and so on. Structured structures mean that
the incorporated habits dispose agents to continue with a particular form of
practice in a particular way. They are also equally responsible for the genera-
tion of practice and habituses and are therefore also structuring structures.
Jenkins (1992) also criticised Bourdieu in relation to the manner in which
expectations are shaped by objective life chances, in such a way that people
rarely expect more than they are actually able to achieve. Bourdieu’s work
implies that for the majority of people, they may not wish to or are unable
to question the status quo. The notion that expectations of dominated
38 Chapter 2
social groups reflect their social position is realistic; agents come to expect
and predict what they find themselves subject to and such expectations are
also often collectively produced and shared by the group. Crossley (2000:
91) argued that the agent is still wholly active in constructing a picture of
the world. He does not see this as Bourdieu being deterministic but rather
pragmatic and realistic. It is true that parents transmit expectations to their
children that involve conveying a sense of the world that the parents know
and this is based on their experience and membership of particular social
groups. Bourdieu has insisted that the habitus was not to be conceived
as a principle of determination but as a generative structure. Within the
limits of the field there are potentially an infinite number of patterns of
behaviour, thought and expression that are both ‘relatively unpredictable’
but also ‘limited in their diversity’ (1990a: 55). My view is that the habitus
is, in the main, determining; there is some potential for manoeuvre but
generally manoeuvre will be minimal.
Bourdieu has made reference to struggle and conflict in his work,
although he has had more to say about reproduction rather than trans-
formation. Bourdieu claimed that the various unconscious assumptions,
expectations and beliefs that hold the status quo are in place as outcomes
of a historical process that have often been preceded by conflict:
What appears to us as self-evident, as beneath consciousness and choice, has quite
often been the stake of struggles and instituted only as the result of dogged con-
frontation between the dominant and dominated groups. (Bourdieu, 1998: 56–57)
The habitus can change slowly through a process of evolution but revolu-
tions in the habitus can occur through ‘fateful moments’ (Giddens, 1991).
Such fateful moments change the trajectory of life and with it the nature
of the habitus; here the habitus can be transformed (Bourdieu, 1984). The
threat of failure, or to use a positive example, success may produce a revo-
lution in the habitus. Bourdieu has discussed important points in relation
to how dissonance emerges between subjective dispositions and objective
outcomes, which, in turn, stimulates the possibility of critique.
The critique which brings the undiscussed into discussion, the unformulated into
formulation, has as the condition of its possibility objective crisis, which, in break-
ing the immediate fit between the subjective structures and the objective structures,
destroys self-evidence practically … the would-be most radical critique always has
the limits that are assigned to it by the objective conditions. (Bourdieu, 1977: 169)
The idea of social crisis disturbing the usual habitual ways of thinking and
acting means that the embodied assumptions and beliefs of the individual
are questioned, which brings an opportunity for critical reflection.
Bourdieu and Dance
The work of Bourdieu has been discussed in the area of body studies
(Turner, 1992; Shilling, 1993; Wacquant, 1995; Crossley, 2000) but as
mentioned previously, there has been very little reference to Bourdieu
in academic studies of dance. Even work that seeks to make connections
between social theory and dance makes almost no reference to Bourdieu
(Thomas, 1995; Desmond, 1997; Carter, 1998; Adshead-Lansdale, 1999;
Fraleigh and Hanstein, 1999). I believe that Bourdieu offers a productive
way of conducting research on ballet as an embodied social practice. The
purpose of ballet training is, in Bourdieusian terms, to acquire an uncon-
scious ballet habitus. The gendered balletic body, technique, movement
vocabulary, muscle memory, posture, alignment and ways of being are all
forms of cultural and physical capital and the more the technique is prac-
tised, the more it becomes ascribed into the dancer’s body and becomes
who the dancer is. In Bourdieu’s terms this is an embodied set of acquired
dispositions that are developed and maintained through rigorous discipline
and practice. I will now depict the field of classical ballet and introduce
the ballet dancer’s habitus based on my own perceptions, experience and
understanding.
40 Chapter 2
The Field of Classical Ballet
The classical ballet world is considered to be a distinctive and exclusive world

of ‘high culture’ because of its historical and contemporary connections
to the European courts and the high bourgeoisie strata in Western society
(Cohen Bull, 2003; Wolff, 2003; Wulff, 2001). History, tradition and hier-
archy pervade classical ballet technique, language, training and each ballet
school and company’s organisation. Classical ballet companies still have a
pyramidal appointment hierarchy reflecting the role distribution in classical
ballets from the nineteenth century, and thus a social structure. Positions at
the bottom are corps de ballet dancers, then there are soloists and finally there
are principal dancers at the top. In the social world of ballet there is a trans-
national awareness through communication with other companies, touring,
competitions, galas, festivals and through the use of guest artists. Professional
ballet dancers often tour the country and the world. The reputation and style
of an acclaimed dancer becomes well known internationally and is there-
fore credited with social prestige. Ballet styles are regarded as ‘reflections of
national personalities or of nations’ (Wulff, 2001: 41). This idea of national
ballet styles can be traced back to major ballet schools providing different
types of training: the French, the Russian, the British, the Danish and the
American schools. Ballet style is learnt through a specific ballet technique
taught through a particular school’s system of training; it is significant that
the word training is used to describe the process of learning ballet although
dancers may also say that they are studying ballet or may refer to ballet school-
ing. More recently there is an expectation that younger dancers will be able
to change or switch between national styles and new choreographic styles.
Ballet then is often considered to be an elite pastime however most corps
de ballet dancers, which constitute the majority, according to Wulff (2001)
in her ethnographic study of four international ballet companies, are from
upper working class to middle-class backgrounds. Principal dancers, ballet
directors and choreographers, however, often meet people from the upper
classes, aristocracies and royals in connection with marketing, fund-raising
and tours. Ballet companies are structured and run by ballet directors who
are assisted by a ballet producer, an artistic co-ordinator, administrators and
secretaries. A ballet production is the combined product of dancers, chore-

ographers and conductors who are rewarded in public, but also numerous
people working backstage. There are also marketing and press departments
dealing with public relations and sponsors.
Learning ballet is not just about learning the technique but it also
means embracing a gendered etiquette and ‘a decorum of politeness, a
chivalry in the studio as well as outside’ (Wulff, 2001: 3). This tradition
echoes courtly manners all the way back to the fourteenth century and
according to this decorum there are strict gender constructions; men are
polite to women when it comes to greeting, passing through doors and so
on and this is also conveyed through the traditional pas de deux performance
with the male dancer supporting the female dancer. Respect in relation to
hierarchy is also viewed as important in that younger people must respect
older people and those with lesser status should be respectful to those with
higher status. Beverley Skeggs (1997), in her work Formations of Class and
Gender: Becoming Respectable, claimed that ‘respectability is one of the most
ubiquitous signifiers of class; it informs how we speak, who we speak to,
how we classify others, what we study and how we know who we are (or
are not)’ (1997:1). Socialisation into the ballet decorum is viewed as a way
to help things run smoothly in a setting where people work very closely
with each other. For example dancers spend a lot of time in close contact
with each other: backstage facilities from dressing-rooms and green rooms
are often crowded and dancers are often skin-to-skin when they dance. The
decorum of ballet is taught by teachers, coaches, older professional dancers
and older students to the younger professional dancers and ballet pupils.
The Ballet Dancer’s Habitus
The structures of the field of ballet and the ballet dancer’s habitus are locked
in a circular relationship as involvement in the field shapes the habitus that,
in turn, shape the actions that have reproduced the field. I write at length
about the ballet dancer’s habitus as part of future chapters later in this book
42 Chapter 2
but as at this point I wish to allude to what I consider to be two signifi-

cant and deeply entrenched workings of the habitus: pain and pleasure.
Classical ballet is a career in which emotional and physical pain are a more
or less permanent feature of the profession (Brinson and Dick, 1996; Aalten,
1997). The world of an elite dancer is a tough environment fraught with
potential rejection, prejudice and injury and the vulnerability of the body
(Wainwright and Turner, 2004, 2006) has important implications for the
dancers as ‘the injured dancing body is perceived as an inevitable part of a
career in ballet’ (Wainwright, Williams and Turner, 2005: 49). Ballet danc-
ers are more likely to experience higher rates of pain and injury, particularly
those associated with overuse and overtraining (fatigue), than other dance
styles. They are also more likely to ignore pain and what they consider to
be minor injuries regarding them as manageable nuisances (Hamilton and
Hamilton, 1991; Liederbach and Compagno, 2001). It has also been argued
that ballet dancers are happy to take painkillers on a routine basis to manage
pain in order to perform (Kirkland and Lawrence, 1986; Cohen Bull, 2003).
Alongside the pain there are significant moments of elation, triumph, audi-
ence applause and appreciation in ballet. The ways cultural factors interact
with individual experiences of the body varies and much research in relation
to sport, physical activity and dance fails to capture the unique experiences
and individual pleasures of those engaging in the physical pursuit. Fun and
enjoyable opportunities for expression and creativity and ‘superordinary’
experiences in dance (McRobbie, 1993; McNeill, 1995; Bond and Stinson,
2000/1, 2007; Embrey and Rose, 2002) and emancipatory potential of
physical activity and dance through notions of positive attitudes to the
body (Theberge, 1987, 2000, 2003; Gilroy, 1989; Scraton and Flintoff, 1992,
2002; Whitson, 1994; McDermott, 1996; 2000; Wright and Dewar, 1997;
Deem and Gilroy, 1997; Gard, 2001, 2006; Flintoff and Scraton, 2001, 2005;
Garrett, 2004; Young, 2005; Risner, 2009a, 2009b) have been considered
but there is little work that relates to the individual and group pleasure that
is derived from those engaging in the social practice of ballet.
As Bourdieu stated: ‘the way people treat their bodies reveals the deep-
est dispositions of the habitus’ (Bourdieu, 1984: 190) so I hope to examine
in this book, the meanings and value that are attached to the body in the
cultural (field) of ballet and how the young developing ballet dancers view
and therefore treat their bodies. Bourdieu’s critique was of a perpetuating

unequal system; a range of hierarchies exist within structures in society
and particular groups seek to distinguish themselves as being ‘special’ and
‘better’ than others in order to gain power and status. Bourdieu’s work is,
in my view, a productive way of examining the field of classical ballet and
the ballet dancer’s habitus.
Chapter 3
Thinking through the Body
‘My body is like a machine which I control. I push my turn-out and flex-
ibility and keep working until I get the movements, then I can relax and
be me and perform and express myself.’
— Anna, 13 years
As the body is of paramount importance in ballet, it is pertinent therefore to

explore dominant and differing perspectives that are central to the academic
field of body studies, in order to understand the differing ways the body is
viewed and, consequently, how it may be treated. In this chapter I examine
and discuss three dominant perspectives to body studies: the naturalistic
body, the social constructionist body and the phenomenological body. In
this book, I interweave the lived experiences of young dancers with discus-
sion and situate the culture of classical ballet within the contexts of two
elite ballet schools. I examine ways in which the young dancer’s ballet body
is produced within these ballet schools. In particular I adopt the work of
Pierre Bourdieu as a way of understanding the connections between body,
gender and identity within the field of classical ballet. I am concerned with
embodiment and practices rather than discourses and effects and I am con-
centrating then on the embodiment of the young ballet dancer. I examine
the ballet dancer’s habitus and the ways in which the young ballet dancer’s
body and habitus is produced and maintained. I explore, as a starting point,
the notion of ‘natural talent’ and that ballet dancers view themselves and
are deemed by others to be unusual and special. I then examine schooling
or training of the balletic body through the ballet class and the ways that
the ballet bodily hexis becomes engrained through the embodiment of the
discipline of ballet and ballet decorum.
46 Chapter 3
The Naturalistic Body
One of the key splits, separations or dualisms that have been reproduced
in different ways across the natural and human sciences is the mind-body
dualism. The mind is used to refer to processes of thought, reasoning,
argument, reflection and debate. These processes of thinking are usually
referred to as cognitive. The mind-body dualism is often known as Cartesian
dualism with reference to the writings of the seventeenth-century phi-
losopher, Rene Descartes. Descartes (1644) argued that res cogitans: the
thinking substance of mind, consciousness, rationality and freedom was
qualitatively different and independent of res extensa: extended substance
of physical objects and natural phenomena. The mind belongs to the think-
ing substance – ‘Cognito, ergo sum’, ‘I think therefore I am’ – and the body
belongs to extended substance. There is a distinction between what is taken
to be natural and deterministic such as respiration and digestion and what
is considered voluntary and therefore subject to change. The human being
is considered as divided: the mind is the location of thought and the body
is viewed as little more than a biological entity; the location of a fixed set
of physiological processes.
The naturalistic view of the body then is ‘body-as-machine’ (Miller,
1978; Porter, 1997; Watson, 2000) or object. Likening the body to a machine
is common in anatomy, physiology, bio-mechanics and traditional medicine
for example sports science literature on the athlete’s body (e.g. Wilmore
and Costill, 1994; Hewett et al., 2010) and dance science literature on the
dancer’s body (e.g. Koutedakis and Sharp, 1999; Simmel, 2014). Literature
on sociobiology forms a second stream of naturalism on the body (Wilson,
1975). Here human behaviour is seen as biologically determined and it is
typically argued that psychological and social differences are best explained
via genetics or evolution (Kitcher, 1985; Sober, 1990). Social behaviour is
seen as the product of genetically driven natural selection. The mind-body
binary has been a central concept for challenge by feminist thinking because
the mind is associated with the masculine and the body with the feminine.
The mind is privileged over the body (Bordo, 1986; Butler, 1990; Braidotti,
1994). Some reactionary politicians have seized on socio-biological accounts

as justification for inequalities in society (Smith, 1998). Shilling has argued
that ‘sociologically, naturalistic views of the body are important because of
the repeated attempts that have been made by the dominant in society to
justify their position with reference to the supposedly inferior biological
make-up of the dominated’ (Shilling, 1993: 59).
The Social Constructionist Body
For social constructionists the body is socially created. Within this work
analysis of the role of social and cultural processes in the formation of a
person involves an exploration of different interpretations in response to
particular events in life. It also includes work that has taken as its focus
the role of cultural symbols and codes in the formation of identities. Here
bodies register emotions but are viewed as containers for experiences that
are a product of the ways in which cultural narratives and interpretations are
used to make sense of lives. Sense-making is generally linked to interpreta-
tion, to judgement and ultimately is the work of thought; the body tends
to be an ‘absent presence’ (Leder, 1990: 1). The body becomes a vehicle of
expression of the self but in most cases what is explored are the kinds of
talk or accounts that subjects give in particular social contexts.
Here I present a brief account of the work of French philosopher
Michel Foucault and how it relates to the body. Through his critical method
of historical analysis, Foucault’s genealogical methodology asked how soci-
ety has arrived at certain knowledge and illustrated that the present is a
socially constructed evolutionary process. The body is a central concern in
Foucault’s critique of history and subjectivity. For Foucault, the body was
not viewed as fixed or stable but generated through various discourses and
practices. Foucault’s Discipline and Punish (1977); a study of the modern
prison system, examined power and its relationship to the body where
Foucault detailed the emergence of complex social practices that work on
48 Chapter 3
moulding human conduct. He argued that it is under disciplinary power

that bodies are trained and regulated for example in school, in a factory,
in the dance studio and in the army and that power works on and through
our actions making possible certain ways of being and doing. Disciplinary
power is therefore a form of power that acts on and through an individual’s
production of self, so that individuals come to want or desire certain ways
of being and doing for themselves. This works through the ways in which
norms and regulatory ideals become incorporated into subjects’ internal
forms of self-monitoring and self-regulation. This is not achieved through
imposition but rather through their inculcation into particular body tech-
niques and practices. The use of the term inculcation as opposed to impo-
sition is to stress that if one is inculcated into a set of practices one has to
actually actively participate. Foucault viewed the body as acted upon; a
passive receptacle of historical and political forces, bodies are therefore
organised and controlled through the organisation and control of space.
In Foucault’s schema, bodies are positioned in specific spaces and are made
useful, functional and efficient by means of the designated spaces. He
described the practices of enclosure, partitioning, codification and dif-
ferentiation of spaces, which have been deployed in factories, workshops,
schools and prisons and so on as a means of securing some control over
the bodies that populate the space.
Although Foucault was keen to stress how disciplinary power works
through the acceptance and active participation of its subjects, he did focus
on a particular hierarchical institutional context to illustrate his claims;
one where prisoners were living under detailed and often total surveillance
and one which would have strong consequences for those prisoners who
did not actively participate. In Discipline and Punish (1977), the concept of
the ‘docile’ or disciplined body was developed in relation to body-power as
a spatial phenomenon, and presented as a body which is malleable and an
unfinished entity that can be sculpted, moulded, altered and transformed.
The body is simply ‘inert mass’ (Shilling, 1993: 70) or a passive effect of
cultural discourses. Foucault asserted that power and knowledge are inter-
twined and that power is everywhere but so is resistance. In his earlier work
Foucault (1965, 1977) wrote of a passive, disciplined body and later of a
self-fashioned body in his History of Sexuality (1978, 1984, 1986). Foucault

maintained that power is not a possession but is produced in multiple and
constantly shifting discourses. He described power as being:
exercised through a net-like organisation. And not only do individuals circulate

between its threads; they are always in the position of simultaneously undergoing
and exercising this power. They are not only its inert or consenting target; they are
also the elements of its articulation. (Foucault, 1980: 98)
Foucault turned from a focus on the inscription of powerful discourses on

the body towards a concern with how individuals can resist power through
the transformation of self. Although people are passively positioned in cer-
tain discourse they can, at the same time ‘be active in positioning in other
discourse’ (Francis, 1998: 7). Foucault pointed to the dangers of what he
called ‘technologies of the self ’ as practices that
permit individuals to perfect by their own means or with the help of others a certain
number of operations on their own bodies and souls, through, conduct and a way
of being so as to transform themselves in order to attain a certain state of happiness.
(Foucault, 1988: 18)
Modern individuals become subjects of their own ‘normalization’ (Foucault,

1977). The terms ‘intelligible’ body and ‘useful’ body are explained as cul-
tural conceptions of the body and include aesthetic representations of
the body (Foucault, 1977). Foucault suggested a set of practical rules and
regulations are formed through which the living body is trained, shaped,
obeys and responds in order to become a socially adapted and useful body
(Foucault, 1980). This investment in the body consists of it being trained
in specific techniques, under specific conditions that correspond to the
aesthetic norm. Foucault claimed that
mastery and awareness of one’s own body can be acquired through the effect of
an investment of power in the body … But once power produces this effect, there
inevitably emerge the responding claims and affirmations, those of one’s own body
against power … Suddenly what has made power strong becomes used to attack it.
(1980: 56)
50 Chapter 3
This allows for the possibility that the body will take up skills and disposi-
tions that are imposed upon it, and use them against those who impose them.
A criticism to Foucault’s views of the body, which is most pertinent
to this book, is that the material body does not tend to exist as a concrete
object for Foucault but is constituted as a disembodied form; the material
body becomes lost in discourse. For Foucault ‘the body is not only given
meaning by discourse, but it is wholly constituted by discourse … The
bodies that appear in Foucault’s work do not enjoy a prolonged visibility as
corporeal identities’ (Shilling, 1993: 74 and 80). Foucault used the phrase
‘docile body’ to describe the relationship of bodies to power ignoring ‘the
idea of disciplinary power as “lived practices” which do not simply mark
themselves on people’s thoughts, but permeate, shape and seek to con-
trol their sensuous and sensory experiences’ Woodward (1997: 79). The
material body is lost in discourse as Foucault‘s work fails to describe the
messy, unpredictable and sometimes chaotic nature of the reality of social
practice. Given that Foucault’s work was not based in empirical research
there lies a gap between theories and actual implementation. This radical
constructionism views the body as a wholly social construction and is argu-
ably, effectively the inverse of the extreme naturalistic argument where the
body is wholly biologically constructed.
A further criticism is the problem of agency. A passive and obedient
body can be produced with little difficulty, although the need for domina-
tion in society may imply a resistance to it; there is little evidence of agency
in the docile body. When Foucault did concern himself with agency in the
three-volume History of Sexuality (1978, 1984, 1986), he produced a subject
who explored the limits of sexuality and identity through self-interrogation,
thereby gaining a measure of freedom as resistance to domination achieved
through self-construction. Foucault did not problematise the materiality of
the body, but simply ignored physical limitations of anatomy, disease and
ageing. Foucault also talked of bodies in general, making little reference to
gender differences. Sandra Lee Bartky (1997) criticised Foucault for failing
to see the gender divisions that are perpetuated by the disciplinary mecha-
nisms that he studied in Discipline and Punish (1977). The dancer’s body
does not fit with Foucault’s view of the body as it can be unpredictable,
unruly, rebellious, disobedient, prone to injury and will inevitably age. This
does not fit neatly with either the passive, disciplined body of Foucault’s
earlier work (1965, 1977), or the self-fashioned body of his later History of
Sexuality (1978, 1984, 1986). This concept of agency refers to an individual’s
capacity to resist, negotiate or refuse the workings of disciplinary power.
As Shilling (1993: 81) argued; ‘the body is affected by discourse but we get
little sense of the body reacting back and affecting discourse.’ The body is
presumed to be passively written upon, so that the ‘dynamic nature of the
body’ (Shilling, 1993: 104) is silenced and ignored.
The sociology of the body has been primarily concerned with what
bodies mean and how the body becomes meaningful within a realm of
social relations. Constructionist approaches have lent themselves well to
feminist thinking because they undermine the taken-for-granted justification
for natural difference between the sexes and systems of structured gender
inequality. The body is seen as a medium in which oppressive cultural norms
are expressed and whilst feminist critiques of representation have been vital
for an examination of the materiality of the body via sexual difference, rep-
resentation is emphasised as a negation of corporeality. Bray and Colebrook
(1998) have argued that the body is not something that can be identified
and organised through restricting representations and that ‘representations
are not negations imposed on otherwise fluid bodies … images, representa-
tions … are aspects of ongoing practices of negotiation, reformation, and
encounter’ (1998: 38–39). The phenomenological approach, rather than
emphasising what bodies mean, is more concerned with what bodies can do.
The Phenomenological Body
The phenomenological body is viewed as ‘not just a thing in the world,

but an intentional entity which gives rise to a world’ (Leder, 1992: 27).
Turner (1992) has argued for the need to overcome the dualisms between
biology and social constructionism so a phenomenological approach can
52 Chapter 3
be seen ‘as a bridge that spans the gap between the naturalistic and the
social constructionist perspectives on the body’ (Wainwright and Turner,
2004: 42). Phenomenology is concerned with embodiment and the lived
body. The concept of embodiment derives from Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s
Phenomenology of Perception (1962). He differentiated the thing-like, flesh-
and-blood, material or objective body from the ‘phenomenal’ or lived,
embodied, subjective body. The lived body relates to the body as it is expe-
rienced by the embodied subject. He suggested that we can become aware
of our material, flesh-and-blood body in a third person sense or perspective
when we relate to the body as thing-like or as an entity perceivable by others.
‘During most of our waking time we focus through a bodily intentional-
ity that does not necessarily involve the use of our personal or reflective
faculties’ (Merleau-Ponty, 1962: xviii). The world is experienced, however,
through our body as a sensual and emotive experience; Hume remarked
‘when I enter most intimately into what I call myself, I always stumble on
some particular perception or other, of heat or cold, light or shade, love or
hatred, pain or pleasure. I never catch myself at anytime without a percep-
tion, and never observe anything but the perception’ (Hume, 1978: 252).
Merleau-Ponty (1962) suggested that our perceptual faculties are pat-
terned according to our experiences and that perception is a culturally
ingrained interpretation of being; what we perceive is determined by what
we do. The significance of culturally embedded, subjective experience was
described as being significant by Merleau-Ponty: ‘The body allows us to
open upon and be in touch with our surroundings, but it is simultane-
ously influenced and moulded by them’ (Merleau-Ponty, 1962: 60–61).
As Gallagher (2005: 247) stated:
nothing about human experience remains untouched by human embodiment: from

the basic perceptual and emotional processes that are already at work in infancy, to
a sophisticated interaction with other people; from the acquisition and creative use
of language to higher cognitive functions.
Bodily techniques are viewed as wholly social and communicative, even

when that communication is unintended; therefore, it is not an emotional
discourse in the sense of what ‘I’ am feeling but an intimate discourse
in terms of how those emotions are shared and interpreted by others.
Merleau-Ponty (2002) described this as a process of ‘intercorporeality’,

where emotions are both worldly and material in form and an individual
can sense a lived experience of his or her being, through self-reflexivity of
the body. Understanding that the body can feel and be touched as a subject
and viewed as an object involves a sense of ownership as the duel nature
of the body is utilised and unified in order to understand experiences. To
perceive is to understand. Social differences, such as gender, class, race and
sexuality are also embodied, often in ways that become habitual.
Following on from this it is important to question the familiar reduc-
tion of dance skill to a ‘technique of the body’ as Marcel Mauss (1979)
argued that the dancer uses her body as an instrument: The body is the
‘first and most natural technical object, and at the same time technical
means’ (1979: 104). This reduction of skills to mechanics is an inevitable
consequence of the separation of the body from the thinking agent that
puts it to work, and the environment in which it operates. To understand
skill, the learner must be located in a process of active engagement with the
constituents of her environment (Ingold, 2000), and ‘awareness of body
parts, their interrelationship and function in movement, the dancer’s ability
to coordinate and make choices and her understanding of principles and
qualities of movement’ ( Jackson, 2005: 31). Work that recognises that the
body can affect and be affected by others offers an embodied perspective
by considering that nature and culture exist in a complex relationship that
is contingent and mutable. Maxine Sheets-Johnston (1992) in Giving the
Body its Due referred to a ‘somatically felt body’ (1992: 3); meaning a felt and
feeling body that has aliveness or vitality that is literally felt or sensed but
cannot necessarily be articulated. Elizabeth Grosz (1994) argued that much
philosophy and feminist work that originates in the social constructionist
view is steeped in ‘somatophobia’ (a fear of the body). The body for Grosz,
is a collection of ‘felt intensities’ (1994: 104) that are derived from bodily
sensations: ‘as a discontinuous, non-totalisable series of processes, flows,
energies, speeds and durations’ (1994: 164). This opens up investigations
of the body as a complex realm of affectivity that is felt in a profound way.
There are indeed similarities to habitus as developed by Marcel Mauss
(1934), Merleau-Ponty (1962) and Pierre Bourdieu (1988). Embodiment
then is characterised by connectivity rather than separation and the body’s
54 Chapter 3
capacity to affect and be affected. In this way limits and boundaries are
drawn around what we are willing to recognise. Abercrombie et al. (2000)
has made helpful connections with the work of Bourdieu:
We can define embodiment as the mode by which human beings practically engage
with and apprehend the world. In this respect, the concept of embodiment also
has a close affinity with the sociology of Bourdieu, which attempts to overcome
dichotomies between action and structure in the notions of practice and ‘habitus’.
(Abercrombie et al., 2000: 115)
Becoming a Dancer
As a social world becomes familiar, that social world tends to be taken-

for-granted. Professional ballet dancers take the social world of classical
ballet for granted unless an epiphany such as an injury, ageing or retire-
ment forces them to think about their habitus (Wainwright and Turner,
2004, 2006; Wainwright, Williams and Turner, 2005). Young dancers are
acquiring a ballet dancer’s habitus and are therefore still becoming familiar
with the codes and norms of behaviour of the social worlds in which they
inhabit. Furthermore, the dancers featured in this book are involved in non-
residential ballet training therefore they inhabit a number of other social
worlds such as home and school. The individual habitus then manifests
many group specific characteristics. A young dancer’s habitus is in flux and
is often disrupted by their own emotional and physical development and
growth as well as the learning of ballet technique, vocabulary, and style –
all this may disrupt or challenge (in a regular or intermitted way) what the
young dancer thinks they know, can do and understand. The amalgamation
of the emotionally and physically changing and developing body and ability
to apply ballet technique and style fluently is constantly under scrutiny via
ballet classes and regular assessment. Time is therefore an important factor
in the development of the ballet dancer’s habitus because the habitus ‘is an
open system of dispositions’ that is reliant on experiences and affected by
them in a way that either reinforces or modifies its structures (Bourdieu,

1992: 133). The young dancers then do not simply reproduce the system
because they are still in the process of learning with regular disruptions to
the habitus. Therefore the young dancers’ may not yet take the social world
of ballet for granted. However, this does not necessarily imply resistant
actions; all the young dancers in this study aspire to become professional
dancers but as Bourdieu argued ‘one may doubt the reality of a resistance
which ignores the resistance of reality’ (2000: 108). Many young ballet
dancers, even those at elite ballet schools, will not become professional
ballet dancers. There will be diverse aspects to the ballet dancer’s habitus.
On the one hand, each individual young dancer’s habitus will be different
as no two biographies are the same and in this way each habitus is distinc-
tive. On the other hand, biographies are features in the collective history
of the group habitus of young ballet dancers. I suggest that evolution of an
identity as a ballet dancer engages the young dancer in attaching particu-
lar meanings to the body and that their desires and dreams of becoming a
ballet dancer become implicated in power relations.
One of the complicating features of ballet training, and actually other
young athlete development, is that a commitment is made at an early age
before the young child can really understand the consequences of such a
commitment. The young child’s desire to dance is most often translated
into action through the support, commitment and funding from a parent
of the child (Buckroyd, 2000; Pickard, 2013) and tends to begin with local
dance classes. This is most often via a private dance school where classes
run after school or at weekends and are paid for by the class or by the term.
Such classes tend to follow a syllabus and grading system and introduce
children to a particular class structure. In the case of the young dancers
featured in this study, this interest has developed from being a fun hobby
into participation in a specialised training programme at an established,
elite ballet school that can only be accessed through an audition process.
However, it is worth noting that the young dancers featured in this study
may have been interested in a different physical activity, yet they have not
been offered such opportunities because they have specialised as ballet danc-
ers from an early age. This early entry is significant as Bourdieu asserted:
56 Chapter 3
The earlier a player enters the game and the less he is aware of the associated learning
… the greater is his ignorance of all that is tacitly granted through his investment
in the field … and his unawareness of the unthought presuppositions that the game
produces, and endlessly reproduces, thereby reproducing the conditions of its own
perpetuation. (1990a: 67)
The dancers featured in this book are amongst those who successfully gained
a place via an audition process to engage in specialised training and were
all deemed to be ‘naturally talented.’
Natural Talent?
Here I examine the notion of ‘natural talent’. Is it really that as an embryo

our DNA maps out exactly what we will be able to show aptitude for?
Are we really born with special abilities and destined to become a drum-
mer, a chef, a football player, a ballet dancer? This would imply then that
just being given the opportunity to engage in an activity that the child
was born to do would enable them to demonstrate and prove their talent.
Furthermore, this suggests that talent is innate and that little or no guid-
ance or teaching is needed. This would also denote that the main carer of
the child intuitively knows which activity to expose the child to and is
able to seek out the activity so that the child could indeed demonstrate
and prove their talent. Ankerson (2012) claims, in relation to sport, that
‘genetics cannot predict who will become an Olympic medallist. All it can
do is predict who is certain to never win a medal’ (33). What of the deliber-
ate practice argument? Research into deliberate practice suggested that the
‘10-year-rule’, which stipulates that a 10-year commitment to substantial
amounts of high quality training and practice is the minimum require-
ment needed for performance success. This translates into approximately
10,000 hours (Sosniak, 1985; Sloboda and Howe, 1991; Ericsson et al., 1993;
Ericsson and Charness, 1994; Van Rossum, 2001; Ericsson, 2006; Ollis et al.,
2006; Coyle, 2009; Moesch et al., 2011). This argument means that so
called talent can be developed (Redding et al., 2011). I suggest that perhaps
rather than talent being innate it is that some children are born into an
enabling environment.
A belief in so-called ‘giftedness’ or ‘talent’ is a powerful and seductive
discourse but it could be suggested that it is a cultural judgement and a
social construction. The basis for the discourse of ‘talent’ is based on bio-
logical determinism and a notion of benign meritocracy. When speaking
with the parents and teachers of the dancers featured in this book, it was
clear that they were convinced that to become a ballet dancer one must be
‘specially gifted’, ‘born to do it’, or have a ‘calling’ and nothing else would
be right for that child. As suggested earlier, these claims rely on a ‘gift’
being given by a higher force or being or a belief in luck. This marks out
particular bodily forms, creates an understanding of specialness, superior-
ity or of greater capital accruement in comparison with others. Thereby
setting the social world of ballet as distinctive and unique in that only
certain children have the ‘natural right’ to be selected; this also serves as a
perfect reason for rejection.
A parent of each of the young dancers was interviewed in relation to
how and why their child started formal ballet classes and how they came
to participate in the classes at the elite ballet schools. The factor that was
deemed significant by the majority of parents (10 out of the 12) was the
notion of natural talent (Howe, Davidson and Slobada, 1998; Freeman, 1998;
Tucker and Collins, 2012); that their child was ‘simply born to dance’. Leah’s
mother explained the reason for engaging Leah in structured ballet lessons:
‘She is a natural mover, she moved all the time as a baby, she moves all the time now,
she can’t stop so I thought I should channel it as a discipline so knowing that ballet is
a discipline, because I’d done a little myself as a child, I started her in ballet classes at
3. I knew that she’d be good at ballet as she had this natural talent.’ (Mother of Leah)
‘You might have chosen many other physical activities, why did you choose ballet?’
(Angela)
‘Ballet appeals to little girls – very romantic, the tutus, the shoes, the pinkness, all
of that and that’s the sort of movement she was doing at home, twirling round the
house. It’s so good for girls as it is so feminine and attractive.’ (Mother of Leah)
58 Chapter 3
Here, Leah’s mother, having tried some ballet herself as a child, decided
from the wealth of possible physical activities available to engage Leah in
ballet. Furthermore, it seems that a significant reason for this was that ballet
is gendered practice and encompasses stereotypical features: ‘romantic,
pinkness, feminine and attractive’ that Leah’s mother deemed is ‘good for
girls.’ I examine oppressive and liberating aspects of gender further as part
of the next two chapters. The young dancer Leah then may well have been
able to show ‘talent’, aptitude or potential for a different physical activity
and yet was not offered such an opportunity.
The teachers that I interviewed also agreed that natural talent was a
key factor in the young ballet dancer and that there was a definite degree
of genetic determinism:
‘Something’s got to be God-given hasn’t it? You know, why we are here? I think you
can enhance what we have and you can learn artistry and you can learn musicality
and you can learn self-determination but I think there has be talent for everything,
even genetics is talent or just innate. It has to be’. (Teacher: Elizabeth)
The idea of ‘specialness’ also arose frequently in the form of a natural call-
ing and motivation:
‘You know the ones who are naturally gifted in the art form and you just know
that they will succeed. It’s something in them, they’re special, they’re hungry for
it. Natural talent is important if they want to be a professional as it’s their calling.’
(Teacher: Steve)
Talent identification processes in the form of an audition apparently search

for young dancers who have potential, but given that ballet technique is
developed by a multiplicity of biomechanical, physiological, physical and
psychological processes, I suggest that it is impossible to reliably predict
how physical maturity and experiences will impact on the young ballet
dancer’s potential. As has been suggested by Wulff (2001), the majority
of ballet dancers who are ‘specially gifted’ also appear to be white, middle
class or upper working class. Current ‘talent’ identification processes may
exclude many children (Abbott and Collins, 2004), for example, there is
an under representation of minority groups in many domains (Archer,
2000; Gillborn and Youdell, 2000; Radnor, Koshy and Taylor, 2007).
Furthermore, many potentially ‘talented’ dancers will be excluded due
to their body shape and size as body type is more dependent on genetics
(Tucker and Collins, 2012) but body composition depends upon both
genes and lifestyle. It cannot be assumed that a lower level of body fat is
synonymous with a high level of technical performance. Furthermore,
body composition alters with maturation. Other ‘talented’ dancers will
be excluded due to the cost of ballet training and the time commitment
that is needed from parents to support and transport. What is identified
at audition may be the ability to pay for ballet training, an ‘adequate’ or
‘appropriate’ social environment (Perleth et al., 2000), a perceived ‘fit’ with
the ballet habitus or a ‘flexible body to work with’ (ballet school teacher)
an apparent capacity to learn (Gardner, 1993, 1997; Simonton, 1999) or
interest and motivation (Ziegler and Heller, 2000; Heller, 2004). It is also
important to acknowledge that the young, pre-adolescent dancer, like other
young children engaged in a range of activities, tend to be malleable, con-
formist and eager to please adults (Buckroyd, 2000). It could be suggested
that the social world of ballet is reproducing a more sophisticated form of
‘Distinction’ (Bourdieu, 1984), which has its historical roots in class based
hierarchies. The assimilation of a natural or innate ability as a ‘gift from
God’ offers a form of understanding the social world of ballet that justifies
and legitimises the idea of a hierarchy; certain bodies are lacking or inferior
(Skeggs, 1997, 2004). This could be a key way in which the world of ballet
perpetuates social conditions.
Many of the young dancers had been told (as I had) by their parents,
relatives, local ballet teachers, examiners and the teachers in the ballet school
contexts that they were able, special, different or unique. The young danc-
ers were aware that to be selected for an elite ballet school was an exclusive
opportunity that many other children their age would not experience. The
sense of specialness and the sense of being an elite dancer was evidenced
by the young dancer Nick (14 years):
‘I know that I’m different to normal people and special. I have a talent for dancing.
I carry myself well and have strength and stamina and want to be a principal dancer.
60 Chapter 3
Not many people can get here and train like I am. It’s a strict audition process. Dancing
is my thing in life. It’s what I’m meant to do’. (Nick, 14 years)
The young dancers believed themselves to be special and talented. Howe,

Davidson and Sloboda (1998) argued that ‘simply believing oneself to
be advantageously equipped can help to motivate a person and give self-
confidence’ (1998: 34). It is recognised that if high expectations are placed
on an individual they are more likely to meet such expectations.
In Bourdieu’s terms I suggest that the belief that the ballet dancer
is special, different, unique, chosen and able to do something that many
others cannot (or at least may not have had the opportunity to access and
try) is an important component of the ballet dancer’s habitus. Nineteenth
century romantic ballets developed a fascination with illusion, the super-
natural and the association of the female dancer with creatures of fantasy
such as sylphs or fairies; such traditional ballets are still popular today
(although many modern subversions exist). The ballet dancer then is seen
as a fantasy creature; females conveying en pointe weightlessness and males
as defying gravity through explosive jumps. The habitus is reproductive and
productive so the rules of ‘the fantasy creature’ are learnt through explicit
teaching: pushing the body to its limits as well as practise. The uncompro-
mising exclusivity of high, perhaps unobtainable and unnatural standards
for the human body, exist in the practices and values of ballet culture. The
idealisation of the balletic body, constructs, preserves and upholds stand-
ards of perfection and this means that a select few are viewed as being able
to realise such standards. The select few are often viewed as special and
unique and conform to the transcendent beauty aesthetic. Once selected
the young dancers commit their bodies to ballet schooling.
I continue to examine in this book, the meanings and value that are
attached to the body in the cultural (field) of ballet and how the young
developing ballet dancers view and therefore treat their bodies. The ballet
dancer’s habitus is produced and maintained through a commitment to
ballet as vocational, the notion of ‘natural talent’ and that a ballet dancer
is special; it is a ballet dancer’s calling to commit to ballet.
Chapter 4
Body, Capital and Habitus
‘At the audition, I was 10 at the time, I looked around the room and
there were lots of people who looked like me so I thought “well I fit”. The
teachers looked at my bones, I had to do the splits and extend my leg in
a grand battement as high as I could. I am very flexible as I have pushed
myself to keep extending. The teachers also looked closely at our turn-out
and we had to do tummy exercises and jumps and balance in a position
for quite a long time. They also saw how well we picked up movement,
how we listened to the music and expressed ourselves.’
— Megan, 12 years
In this chapter I interweave the lived experiences of the young dancers

with discussion and suggestion. I situate the culture of classical ballet
based on the contexts of two elite ballet schools in England and exam-
ine how the young dancer’s ballet body is produced within these ballet
schools. I continue to adopt the work of Pierre Bourdieu as a way of under-
standing the connections between body, gender and identity within the
field of classical ballet. I am concerned with embodiment and practices
rather than discourses and effects. I am concentrating then on the embodi-
ment of the young ballet dancer. I examine the ballet dancer’s habitus and
the ways in which the young ballet dancer’s body and habitus is produced
and maintained. I examine schooling or training of the balletic body
through the ballet class and the ways that the ballet bodily hexis becomes
engrained through the embodiment of the discipline of ballet and ballet
decorum. I discuss ways in which physical and artistic capital is accrued
with consumption of gendered balletic imagery by young dancers. I also
62 Chapter 4
argue that the embedded assumption that emotional and physical suffer-
ing for the sake of ballet as art is normalised and accepted social practice.
Ballet Schooling
Within the social world of ballet there is a structured framework that in

sociological terms is an example of the ‘structured structuring structures’
(Bourdieu, 1990a; Crossley, 2001) in the form of the ballet class, which is
set at a certain time in the day each week and is structured in a particular
way: barre, stretches, centre, adage (slow, sustained movement), allegro
(jumps) and reverence (bow or curtsey). There are often rehearsal sched-
ules to follow in preparation for a performance and a performance too is
another example of a structure.
Schooling refers to the training of a dancer between the ages of 3 and
18 years (Thomasen and Rist, 1996; Warren, 1996) that becomes part of the
dancer’s habitus. The purpose of ballet schooling or training is to make the
unnatural, natural or in Bourdieu’s terms to acquire an unconscious ballet
habitus. As Deborah Bull (a principal dancer with The Royal Ballet) stated:
The problem with classical ballet, the sort of dancing I do for a living, is that it is
second nature to me: I must have learnt it at some time, in the way that once upon
a time I must have learnt to speak. But I don’t remember the process at all … The
ability to learn movement, to recognise patterns and memorise sequences, is some-
thing I take so much for granted. Yet for non-dancers, getting movement ‘into their
bodies’ has the nightmare quality of wading through treacle. (Bull, 1999: 140 and
264 original italics)
This embodied set of acquired dispositions and the steps that are inscribed
into the dancer’s body are in Bourdieu’s terms a core part of the dancer’s
habitus. The central experience of learning to dance is the practical class.
The facility and ability to learn complex patterns of movement becomes
part of the ballet dancer’s disposition. Essentially dancers are shown visu-
ally through someone else’s body; their teacher’s or a peer, what to do and
Body, Capital and Habitus 63
they copy with their own body. This ability to apply what is shown and
seen becomes ingrained in the movement memory and body of the dancer.
Music is also important as it structures the movement and often the music
signals what to do. Movement steps and patterns become embodied and
once the dancer knows the movement in this habitual way, they can work
on developing greater quality and expression. This muscle memory capac-
ity has been compared to the habitual nature of riding a bike or driving a
car (Buckroyd, 2000; Wainwright and Turner, 2004, 2006; Wainwright,
Williams and Turner, 2005) as evidenced by one of the young dancers, Leah:
‘Because we are always going over the same movements but in different combina-
tions, I can do the movements in my sleep. When I first started ballet I remember
finding certain movements really hard but now those ones are so easy because I’ve
done them so many times, my body just does them without really thinking about it.
I can just concentrate on expressing them.’ (15 years)
These dispositions are engrained in the body after much practice. This
development of ballet technique through constantly copying movements
and repeating in the ballet class, is how some physical capital is accrued
by the young dancers. This is the ‘logic of practice’ (Bourdieu, 1990a); the
values of the field of classical ballet are transmitted and perpetuated via the
ballet school and ballet class to the young dancers who strive to accrue the
important physical and what I term artistic (expressive) capital. The ballet
classes within the contexts of study are in many ways seen as preparation
for performance but for a large majority of young dancers they will not
progress to a career in ballet performance. One of the young dancers, Kenzi,
14 years, reflected on how he had seen some of his friends come and go:
‘When I started here I made lots of friends but slowly they’ve gone, ‘cos they’ve gone
off ballet or didn’t pass the assessments to the next level, a couple were told that they
were too big, one couldn’t afford to come anymore ‘cos he lives a long way away and
the travelling cost a lot. There’s a few of us left. I’m lucky to be here. [In a different
school] in London it has as you go in the door a big sign that says “survival of the
fittest”, well it’s like that here.’ (My addition in brackets)
There is a strongly imbued sense of meritocracy evidenced here in that it

is ‘the best’ that survive rather than the financial constraints, which are
64 Chapter 4
excluding, as was the case with Kenzi’s friend. One of the teachers in the
study reflected on the fact that many young dancers often do not progress
within the ballet training programme. He claimed,
‘Whatever they take from this, even if they don’t use it in the future, they have the
discipline, the determination, the character that’s been built up through the knocks
and the determination to carry on. I think there’s no fault’. (Teacher: Steve)
The ballet class is about learning the technique and style of ballet particular
to the school or company and significantly, the core values of the culture
of ballet: the production of the ballet body, ballet aesthetic and the con-
struction of masculine and feminine identities.
Once a young dancer has committed to a ballet training programme,
there is an emphasis on the ballet bodily state of being or hexis (Bourdieu,
1990) and this becomes inscribed on the body. Anna illustrated how her
bodily hexis differed from that of her non-dancer friends:
‘Yes, I sit bolt upright and everyone else is slouched over the chair. I find it a more
comfortable position. The way I walk and everything, my friends say “Oh you can
tell she’s a dancer”. The way I do everyday things. It’s from doing it over the years
and picking it up and being used to it, it’s just natural now and just happens even
when you’re not even thinking about it because you’re so used to it.’ (Anna, 16 years)
The characteristic posture and gestures of ballet training, the embodiment

of the vertical line as a symbol of idealised beauty in Western culture has
become habitual and embodied in Anna. The social world of ballet is evi-
dent in the body inside and outside the ballet class (Bourdieu, 1990a: 190).
The ballet decorum was also identified by two dancers Sima and Rich as a
source of tension between life at home and school and life at ballet:
‘When I’m at ballet I hold everything in. I’m careful. I’m aware all the time that
someone is watching. If I speak I try to be very polite and respectful. I have good
manners here. I never slouch here. People act differently at my school so I act dif-
ferently to fit in otherwise they call me a snob. I relax more at school, talk in class
to my friends, forget my manners sometimes and try and copy the way they sit,
they slouch. At home my sister also teases me about being too good for the family
now I’m a ballerina. That I’m trying to be something I’m not. I get upset about this
sometimes.’ (Sima, 13 years)
The embodiment of the ballet bodily hexis was shared by both boys and
girls and particularly related to posture, alignment, co-ordination, gestures
and mannerisms. The habitus and embodiment of the bodily hexis signifies
as middle classed (Bourdieu, 1984; Skeggs, 1997, 2004).
‘It’s hard sometimes because I used to get teased when they found out I danced. Now
they’re impressed when I show them some of the jumps and things but they tease me
for being so quiet and controlled and co-ordinated, for using my arms when I explain
things and for being upright and stiff and sensible – they say it’s posh. They say “just
relax, you’re so stiff it’s embarrassing, just bend your back and slouch”.’ (Nick, 15 years)
The bodily hexis of ballet has been described by Nick as one that does not
fit neatly with the bodily hexis embodied by his friends. Traditional mas-
culine identity is associated with dominance, physical strength, aggression,
competition and heterosexuality and, as Francis (1998) asserted, males tend
to be constructed as silly compared to females as sensible. Furthermore,
adolescence is often connected with heightened body consciousness and
rebellious behaviours that may manifest through bodily stance in the form
of a slouch. Nick and Sima were not alone in referring to the word ‘posh’.
It was used with reference to the embodied mannerisms, social etiquette,
posture and alignment of the dancers and there were most references from
those at the ballet school in the North of England. This suggests that there
was a social class tension in the habitus.
The implication from family as evidenced through the words of Sima,
or from friends as in the example from Rich, is that if one is ‘posh’ one
stands, speaks and conducts oneself in a particular way as Bourdieu’s work
Distinction (1984) and Beverley Skeggs (2004) concluded. The examples
from the two dancers reveal that they are aware of the differences and
tensions in the particular bodily ways of being or aesthetic dispositions
(Bourdieu, 1984) between home, school and ballet school. Eventually,
the bodily hexis of ballet will become an integral aspect of each dancer’s
day-to-day performance, which they will not be able to change or hide. It
is also an essential part of becoming a ballet dancer, as ‘to look and act like
a dancer’ affords important cultural capital. Importantly, the bodily hexis
is accepted as part of being a dancer and is not questioned, so in this way,
the hierarchies and exclusion are embraced.
66 Chapter 4
According to Margot Fonteyn (1978: 21) ‘there is no question that the

single most important factor to succeed in ballet is a good teacher.’ George
Balanchine also claimed that ‘ballet is an art of example. No textbooks
can supplant the living presence of a teacher, who embodies tradition’ (in
Taper, 1984: 154). One teacher in my study claimed that ‘a good teacher
doesn’t inhibit the natural talent; you are there to enhance it and bring it
out’ (Lucy, teacher). I regularly observed the teaching of ballet technique
and style over the period of four years within each of the contexts of study.
Generally both contexts seemed to offer a facilitating environment for
learning (Buckroyd, 2000) via the teachers to the young dancers. My field
notes reflect on an apparent contradiction, however:
During the classes there have been a number of occasions when the teachers have
shared concerns to the whole group related to their welfare, such as ‘don’t take the
leg too high until you’re warm’ and ‘don’t push too far’. The young dancers are also
encouraged to take responsibility for themselves ‘feel it in your body so you can find
your own limit’. However, later in the same classes the same teachers are making
comments such as ‘fight against your body’, ‘there is always more to give’ and ‘push
through the discomfort’ to individual dancers. These are perhaps contradictory and
confusing messages for the dancers who all seem very eager to please and do as they
are asked because the teacher carries much power in decisions related to their future
in the ballet training programme. Teacher approval is therefore very important for
the dancers as is pushing the body and trying to demonstrate the technique, exercises
and phrases to best effect. (Field notes)
Teaching approaches did not involve shouting or hitting, which has

been documented as being common in ballet training (Buckroyd, 2000).
Approaches to gaining the most of the young dancers were more subtle
and yet powerful.
‘She is really focused and strict but kind. When she tells us about a movement she
might show it or just talk about it and this helps us to imagine the movement. She’s
always talking about how the movement might be performed and it helps me think
about performing it on the stage in front of an audience who are there to see me. So,
for me the way she talks about the performance of ballet helps. She also says that the
movement can always be better even if you think it was the best you can do, you can
always do more. She does know what is best for us. You have to be very disciplined.
I’m always trying for more, pushing and pushing to see how much I can get out of
my body and sometimes it feels that nothing is ever good enough but good enough
won’t get people to pay to see you. It’s got to be perfect.’ ( Jon, 15 years)
Here, Jon’s example is a reminder that the body is both a process of con-
struction where it seems to be likened to the naturalistic view of a body-as-
machine (Watson, 2000) and that the body is a product in performance. The
performing body is viewed as an opportunity for a feeling and expressive
body and perhaps this body could be more likened to a more ‘phenomenal’
or subjective body as described by Merleau-Ponty (1962). The notion of
pushing the boundaries of the body as suggested in my field notes example
and by Jon in this example is discussed further in the next chapter. The
development of the ballet aesthetic, of perfection for others to see, is power-
ful and entrenched in the schooling and training of the dancer. The ballet
dancer is constantly striving for perfection: ‘ballet pushes us to the edge
of who we think we are … Basically, from the moment we begin serious
training, nothing is ever good enough’ (Darcey Bussell, 1998: 4). As one
young dancer logged in her ballet journal alongside a picture of her role
model Darcey Bussell: ‘You have to look perfect and be perfect’ (Megan,
11 years). However, such perfection in performance must be expressed by
an individual body. I will return to this issue later in the book.
There are about two hundred steps to learn in classical ballet, so young
dancers are learning ballet literacy: posture, alignment, a vocabulary of steps
and combinations and a habit of reading balletic form and movement. The
vocabulary of steps was taught in English and the French terms were also
used in both schools. The marked differences in teaching content is that
the girls were engaged in en-pointe work for part of their class and the boys
in upper body strength development in preparation for lifting girls. I dis-
cuss en-pointe work for girls and upper body strength for boys later in this
book. The teaching involved using the ballet terms and vocabulary as well
as many metaphors and imagery such as ‘grow in the movement’ mean-
ing to lengthen and stretch, ‘straighten your back as if your head is being
drawn upwards by an invisible string’, and when preparing for a jump: ‘use
or push the floor’. In order to signify where the legs and arms are supposed
to be placed in relation to the rest of the body or in a step terms such as
‘inside leg’, ‘outside leg’, ‘back leg’, front arm’ and ‘supporting leg’ were used.
68 Chapter 4
Positive forms of speech were used in both contexts, for example comments
such as ‘lift your leg higher on the turn’ instead of ‘you’re not lifting your
leg high enough’, or ‘stand tall’ instead of ‘don’t slouch’ and ‘do take care to
…’ Rather than ‘you’re not …’ There was also recognition of achievement
and effort with generous use of phrases such as, ‘good try’, ‘you’re almost
there’, ‘well done’ and so on (Pickard, 2012). Furthermore, the praise often
identified exactly what was good with comments such as ‘you stretched
your foot fully that time’. I observed specific and focused feedback given
to each individual dancer during the course of the four years of the study,
which identified and described the precise movement or position that was
being commented on and offered helpful points to note or goals such as
‘you can extend the right leg further and use the left shoulder for the turn’.
One teacher commented on her approach to praise:
‘It’s encouragement without gushing and I do believe in that argument. So starting
with the positives before you apply the negative. And I like to encourage them as
much as possible, even those that aren’t achieving so well. I think if you have con-
fidence in yourself you will attain a lot more, although I guess there’s some people
that thrive on fighting the challenge, but, I think, generally as people, we like to
hear good things and then we will want to do our best to please to get more. So I do
just encourage them a lot. And I try to give them constructive criticism. Not really
criticism but help. I feel there’s a difference between criticism and constructive com-
ment.’ (Teacher: Elizabeth)
The approach to teaching was calm, which is in contrast to some of my

own experiences of learning ballet where there was an overtly hostile, some-
times frightening environment with much negative criticism, insensitive
public humiliation and temperamental outbursts from the teacher. I dis-
tinctly remember a reason given to me in order to justify this approach to
teaching that was that ‘it was for my own good to get me to the standards
demanded by the professional ballet world’. My ballet teachers had abso-
lute authority and high standards: they wanted perfection. The young
dancers identified the calmness and patience as facilitative but also the
ways in which the teacher looked at them were viewed as a significant and
powerful form of control with consequences for the dancer. As the young
dancer strives to achieve technical proficiency and the ballet aesthetic of
beauty and perfection, they are constantly looking to the teacher for a
particular response:
‘I think you just have to keep practising, even though you know the movements
you’re expected to and need to be clean, precise and careful. You are not allowed to
make mistakes and if you do then you have failed yourself and your teacher really.
You have to be very disciplined. The teacher never actually says that the movement
is bad or you’ve failed to do that well but you know by what they do say like “it could
always be better” or “it’s not perfect yet”, or by the ways they look at you. One day I
know that she’ll be impressed by what I do.’ (Sima, 14 years)
Drawing on Bourdieu, the social game of ballet has similarities with coach-
ing and sport. Ballet is inscribed in individuals through encounters between
the habitus and field, ‘in things and in minds’ (Bourdieu and Wacquant,
1992). The young dancers gain a ‘feel for the game’ (Bourdieu, 1990a)
through full engagement with the rules; from the young dancers’ perspective
this appears to be ‘that nothing is good enough’, that ‘you’re not allowed to
make mistakes,’ and ‘it’s not perfect yet’ alongside a constant searching for
the teacher to look in a certain way in order to confirm to the dancer that
they are ‘impressed’. The holder of symbolic power: the teacher, uses their
power against the agent: the young dancer, in order to alter their actions
and is therefore exercising, in Bourdieu’s terms, symbolic violence in the
form of approving or disapproving facial expressions or looks or gestures.
These symbols serve to convey particular coercive meanings but are not
necessarily made explicit. These meanings within the habitus are experi-
enced as legitimate and are accepted because the teacher knows ‘what is
best’ for the young dancers.
The young dancers, both male and female, were bound by their desire to
be performing dancers therefore they were obedient and conscientious and
in this way they could be viewed as complicit in their own subordination
(Bourdieu, 1990a). The views of parents are also significant and powerful
here. The following examples reinforce that the discipline involved in the
study of ballet is perceived to be positive:
‘They’re strict and disciplined here and that prepares them for the future as a dancer
or whatever. He is talented so this is the right place for him to develop his talents.
70 Chapter 4
I wouldn’t want him just sitting around the house being lazy. He likes the disci-
pline because if he didn’t he wouldn’t choose to do this and wouldn’t want to keep
coming. He knows that it costs a lot to bring him so it is important that he is happy’.
(Mother of Jon)
Here Jon’s mother seems convinced that Jon is talented in ballet and so
the school is the right place for him to develop his talents and that if he
did not participate in this ballet training programme he would be ‘sitting
around the house being lazy’ rather than perhaps participating in a dif-
ferent activity. The association with boys being lazy has been discussed
in literature on boys, masculinities and schooling (Mac an Ghaill, 1994;
Francis, 1999). Furthermore Jon’s mother asserted that Jon is active in his
choice to continue with his training. It may be of course that Jon is now
bound to ballet because he is aware of the financial commitment that has
been made and this is deemed for his benefit.
Kenzi, a British black African boy had very little formal dance expe-
rience before he began the ballet training programme at the school but
was a competent urban dancer. He discovered more about ballet through
a workshop led by members of the ballet company education outreach
programme. He had particular views about what ballet was before the
workshop and yet the inclusive nature of the experience led him to audition
for the ballet training programme at the school in the North of England:
‘When they came to my school and did a workshop I was surprised that ballet wasn’t
really what I thought it was. I thought that it was for, can I say this? White, gay,
posh boys who are ‘yes’ people and all do as they are told (Mimes an interpretation
of such a boy and laughs). I liked the way they made it fun though and that we had
to do loads of leaps and jumps. I was good at these. I like flying. They asked me to
audition, I came and I like it. I practice a lot. I want to take it further. I like knowing
about my body.’ (Kenzi, 12 years)
Kenzi drew on a particular representation of ballet where the ballet decorum

of respect and politeness and gender stereotyping are emphasised. Kenzi
continued with his ballet training for two out of the four years of my study
and then left the ballet programme because he claimed that he had to make
a decision between
‘fitting in with his friends or fitting in with ballet … Ballet has changed me; hip hop,
street, crumping, they speak a different language. I can’t do ballet and street. I need
more freedom. I’m a B-Boy as my street is sic. Mates and my life outside here are
more important at the moment.’ (Kenzi, 13 years)
The ‘language’ of urban dance refers to the bodily hexis, the aesthetic and
embodied identity that was seen by Kenzi as in contrast and incompat-
ible with ballet. The social game of urban dance was inscribed on Kenzi
through his encounters between the urban dance habitus and field of urban
dance; the rules and feel of the game differed from ballet (Bourdieu, 1990a).
Perhaps Kenzi was aware of the gender, social class, ethnic and aesthetic
differences in the habitus and field. For Kenzi it was impossible to recon-
cile the differences. Reconciling difference is also evident in the comments
from Lie’s mother:
‘I think that Lie is so lucky to be here. It’s a privilege. I didn’t think that she’d go
very far because she has the African arched back and Afro hair; it doesn’t really fit
the style but she’s so disciplined and determined. She is working really hard to get
a straight back and they’re all fine about her untamed hair and that we can’t get it
into a bun. The discipline is good for her but she’s always been a good girl. I know
that she wants to be a professional ballerina so we’ll see. She certainly works as hard
as she can.’ (Mother of Lie)
‘Why did you say that Lie was lucky to be here?’ (Angela)
‘Because she mixed race (laughs). I’ve always thought of ballet as really a white game.
This is all new for us.’ (Mother of Lie)
There is a recognition here of the cultural capital that ballet affords and
the position within wider society. The young dancer Lie, 13 years of mixed
heritage: black African and white, is immersed in a predominantly white
European vocation where she is engaged in the discipline of ballet, which
‘is good for her.’ Lie is apparently so ‘disciplined and determined’ to become
a ballerina that she is trying to re-structure her ‘African arched back’ to fit
the ballet body aesthetic.
One of the main differences between the two contexts of study is
that the school in the South of England is viewed as highly selective and
72 Chapter 4
exclusive by the young dancers and in this way the teachers have consid-
erable power in determining whether the young dancer continues at the
school. The school in the North of England has to craft an identity as it
is similar to the school in the South of England because it is a prestigious,
selective ballet school offering non-residential training but it is different
because it does not carry the same exclusive weight as the school in the
South of England. I suggest that these differences were apparent in the level
of interaction between the teachers and the young dancers. In the school
in the South of England, the teachers controlled, led and managed the
ballet class in a didactic manner. There was a marked difference in power
relations with the teacher in the dominant position and the young danc-
ers as subordinate. The power of those holding authority was not overtly
challenged during my four year longitudinal study. The young dancers
were incredibly focused and disciplined and tended to work in silence,
although often smiled in response to comments from the teacher and
spoke if prompted to ask or answer a question. Occasionally in the boys’
class they whispered to each other during transition periods or before and
after moving across the floor in jumps. Generally, the young dancers rarely
asked a question during the class of their own accord but rather might
approach the teacher before or after the class to speak with them privately.
One teacher summarised her experiences as a training dancer and clarified
the importance of respect:
‘I was taught to be submissive when I was training. I was there as a body to be moulded
but I wouldn’t have achieved what I did without that forcefulness. Now things have
changed, I try and create an atmosphere where the children should be respectful but
free to ask something so it’s not respect out of fear’. (Teacher: Lucy)
One young dancer, Tracey reflected on the silence of the ballet class:
‘Well you just listen carefully to the music and dance to it. If I don’t remember
something or understand the movement I just watch others or hope that the teacher
will offer me a correction as I don’t really like asking. I think you’re judged if you
ask too much.’
‘In what way are you judged? Tell me more.’ (Angela)

‘Well I mean if you don’t get it, then may be you’re not right for here. You don’t
deserve to be here. You also worry about what other people will think because they
haven’t asked anything so they obviously get it. I’d rather just keep practising in my
own time.’ (Tracey)
‘Yes, I agree. The teachers do sometimes say “does anyone have any questions?” But
you don’t want to be the one who asks as unless it’s a great question about something
which shows that you’ve really understood the movement and you just want to know
more about the way to express it for example, then it is not right to ask it.’ (Milan)
This fits with the prevailing discourse of ‘natural talent’ because if a dancer
asks too many questions then they are not getting the movement ‘natu-
rally’ and hence they are positioning themselves outside the discourse and
could potentially be rejected. Teaching methods and the content of ballet
training have been criticised particularly for the emphasis on skilled bodily
performance and concentration on one technique often taught through a
teacher dominated approach with little opportunity for discussion, dissen-
tion or the development of creativity (Brown, 2000; Sykes, 2002; Foster,
2003; Morris, 2003).
One teacher spoke of her approach:
‘I feel very strongly that I wanted to teach in a way that was different to how I was
taught. I feel that my training was severe. My training worked on the principle that
you were never good enough and only seemed to focus on what you didn’t achieve
rather than what you did. My body was an instrument and manipulated as such. I
think you make a choice and some people teach in the way that they were taught.
I am careful to let them know the demands of the art form but I want them to be
self-motivated so I’m positive. Here we are also very aware that we want ballet to
appeal to a range of people from different backgrounds so I need to be able to relate
to a range of pupils: black and white, rich and poor. It is important that the dancer
knows how movements feel so that they can express them.’ (Teacher: Adele)
The phrase ‘body as instrument’ reinforces the mind-body dualism and

assumes that ‘you’ and ‘your’ body can be separated. In this way ‘you’ can
misuse or abuse your body or someone else can if that seems to serve ‘your’
interests as a dancer. Although the teacher did carry great power in this
school context, she did seem to be aware of trying to distribute some of the
power to the dancers; that the body was not just an instrument but that the
74 Chapter 4
physical and emotional are connected. In this way, through a connection to

the feelings associated with dancing she seemed to view the body as more
than simply a thing or an object to work rather that the dancers should
think about and share what they are doing, how they are doing it and why
they might be doing it in a particular way. This view of the body connects
more to the ‘phenomenal’ body that Merleau-Ponty (1962) described.
Within the two hour and 30 minute ballet classes in the context in the
North of England much was made of how movements felt to individual
dancers, ways of breathing through movement and ‘moments of discomfort’
(Teacher: Adele), which muscles were being used during movements, what
was challenging or easy and what the young dancers could try in terms of
adjusting their bodies to develop their technique further.
‘Use that feeling in your tummy like your flying to gain extra height in the jumps. If
you use the plié more you’ll fly more. Your muscles will probably hurt more tomor-
row because you’ve used them more.’ (Observation of teacher: Adele)
Here there was also greater emphasis on the pleasurable aspects of moving
and learning ballet as well as the painful. This approach to teaching I suggest,
is an attempt at aiding the young dancers in developing greater knowledge
of and capacity to ‘listen to’ (Aalten, 2007) their bodies. In this way the
body is treated less like a thing or a machine but rather in a more holis-
tic way and connects to a process of ‘intercorporeality’ (Merleau-Ponty,
2002), that bodily techniques are social and that a sense of experience can
be developed by an individual and a group through self-reflexivity of the
body. Understanding that the body can feel and be touched as a subject
and viewed as an object involves a sense of ownership as the duel nature
of the body is utilised. On the other hand there was still as much emphasis
on ‘perfect’ ballet technique, through repetitive movement and practice.
Even with a wider understanding of how ballet technique can be applied
to an individual body, a view of the body as holistic rather than as a sepa-
rated object, evidence from the data suggests that the young dancers were
still willing to push the boundaries of their young, developing bodies in
order to meet their perception of the demands of the ballet aesthetic. In
both contexts of study through long, arduous and disciplined schooling or
training, commitment and practice the young dancers developed their ballet
technique and style. Ballet technique and style became further engrained
in the bodily hexis. This, alongside a willingness to discipline and push
the boundaries of the body, increases physical capital (Bourdieu, 1990a).
Physical and Artistic Capital
The social world of classical ballet is a competitive one (Gordon, 1983; Wulff,
2001) as are many other arenas of sport, for example professional football.
Young dancers struggle for status and dominant positions and in order to
compete for power, the young dancers in this study drew on various forms
of capital particularly in the form of physical capital. The amount of capital
defines the young dancer’s social position, which in turn shapes the life
experience. Within this study all the young dancers were, to use Bourdieu’s
terms, players in the game of ballet; they all had a stake in the game. The
dancers were chasing the goal of becoming a successful and esteemed ballet
dancer and therefore they were willing to commit to, believe in the game
and adhere to distinctions and norms that were deemed to matter. There
was also drop out though as evidenced by the young dancer Kenzi. Mastery
of the game of ballet depends on accruement of capital. Playing the game
means accepting that power struggles within the peer group exist in the
form of rivalry, envy and competitiveness and in the potentially inhibiting
effect of a ‘pecking order’ within the ballet class. One young dancer Gary,
summarised his perception of the value of competitiveness:
‘I’m very aware of what others can do. Yes, competition is healthy though … it makes
you try harder and harder. If you want to be the best in ballet you have to be perfect:
good body, great technique and wonderful expression and performance and then
no-one can touch you. I’d like to be the envy of the group.’ (Gary, 13 years)
Ideally dancers should be strong, supple and also be able to perform with
speed and impressive stamina (Koutedakis and Sharp, 1999); as well as
76 Chapter 4
convey the particular aesthetic of grace, beauty and perfection. The social
world of ballet trades on notions of bodily perfection within a culture of
‘performativity’ (Butler, 1990), which celebrates competition and com-
parison (Evans, 2004). The key reason for engaging in a ballet training
programme at an established ballet school is so the young dancer can per-
form because ultimately ballet is a performance art. In a performance the
ballet dancer demonstrates the illusive, transcendent image of perfection
to an audience and in this way is both an object and a creator of desire.
The performance is enhanced through technical skill and artistry or expres-
sion and the more of these that the body can demonstrate, the greater the
physical and artistic capital. Many of the young dancers in this study were
striving to be the best in the class technically and artistically and to gain
acknowledgement and positive reinforcement from the teacher as discussed
earlier in this chapter. In pleasing the teacher, accepting dominant ideas,
norms, values, behaviours and expectations, the young dancer increases
their potential to continue in the ballet training programme and to be put
forward for and selected for performance opportunities. Classical ballet can
be seen as an aesthetic project with the aim of producing and reproducing
ballet dancers: the body as art.
In ballet, a particular look and type of body carries more cultural
weight and value (Bourdieu, 1986; Pickard, 2013). One young dancer was
so aware of what counted as capital in relation to the look of a ballerina
that she was concerned about the colour of her hair:
‘The best ballet dancers have brown hair. I worry that there aren’t enough blond
dancers. I think I might be in trouble later when my hair’s the wrong colour.’ (Leah,
12 years)
The idea of copying and attempting to replicate what is perceived to be the

ideal and positioning oneself within this is significant. Cultural and physi-
cal capital is accrued in the form of the ballet body as well as how it moves:
‘I’m so lucky because I’m naturally slim and little and that’s exactly how you must
be in ballet. I don’t have to diet at the moment but I know that lots of my friends
have to be very aware of what they eat because they have those sorts of bodies.’
(Megan, 11 years)
Megan has increased physical capital because she is ‘naturally slim and
petite’. This notion of the ideal body for ballet was also prevalent in
responses from the parent interviews:
‘I would say that physique is very important, their look is very important … at her
local dance school you see good dancers but they have not really got the physique
that you would particularly like to watch. Natural physical make-up is not something
you can change either.’ (Father of Megan)
The ideal body was associated with the expected male role in ballet by
Nick, 15 years:
‘You need the right build, quite slim but be able to show muscles that show strength.
You need a triangle shape on the top and muscly legs but you can’t look too bulky
or manly. You need to be able to express movement. You need to be strong enough
to lift girls, to jump and to look good.’
This traditional gendered view of the male ballet dancer in the way he looks
and what he does is clearly defined by Nick. The male lifts and supports the
female and then he traverses the stage with commanding jumps parading
his attractiveness to the audience replicating hetero-normative assumptions.
The current cultural trend in ballet does emphasize outstanding tech-
nical competency, which includes increasingly higher leg extensions for
females and therefore flexibility in the hip for example. Technical compe-
tency, however, is only one aspect of the development of a ballet dancer
and is not a guarantee of a successful dancing career (Hamilton, 1998;
Greskovich, 2000). It is important therefore that the young dancer devel-
ops their artistic capital alongside their physical capital. By artistic capital
I mean the manner and style in which each movement is expressed so that
the dancer engages with the audience in order to convey the meaning or
choreographic intention in performance. For example, the ballet historian
and critic Richard Buckle remarked:
Margot Fonteyn, the most wonderful – yet a typical – product of the British school,
was an example of mind over matter. Her torso was inflexible, and her by no means
perfect legs were limited in their range of movement: but she thought herself into
becoming a great dancer … The sad eyes and the inclinations of her head lent such
78 Chapter 4
expression to the gestures of her lovely arms, that her torso and legs were overlooked.
(1982: 276)
Margot Fonteyn herself claimed that: ‘dancing carries the development

of this physical expression to ultimate limits’ (1978: 9). In Bourdieu’s
terms this represents the transcendence from physical capital into artistic
capital. I also examine the notion of transcendence from physical capital
to artistic capital further in Chapter 6 pertaining to bodily expression
and pleasure.
Given that ballet requires emotional performing bodies in perfor-
mance, it seems ironic that dancers’ interests tend to be defined and focused
at an early age and remain intense from childhood to adulthood. As one
teacher who had been a professional ballet dancer confirmed:
‘It’s experience and life that makes a great ballet dancer. It’s very difficult to learn life.
You have to experience it to be able to throw it back ‘cos otherwise you’re theorising
about something which if you haven’t felt; you don’t understand. We’re asking very
young dancers to do this. As dancers, unfortunately it’s as they come into retirement
age, they start to develop as people and get life’s emotions. It’s only as they retire
and they go on through life and they really experience pain and love then they could
bring that to their dancing and then it’s gone’. (Teacher: Elizabeth)
Ballet dancers sacrifice other areas of their lives for example, friendships
and a range of interests and experiences which, it has been suggested, nar-
rows the dancer’s knowledge and experience of the world (Krasnow et al.,
1999; Hamilton and Hamilton, 1991). However, dancers from a young age
also experience and manage a startling array of emotions in the form of
loss, winning or losing, self-punishment, regret, ambition, jealousy and so
on, by engaging in the ballet habitus.
Ballet training involves a willingness to tolerate a considerable amount
of discomfort, tiredness and probably pain and hunger (Buckroyd, 2000): to
‘suffer for one’s art’ (Teacher: Steve). The body as aesthetic project perpetu-
ates a view that ‘pain is not an obstacle to, but a means towards liberation
and salvation’ (Loland, 2006: 54). The social world of ballet propagates the
premise of suffering as it is a central theme in many ballet works where the
transformation through suffering or the tragedy of torment and death is
key such as Giselle, Romeo and Juliet, Manon, The Red Shoes and Mayerling.
The ability to dance through pain is also a reoccurring theme in many ballet
biographies (Fonteyn, 1975; Bentley, 1982; Seymour, 1984; Kirkland, 1986;
Newman, 1986; Solway, 1998; Bull, 1999; Bussell, 1999; Claid, 2006). The
importance of such emotional capital or artistic capital as accrued through
the suffering of ballet dancers is emphasised by the famous ballerina Dame
Antoinette Sibley:
One’s got to believe in fairy tales up to a point, but I think it’s better if you’ve really
lived, seen the harsher side of life, if you’ve been hurt, if you’ve cried a little, if you’ve
laughed a lot, if you’ve loved a lot. It makes a difference if you know everything, the
lows, and the heights, and love (Newman, 1986: 105).
Significantly, Sibley suggested that a ‘lot of suffering can help you as an

artist. Suffering can increase your sensitivity just as much as happiness can’
(Newman, 1986: 211).
The schooling or training of the balletic body in the form of the ballet
class engages the young ballet dancer in embodying the discipline of ballet
and ballet decorum that includes the consumption of gendered balletic
imagery so that the ballet bodily hexis becomes engrained. Dominant
ideas, beliefs, norms, behaviours, values and expectations of ballet culture
are transmitted via the ballet teacher in a position of power. Although dif-
ferences in ideas, teaching methods and behaviours in the way the body
is viewed and treated exist in the two contexts of study, I suggest that the
dominant belief in the ballet aesthetic of perfection and beauty is most
powerful and consequently the body is more likened to a separate object
or machine rather than viewed in a holistic way by the young dancers.
Physical and artistic capital is accrued through power struggles within
the competitive environment and a willingness to accept and engage with
emotional and physical suffering for the sake of ballet as a performance
art. The powerful discourses of ‘natural talent’ and resilience, although
in tension, are held together simultaneously within the ballet habitus.
Paradoxically, given such clearly defined gendered roles in ballet technique
and performance, both male and female dancers are expected to embody
traditional masculine language and values in relation to ‘knockbacks’ such
80 Chapter 4
as resilience, determination, self-control, cool, emotional discipline and self-

belief. Desires and dreams of becoming a ballet dancer become implicated
in power relations as pleasing the teacher potentially reap high rewards.
The young dancers are working towards becoming like ‘a fish in water’
it is evident that the young dancers are beginning to take some aspects
of the social world of ballet for granted (Bourdieu and Wacquant, 1992:
127). The ways in which ballet schooling and the young dancers view and
attach value and meaning to the developing balletic body is of significance
because ‘the way people treat their bodies reveals the deepest dispositions
of the habitus’ (Bourdieu, 1984: 190). In the next chapter I shall explore
an aspect of the ballet dancer’s habitus that I consider to be fundamental,
that of the meaning and management of pain.
Chapter 5
Ballet Bodies in Pain
‘Ballet is both beautiful and brutal – I am smiling while my muscles are

aching and my toes are bleeding.’
— Leah, 14 years
A young ballet dancer with a desire to be a performing and professional

ballet dancer is engaged in a process of ‘becoming’, so during this time of
formation and development the young dancer must work out the ‘rules of
the game’ (Bourdieu, 1990a) and which aspects of the game carry most value
or capital. These workings out will then influence the player’s or dancer’s
future action. The meanings and values that the young dancer attaches to
their body is significant because the body becomes ballet so, consequently,
there is a strong relationship between the ballet dancer’s body and their
identity as a ballet dancer. As I have argued, given that the ballet body is
represented in process as construction and in product as performance,
the ballet body is both the subject and the object of ballet. The dominant
view is that the body is perceived in a third person sense as thing, object or
machine by the young dancers rather than in a holistic way. I have already
suggested the influential power of the ballet aesthetic and that the ballet
dancer is an embodiment of an object of and a creator of desire: the ballet
aesthetic of beauty and perfection. Physical and emotional pain and suffer-
ing is generally accepted by the young dancers as a pre-requisite for success
in striving for perfection and such gains in physical and artistic capital are
important in the acquisition of the ballet dancer’s habitus.
In this chapter I examine physical and emotional pain in ballet in
greater depth. I examine the encounters between pain and meaning through
lived experiences of young ballet dancers as they construct, negotiate and
82 Chapter 5
embody social and cultural meanings in relation to pain. I also explore

whether the dominant view of the ‘body as instrument’, ‘technical object’
(Mauss, 1979) or ‘absent’ (Leder, 1990) engages the young dancers, both
boys and girls, in separating their bodies from their minds and whether
this is a strategic way of accruing important physical capital. This chapter
generates further insights into processes of legitimising practice and the
young dancers’ actions and meanings in relation to their bodily habitus,
gender and pain.
Having trained as a dancer, I ardently remember that through the pain
of practice the language of ballet became easier as I moved closer to achiev-
ing the perceived ideal. I do have the remains of the past in my body present
as strain and injury. The pain that I felt regularly was not excessive and I
became tolerant and used to aches. I am speaking of the pain experienced
as I learnt to articulate ballet through a codified technique, in learning
and practicing a physical pursuit and challenging my body. To speak of
ballet and pain together may seem melodramatic and the pain of ballet is
obviously not comparable to many types of pain inflicted such as broken
bones for example but it is pain that occurs in the body as it forms, shapes
and structures (Claid, 2006). Although this book draws predominantly
on the work of Bourdieu, I accept that the work of Michel Foucault offers
some useful ways of conceptualising the discipline of ballet and to support
understanding of surveillance and the disciplined body (1979). His work
on Technologies of the Self (Foucault, 1988) and Care of the Self (1990) are
particularly pertinent.
The words of 12-year-old Megan illustrate her process of coming to
terms with the hardship, discomfort and pain that she believed to be nec-
essary conditions for her development as a ballet dancer:
‘When I’m dancing it’s like I’m free and floating, I’m me. I have always wanted to
be a ballerina and I will be. When I started ballet classes at 3, I think I took it more
seriously than the others. Everyone else saw it just as a fun thing. My teacher sug-
gested that I audition for here. At the audition, the teachers, without saying anything
particular, just seemed to make me work really, really hard and I didn’t seem to get
tired, I just kept going. I was excited and was enjoying what I was doing. The time
went very quickly. I remember having to do the splits and all the people saying ‘go on,
try a little harder’ and it really encouraged me so I got lower down and it didn’t really
hurt. I get better all the time. I love it here. The first two years were fun though also
disciplined, now it’s harder and everyday it gets more harder. When I started pointe
I was scared of the pain of blisters and the bleeding but it is ok. You get used to it. If
you want to be a dancer, you just learn to be tough and strong and put up with the
pain. You have to deal with knock backs sometimes when things don’t go so well. I do
seem to cry a lot but it’s worth it to prove to myself what I can be’. (Megan, 12 years)
The young dancers regularly reported physical and emotional pain with
many references to the personal commitment of time and effort alongside
a wealth of examples of resilience, corroborating the substantial literature
on the development of ‘expertise’ with its central emphasis on commitment
and practice. As I have discussed in the previous chapter rigorous physical
practice of ballet technique is learned via an external system and embodied
as ‘natural’ in what I suggest is a complex layering of the constructed body
of physical skill and ballet aesthetic. I argue that experiencing pain and pain
tolerance are embedded in the schooling or training of the ballet dancer
and in cultural and institutional or school beliefs about what a ballet body
can do and can become.
Pain has been defined as ‘an unpleasant sensory and emotional
experience and can be associated with actual or potential tissue damage’
(International Association for the Study of Pain, 1979). Levels of pain
are notoriously difficult to distinguish, as the severity of each individual’s
pain will always be relative. Since the early 1990s there has been increased
interest in pain and injury from a physiological (Brinson and Dick, 1996;
Krasnow, Kerr and Mainwaring, 1994; Koutedakis, and Sharp, 1999; Laws,
2005; Soloman et al., 2005) and a psychological framework (Anderson and
Williams, 1999; Fawkner, McMurrary and Summers, 1999; Lazarus, 2000;
Liederbach, and Compagno, 2001; Mainwaring, Krasnow, and Kerr, 2001;
Roessler, 2006). Furthermore, with regard to its social importance, pain
has been of particular interest within the disciplines of sport sociology and
anthropology (Nixon, 1992, 1993; Young, 1993, 1994; White et al., 1995;
Roderick et al., 2000; Waddington, 2000; Howe, 2004; Bale, 2006). Any
investigation of pain, however, is problematic as it can be seen as a highly
subjective, cultural phenomenon and construct (Howe, 2004). Pain is
inscribed with meaning based on the socio-cultural context in which it is
situated. As Curry and Strauss (1994), Nixon (1992, 1993) and Young (1993,
84 Chapter 5
1994) found, the experience of pain may be normalised by some groups

and problematised by others. Biologically though, pain is a signal in the
body, a warning that something is wrong, perhaps a signal of impending
or actual injury.
The Dichotomy of Good Pain and Bad Pain
The term ‘positive pain’ is used to describe the fatigue that an elite sport-
sperson goes through in the course of trying to enhance performance. It
is believed that all properly structured athlete training schedules should
be developed to maximise this component of pain (Bale, 2006). Exposing
sporting participants to pain, while they are injury-free, in the process of
training is believed to increase their pain threshold (Carmichael, 1988).
Pain is viewed as constructive only when it is limited to periods of intense
training that are followed by no negative side effects from training and /or
involvement in competition or performance. This view is encompassed in
the ‘no pain, no gain’ slogan (Stamford, 1987). Positive pain or zatopekian
pain is seen as a useful way to increase the body’s immunity to pain and
pain threshold. Martin and Cole (1991) asserted that
Fatigue and muscle soreness are quite different from overtraining or staleness,
although they may exist during such states. They are normal physiological elements
of what may be termed the training process, which is defined as a set of interactions
between a stimulus and a response intended to initiate adaptive (beneficial) physi-
ological changes. (1991: 254)
Zatopekian pain then is considered to be positive fatigue and muscle sore-

ness, but the difficulty in distinguishing these symptoms from a pain which
may be a marker of injury and therefore a negative pain is problematic.
The notion of positive pain is very much embedded in the culture of
ballet, in the institutions and in the schooling or training of the body of
the ballet dancer. Teachers in both of the ballet school contexts readily and
regularly spoke about pain within ballet classes even with the youngest
children as ‘a positive force to contend with’ (Teacher: Steve) and that
‘pain is not the enemy but the dancer’s best friend as realising that ballet
hurts, but that it is a good hurt, is key in a dancer’s development’ (Teacher:
Elizabeth). Ballet classes within both contexts regularly used references to
pain as a way that dancers could develop and improve:
‘They have to learn what pain they can work through and what hurts. I think stretch-
ing is a nice pain but they don’t all seem to. When they say “Ow!” we have to work
out if it is that the muscles really aren’t going to do it and are in danger of snapping
or whether it is just that they have to get used to that feeling of lengthening. Most
children would have been through a certain amount of pain to get here anyway so
therefore they should know themselves if it’s a nice hurt or if it’s an agony. I think
most of the pain is good and as dancers you expect pain to be good and doing good.
It is difficult with children though as their bones are growing and not their muscles’.
(Female ballet teacher)
Similarly according to another ballet teacher; ‘it is important that dancers

are in tune with their bodies, that they know the difference between good
and bad pain’ (Teacher: Adele). Conversely, the notion of positive pain I
suggest is a constructed dualism, constructed by the culture of ballet and
by the institutions of the ballet schools as something which is deemed
legitimate and also something that constitutes value. Children of course,
may not ‘be in tune with their bodies’ and may be particularly vulnerable to
exacerbating pain and injury due to partial or limited knowledge (Gaffney,
1993). Children are also particularly susceptible to thinking that they must
endure pain in order to be successful as evidenced by Kenzi:
‘Sometimes we do something here and it really hurts, the teacher says “be careful” and
“don’t overdo it” but I don’t really know what that means. I just do it because I see
that everyone else is doing it and it doesn’t look as though it hurts them. The teacher
always says “good” if you can do things and not if you stop or give up’. (Kenzi, 13 years)
It has been suggested, however, by Buckroyd (2000) that it is possible to

develop the ability to distinguish negative pain (as a signal of impeding
injury) from positive pain (soreness from exertion) and this can be increased
by knowing and listening to the body (Aalten, 2007) and determining
86 Chapter 5
when the body is tired. However, a number of studies of pain tolerance

in dancers claim that dancers have a higher pain tolerance level than non-
dancers because they are ‘used’ to pain (Tajet-Foxell and Rose, 1995; Ahem
and Lohr, 1999; Paparizos et al., 2006). Tajet-Foxell and Rose (1995: 34)
have argued that ‘the meaning of pain, the importance of acknowledging
pain and of learning how to respond to it should be targeted as early as
possible in a dancer’s training.’ However, ballet training is a long, complex
and ever-changing process for the young dancer because the body is still
growing and developing physically alongside trying to develop capacity to
accommodate new ballet technique, vocabulary and material.
Consequently dancers may not understand or desensitise and ignore
what is happening to their bodies. This is also exacerbated by the messages
given during ballet classes such as that regularly shared by one teacher
during the ballet class to the group of young dancers:
You are constantly fighting with your body, don’t let the pain win as your body can
always do more. It’s nice because if you do fight it, it’s so worthwhile. (Teacher:
Elizabeth)
The teacher was an ex-pupil of this school and an ex-dancer with the ballet
company of the institution of which the ballet school is a part. One can
assume therefore that the teacher’s pain threshold, expectation of pain
tolerance and model of pain was probably based on her own understand-
ing and experience of pain embedded within the ballet culture. Therefore
the teacher, I suggest, is concerned with transmitting the aesthetic heritage
that she embodies and is therefore reproducing her own ballet schooling or
training as well as the ballet culture, which is also embedded in the company.
Research in the world of professional dance has convincingly shown that
most dance injuries are not the consequence of trauma, but the result of
chronically overburdening the body as overuse injuries (Bowerman et al.,
2014). Because pain is often ignored, a minor physical problem eventually
turns into a serious one (Krasnow, Kerr & Mainwaring, 1994; Brinson and
Dick, 1996; Koutedakis, and Sharp, 1999; Liederbach and Compagno,
2001; Mainwaring, Krasnow and Kerr, 2001; Laws, 2005; Soloman et al.,
2005). Tracey (13 years) implies that ‘giving into pain’ is a sign of weakness:
‘You mustn’t give into the pain, the muscles will release if you keep pushing
them.’ Jon explained his interpretation of, need to conquer and manage-
ment of pain:
‘With pain I don’t really stop and say “Ow, Ow!” I push myself a bit and when I
know it’s really hurting I’ll stop. When I’m doing exercises that are really hard to
hold I feel pains in the back of my legs. I sometimes stop and relax and then go back
to them. Sometimes I push a bit further.’ ( Jon, 14 years)
In all of these examples the dominant view of the body is as an object, a

malleable tool or machine and consequently this is how it is treated.
A teacher spoke of the work that is undertaken in the school in rela-
tion to developing a healthy dancer and she suggested that this has become
embedded in practice. The practice, as I alluded to in the previous chapter,
consisted of asking the young dancer to begin to articulate how they feel
when something is hurting or deemed painful. The teacher in the school in
the North of England described the sensation owing to exertion as often:
not being seen as pain or painful but is related to a sensation of sore muscles, muscle
stiffness, a moment of pain, or feeling very tired and these can be seen as good indi-
cators that they have been working hard. (Teacher: Adele)
So there appears to be a contradiction at play here. On the one hand,

the young dancers are encouraged to articulate if something is hurting
or painful because this might be a negative consequence of training and
yet on the other hand, the teacher is encouraging ‘indicators that they
have been working hard’, which may actually be important signifiers of
fatigue or overburdening the body (Krasnow, Kerr & Mainwaring, 1994;
Brinson and Dick, 1996; Koutedakis, and Sharp, 1999; Liederbach and
Compagno, 2001; Mainwaring, Krasnow and Kerr, 2001 Laws, 2005;
Soloman et al., 2005). How far can these young dancers take care of their
own bodies, particularly given that they want to be performing dancers
and have committed much time and effort to their desire? Are they will-
ing and able to judge their limitations? Are they able to judge the con-
sequences of injury if they push too far? I asked the dancers as part of a
focused group discussion:
88 Chapter 5
‘I have heard your teacher and you speak of pushing your body, how would you know
if you had pushed your body too far? How far is too far?’ (Angela)
Long pause from the group. After 2 minutes Lie spoke first.
‘That’s really hard. Sometimes my body gets so tired and it aches and I think “I’ll
never do anymore” but I do and I feel good. You have to find the determination to
do the best you can, you want to prove yourself all the time, to push all the time,
sometimes a little ‘cos you’re scared about how much it is going to hurt but you realise
there’s more there and it’s ok. You might be stiff but you know eventually it’ll wear
off. You push through it and gain that much more. I don’t think there is too far unless
you’re in agony and can’t move, you know you get a shooting pain’. (Lie, 14 years)
‘Yeah, I agree you need to push your pain threshold and not just give up if there’s
a twinge of pain. There’s only too far if you are already injured and if it is going to
make it worse’. (Milan, 14 years)
I also asked the same question of the children in the school in the North
of England. Again there was a significant pause before anyone answered.
After one and a half minutes:
‘There’s not too far, it is up to you to decide. Some dancers, like Darcey Bussell can
do amazing things like lifting their legs up to their ears, but you can only do that with
some pain. You are training your body but at our age we are flexible so if we do it now
we will always be able to do it. I stay in the box splits at home reading a book until I’m
so stiff I can hardly move but the next time I do the splits it is easy’. (Sima, 13 years)
‘You have to get to know your own body. You are your best teacher. You have to learn
how far to go. I still take risks though, just to see what I can really do and sometimes
regret it.’ (Nick, 15 years)
Although the young dancer Nick is aware that he needs to get to know
the limits of his body, he is still prepared to push beyond those bounda-
ries. Indeed, it is futile to expect a young dancer to take care of their own
bodies when the adult role models are engaged in pushing the boundaries
of their bodies too.
A number of accounts of dancing through pain and injury exist in
autobiographical works (De Mille, 1951; Fonteyn, 1975; Bentley, 1982;
Brady, 1982; Ashley, 1984; Seymour, 1984; Kirkland, 1986; Porter, 1989;
Farrell, 1990; Kent, 1997; Bull, 1999 and Bussell, 1999). Dame Antoinette
Sibley stated:
Once I realized that ballet wasn’t just physical torture, that it was actually a lan-
guage that I could speak with my own way … then I was happy. Then I loved to do
it, because it wasn’t just grinding and horrible. I realized in fact that everything I
was doing in class was just a means of expression … For me class is very depressing,
more depressing than for most people because I’m not a good classroom dancer …
I’ve always been very aware that some people have the perfect physique – very high
insteps, long legs – for doing all the mind boggling things, none of which I could do …
I’m a good balancer, I have good line, but these things aren’t necessarily the more
showy things. I can’t jump like they can, I can’t beat like they can, I can’t get my legs
up … So it’s always been an effort and it’s always been a fight. (Newman, 1986: 52–53)
The ballerina Darcey Bussell also illustrated the temptation to continue

dancing through pain and injury:
Dancers are always so desperate not to miss any part of their careers that we find it
tempting to work through injuries if we possibly can. When we first join the company
we’re especially determined to prove ourselves, and I know many dancers who have
been injured but who have carried on working without telling anyone. (1999: 149)
This example also relates to the competitive environment of ballet as

discussed in the previous chapter. The culture of comparison is also evi-
denced in the words of Rich (15 years): ‘It really matters what other people
are doing, ‘cos if they are all doing it, you have to really or you’re seen as
the flaky one.’ The young dancers are influenced by their role models;
past or present professional ballet dancers such as Darcey Bussell, Sylvia
Guilliam and Carlos Acosta. They are also influenced by the powerful
ballet aesthetic, their desire to work towards achieving the ideal ballet
body in performance, their teachers and the training methods in ballet
schooling and their peers:
I can’t image my world without (ballet) and I certainly doubt that I would have suc-
ceeded at anything else. When I’m taking bows after a ballet like Romeo and Juliet
I feel transported … In dance, our bodies are instruments and we have to work at
them everyday. People often ask me how I put up with the hard work of ballet … but
it becomes an addiction. I now live with a constant feeling of guilt which nags at me
90 Chapter 5
if I haven’t worked hard enough in the studio … We want to be the best, we want
to please everyone … Dancers have to be obsessive about ballet. (Bussell, 1998: 3–5)
Pain is more complex than a simple mechanical process of stimulus and

response (Melzack, 1973; Melzack and Wall, 1996) for the young dancer. The
young dancers do appear to learn that pain is something to deny, ignore or
conquer. Perhaps the young dancer does not realize that they are actually in
pain or indeed what a ‘good pain’ or ‘nice hurt’ is. A further complication
is that it may be difficult to fully articulate or describe a sensation. One
can only imagine someone else’s pain on the model of one’s own and it is
challenging to imagine pain that is not felt. (Wittgenstein, 1968). Ballet
schooling or training speaks about pain and ‘good’ pain and ‘bad’ pain
regularly during classes, however, as one teacher asserted:
‘Pain is so difficult because I have a high pain threshold, you need to have a high
pain threshold as a dancer so it is part of my job to teach the children to tolerate a
certain amount of pain and not to complain about it every five minutes but at the
same time not too much that it is unsafe’. (Teacher: Adele)
Dichotomies of ‘good pain’ and ‘nice hurt’ as opposed to ‘bad pain’ are
deeply held beliefs within the culture of ballet and are very much part of
processes of legitimisation of practice. ‘Good pain’ and ‘bad pain’ are prob-
ably fictive accounts constructed within the ballet world to legitimise push-
ing the boundaries of the body. This may engage young dancers in learning
how to ignore potential harmful sensations in the body in the seductive
drive to move on within their structured ballet training.
The prevailing view of the body and the way it is treated is likened to
a machine to fight both with and against. The purpose of pain is so that
ballet technique and repertoire of movement is engrained in the body
memory as natural. The dancer’s training creates a particular absence of
the body, elusiveness, or as Csordas (1994:8) has formulated, a ‘disap-
pearance from awareness’. The constant repetition of movement patterns
brings the dancer to a state where they can do them unconsciously; the
dancer does not have to think about their body anymore when asked to
do a movement. The absence of the body is disrupted when there is ill-
ness, pain or a sudden confrontation with physical failure (Wainwright
and Turner, 2004, 2006; Wainwright, Williams and Turner, 2005). As

Leder (1990: 71) asserted: ‘A region of the body that may have previously
given forth little in the way of sensory stimuli suddenly speaks up … Even
body regions that are ordinarily perceptible still present a heightened
call when in pain.’ However, the body in pain might ‘speak up’, but pain
can still be rejected or ignored. This absence of the body in the social
world of ballet is not passive and taken-for-granted but an absence that
is actively achieved. In an attempt to create the ideal ballet body, dancers
learn to knowingly silence their own material bodies. Pain is not learned
as a warning sign that boundaries of the body have been met, but rather
as boundaries that have to be crossed.
Shaping the Body
The body in ballet is in a process of construction towards the product

of the ideal body in performance, which embodies the ballet aesthetic.
There is a clear body culture with regard to shape and size in ballet. The
traditional ballerina icon has been preserved from the Romantic Era, the
female ballet body is deemed to be petite, elegant, weightless and feminine
and the male ballet body is connected to the Ballet Russes and was revived
during the 1970s. He is also slim and yet strong, muscular and masculine.
In the critical review Competing with the Sylph, Vincent (1981) discussed
the aesthetic ideal in the ballet world and its consequences for the health
of female dancers. Vincent (1981) described the obsessive ways in which the
ballet world dealt with the body weight of female dancers and related this
to the frequent occurrence of eating disorders among them. Nearly twenty
years later Vincent (1998), in his introduction to the special issue on eating
behaviour in the journal of Dance Medicine and Science, concluded that
the situation has not improved since then: ‘The reason’, Vincent writes, ‘is
our failure to confront the root of the problem, because it is a cultural and
aesthetic, not a scientific or medical one’ (Vincent, 1998: 4).
92 Chapter 5
The choreographer George Balanchine had a profound effect on the

modern ballerina aesthetic (Shearer, 1986). Gelsey Kirkland cited a par-
ticularly illustrative example in her autobiography:
with his knuckles his thumped me on my sternum and down my rib cage clucking
his tongue and remarking ‘must see the bones’ … He did not merely say ‘Eat less’, he
said repeatedly ‘Eat nothing’ … Mr B’s ideal proportions called for an almost skel-
etal frame, accentuating the collar bones and length of neck … Mr B’s methods and
taste have been adopted by virtually every Ballet Company and school in America
… ‘Thin-is-in’ … For those who refuse to go with the crowd, employment is unlikely.
(Kirkland, 1986: 56)
There is a growing aesthetic amongst ballet audiences, companies and

therefore institutions for almost skeletal hyperflexible ephemeral bodies
that may be more prone to injury (Bronhorst et al., 2001; Wainwright and
Turner, 2003, 2004, 2006; Wainwright, Williams and Turner, 2005). The
field of classical ballet and the schools will produce and reproduce a par-
ticular bodily aesthetic according to demand. Ballet is a cultural activity
promoted by the powerful social group who value it and currently audiences
are predominantly white, middle class women (Bridgwood and Skelton,
2000; Hutton, Bridgwood and Dust, 2004; Keaney, 2008) despite the
government’s policies towards greater equality of access for all, with new
measures to ensure that state supported arts get the ‘right’ audiences for
their work (Department for Culture, Media and Sport, 2007). In striving to
meet the demand for a particular bodily aesthetic young ballet dancers are
influenced by the power of the ballet aesthetic, role-models, teachers and
peers. Experiences of anorexia nervosa and bulimia and sense of achieve-
ment in maintaining low weight are well documented in dance (Schnitt
and Schnitt, 1986; Nixon, 1989; Buckroyd, 1995, 1996; Abraham, 1996a,
1996b; Brinson and Dick, 1996; Haight, 1998; Wolman, 1999; Benn and
Waters, 2001; Yannakoulia, Sitara and Matalas, 2002; Sundgot-Borgen,
Skarderud and Rodgers, 2003; Koutedakis and Yamurtas, 2004).
Much of the literature points to the high incidences of dancers’ eating
behaviours such as elective restriction of food, binge-eating, purging and
the maintenance of extremely low weight through use of laxatives. Benn
and Waters (2001) found that many of the adult female dancers in their
study were engaged in cycle of calorie counting starvation diets and eating
binges, with many of the dancers only consuming between 700–900 calo-
ries per day and many under 700 calories. Furthermore, many of the danc-
ers did not acknowledge that this was a problem or denied any potential
long-terms consequences because their ideas of healthy and normal were
formulated according to the norms and values of the ballet world (Benn
and Waters, 2001: 142). In Bourdieu’s terms, bodies are a reflection of their
habitus and alongside the aesthetic orientation there is a view of the world
that is transmitted and valued.
In addition to disordered eating, which may mean a refusal to maintain
body weight at or above a minimally normal weight for age and height,
there may be intense fear of gaining weight and, in post-menarcheal females
amenorrhoea, the absence of at least three consecutive menstrual cycles
(Buckroyd, 2000: 163). Furthermore, there may also be, among a number of
physical and psychological characteristics: hair loss, lowered body tempera-
ture and heart rate, low blood pressure, feeling cold and poor circulation.
Some studies (Le Grange et al., 1994; Abraham, 1996a), have explained
the eating disorders of ballet dancers, gymnasts and some other athletes
as reactions to requirements and external pressures to remain thin. This
may seem too simplistic, but many symptoms of anorexia (e.g. amenor-
rhea, strict diet control) appear to be common and even adaptive in the
ballet community (Garner and Garfinkel, 1980; Garner et al., 1987). Other
authors (Abraham, 1996b) have suggested that dancers have simply learned
poor eating habits that persist and may be reinforced in professional ballet
companies. Dancers are considered to be particularly vulnerable to diet
regimes and other technologies aimed at bodily ‘correction’ (Bordo, 1993:
104). In the ballet world fat bodies are ‘out of bounds bodies’ (Brazel and
Lebesnok, 2001) as ‘fat’ is ugly and weak, whereas ‘thin’ is beautiful (Garrett,
2004; Rich and Evans, 2005; Pickard, 2013). A comment from one teacher,
Steve, was particularly illuminating in relation to this preservation of the
ballet body:
‘Because ballet is one of the very highest art forms, you cannot attain the levels that
are needed basically if you’re fat (laughs). It’s just impossible and also to retain bal-
letic posture and balletic movements, you know, you can’t get a grand jeté if you can’t
94 Chapter 5
get your legs apart. If you’re tight in the groins and your bones aren’t set right, it just
isn’t going to work and yes, it not may be politically correct but don’t choose to do
that profession. There are plenty of professions where you can be politically correct.
This is a high standard world.’ (Teacher: Steve)
To be thin in the social world of ballet is both the norm and the expectation.
Although policy documents and teachers in both of the contexts in
the study did speak about healthy eating, the importance of hydration
and sleep, there was a disparity in the rhetoric of improved knowledge
with increased professional input and the lived experiences of the young
dancers. As I have already mentioned, the school in the North of England
has decided to focus increased time within the training programme on
‘developing the healthy dancer’. Here information was supplied on food and
nutrition and conversations were had with the group of dancers about the
importance of a healthy diet. However, from the data I would suggest that
the information has been learned passively with some misleading informa-
tion: ‘dancers should not eat any fat’ (Gary, 12 years). One teacher shared
her insights with me in relation to being a healthy dancer:
‘Tell me more about how a young dancer is supported in being a healthy dancer?’
(Angela)
‘I don’t know very much about this non-residential programme. My ignorance sug-
gests that there could be more. If they’re at the boarding school there’s a fantastic
regime in place. They never tell people just to lose weight; they think let’s look at
what you’re eating and how we can enhance it to be beneficial to you. So it’s really
constructive and how important. Really their whole well-being is well looked after.
They are all under one roof. I mean when I was there and when I was dancing with
the company, I’m not fine-boned and I was asked to lose weight but it was carefully
monitored. Here, they come in once a week and disappear and really the potential
damage is great because they come in and perceive something and a little knowledge
is dangerous. Parents are not always responsible. I know of a student and I think her
mother was encouraging her to smoke because she said it would keep her thin. Aah,
how stupid.’ (Teacher: Elizabeth)
This teacher, a former dancer with the company (the institution of which
this school is a part), drew on her own experiences as a former pupil of
a ballet boarding school. She immediately connected the question to a
focus on weight and spoke about ‘a fantastic regime’ in relation to moni-

toring food intake and weight loss. Rather than perhaps questioning that
the bodies of very young dancers, often pre-adolescent dancers, are con-
stantly scrutinized, monitored and encouraged to lose weight, she accepted
that this is an inevitable consequence of ballet culture. Furthermore she
approved of the apparent safety of dancers being ‘under one roof ’ rather
than the danger of them being with irresponsible and ‘potentially damaging’
parents. This teacher’s ideas of healthy and ‘normal’ have been formulated
according to the norms and values of ballet culture.
From an early age ‘young dancers do become aware of the expecta-
tions of the ballet body physique, the idealised ballet body and perfor-
mance demands’ (Pickard, 2007: 38). When we talked about ‘what makes
a healthy dancer?’ the young dancers could respond with a model or text
book answer drawing on some of the specific input sessions that they had
as part of their training programme. However, during a number of con-
versations not particularly related to notions of ‘the healthy dancer’ it was
apparent that the ideal ballet body was dominant in the young dancers’
perceptions and understandings of their bodies. Ballet is a social practice
that shapes the activity of the young dancer and is also shaped by that young
dancer through a process of incorporation of the social into the body. This
process was evident in a series of interviews with Tracey. I have indicated
her age alongside her quotations:
‘It is important to have five fruits and vegetables a day and drink lots of water. You
have to eat well because otherwise you will be too tired to dance’. (Tracey, 12 years)
‘I am aware of how I look now and am constantly looking at myself and comparing
how I look with my friends. I think that I could do with losing a bit of weight even
though I’m quite tall in comparison to some of my friends and the others here. My
mum says that it is just how I am at the moment and as I grow taller I will also get
thinner’. (Tracey, 13 years)
‘I don’t like my thighs or my bottom or my tummy or the top of my arms at the

moment. (Tracey, 14 years)
‘I know that I have to be careful. I think a lot about what I eat and what I can or
should eat. I did get a bit wobbly once because I hadn’t eaten enough and I didn’t
96 Chapter 5
like the feeling ‘cos I felt really weak. I know that I need lots of carbohydrates to give
me energy to dance but I also know that these can be fattening. I have that sort of
body. I like fruit and vegetables and I drink lots of water so I am healthy. I still have
chocolate sometimes but I limit myself. It’s hard at the moment because my shape
seems to be changing everyday. My mum and my friends at school say that I have a
lovely figure but it is different when you see everyone else here and you hear about
how important it is to be a particular way.’ (Tracey, 15 years)
‘Is there anything that you’re worried about at the moment in relation to becoming
a ballet dancer?’ (Angela)
‘Em … my body really. I’m not fat but I’m not skinny em, and I’m well (42 second
pause) … at teenager age when you all should change and everything, but, that’s the
main thing I think, like, not the right size or something, got to try and keep quite
nice and slim, so you look nice in a leotard and your tights and everything. That’s the
main thing really. It’s the most important thing here.’ (Tracey, 15 years)
Tracey became involved in a process of self scrutiny and monitoring. This

heightened body awareness is exacerbated because dancers have a constant
view of themselves in their ballet class via the wall to wall mirrors, which
were evident in the dance studios in both of the contexts of study. The
young dancers could ‘constantly monitor themselves for bodily imperfec-
tions’ (Featherstone, 1991: 175).
The ballerina Gelsey Kirkland (1986) in her book Dancing on my Grave
spoke about the mirror as her nemesis. I think that she is worth quoting
at length because she has captured the learned importance and intense
relationship a dancer can develop with the mirror:
The mirror was … seductive to the point of addiction. Stepping through the look-
ing glass meant confronting a double who exposed all my flaws and pointed out all
of my physical imperfections. Over a period of time, the image in my mind clashed
with the image in the glass. Until the opposition between the images was resolved, I
saw myself as a walking apology, unable to attain or maintain my constantly refined
ideal of physical beauty … With all of my insecurities intensified, I became my own
worst critic, embarking on an aesthetic quest for perfection that in the end would
heal the wounds I had inflicted upon myself. Trying to perfect both my appearance
and the quality of my movement, I was unaware of a contradiction …The endless
repetition of barre exercises in front of a mirror reflects a distorted image many people
have of ballet, an image shared by many dancers. The physical side of the discipline
does involve a certain degree of tedium, to say nothing of the pain. But the hours
of practice are minor compared to the emotional terror that can sometimes haunt
a ballerina when she studies her reflection in the mirror. This anxiety is not due to
simple vanity or fear of professional rejection … but that one has been created for
nothing. (1986: 72–73)
As Goldberg (2003: 307) asserted ‘how does the fledgling ballerina vom-
iting in the school bathroom refuse her anorexia and recognize that the
unattainable White Swan she is looking for in the mirror is an imaginary,
fictional woman?’ As evidenced from one young dancer, Leah, 13 years,
learning to use the mirror is an important rule of the game:
‘In my other dance school we didn’t really have mirrors so when I came here it was
nice seeing myself all the time and learning to use the mirror for corrections even
though it is important to feel the movement in your body. Sometimes I love seeing
my body as I look and feel so lovely but other times I hate what I see and don’t want to
look but kind of have to. It’s weird really. Sometimes I don’t think it’s me. Sometimes
I look too thin, sometimes I look too fat. Sometimes I just look at everyone else in
the mirror and they look better than me. I’m surprised when I see myself but I can’t
show that on my face ‘cos others will see that I lack confidence.’ (Leah, 13 years)
Although my focus in this book is on the work of Bourdieu, I must acknowl-

edge that in relation to an approach to government of the self (Turner,
1982) and nutritional regimes the work of Foucault has much to offer. The
balletic body is an archetypal example of the ‘useful body’ corresponding
to the aesthetic norm and the discipline of thinness. Foucault (1988: 3–4)
was concerned with how ‘a human being turns him or herself into a subject’
through practices through which individuals ‘acted upon their own bodies,
souls, thoughts, conduct and a way of being in order to transform them-
selves and attain a certain state of happiness.’ One of the key components
of self-care discussed by Foucault (1986) is the practice of self-examination.
One technique for self-examination, ‘gymnasia’, or self-training, involves
the individual in practices which function to establish and test the indi-
vidual’s independence from the external world.
In a Foucaudian analysis of women and eating disorders Bartky (1997)
and Bordo (1997) have linked femininity and eating disorders through the
notion of the ‘disciplined’ or ‘docile body’. Through ‘the pursuit of an …
98 Chapter 5
elusive ideal of femininity … female bodies become docile bodies – bodies

whose focus and energies are habituated to external regulation, subjection,
transformation, improvement’ (Bordo, 2003: 166). There are a myriad of
practices available for women to transform the female body into ‘a body
of the right size and shape’ (Bartky, 1997: 136). Bordo (1993) argued that
such discipline and normalization of the female body as a form of social
control is perhaps the only gender oppression that crosses age, class, race
and sexual orientation. Femininity is a tradition of imposed limitations; a
woman must be willing to limit oneself in the amount of physical public
space that she takes up and uses and in the ability to live with minimal
food intake (Bordo, 1993; Bartky, 1997; Benn and Waters, 2001). In deny-
ing appetite, female hunger is contained:
In the course of that practice, for any number of individual reasons, the practice is
pushed a little beyond the parameters of moderate dieting. The young woman dis-
covers what it feels like to crave and want and need and yet, through the exercise of
her own will, to triumph over that need. In the process, a new realm of meanings
is discovered, a range of values and possibilities that Western culture has tradition-
ally coded as ‘male’ and rarely made available to women: an ethic and aesthetic of
self-mastery and self-transcendence, expertise, and power over others through the
example of superior will and control. The experience is intoxicating, habit-forming.
(Bordo, 2003 p. 178)
Here, according to Bordo, the female has discovered an entry into a privi-
leged male world (Pickard, 2013). In a social world such as ballet, the body
is admired for the sense of self will and self-control that it projects; this
carries high cultural capital (Bourdieu, 1977, 1984, 1990a) and therefore
power. In the pursuit of perfecting the body as a disciplined object to be
admired by others, experiences of disordered eating that are constraining
and self-destructive come to be experienced as liberating (Pickard, 2013:
13). Eventually, an anorexic body is one which has eradicated all marks of
the feminine and this has been done paradoxically, through pursuing con-
ventional feminine behaviour (Bordo, 1993; Bartky, 1997). In ballet, body
power is enhanced and displayed by the ‘absence of flesh’ (Turner, 1995:
25). Physical appearance was also related by some of the young dancers to
a system of rewards and sanctions where weight gain led to non-selection
for further training and performances but weight loss was linked to praise,
selection and success.
The demand to be thin is considered to be more rigorous for women
than for men and is often required of female dancers by male choreogra-
phers and male artistic directors (Novack in Thomas, 1993). However, the
ballet school, as a culture within a culture, does attribute value to both
males and females for being thin (Pickard, 2013: 13). In relation to male
athletes, Baum (2006) warned that because disordered eating in males is
less prominent it can easily be missed. Milan demonstrated his awareness
of the value of being thin:
‘I do worry about the fact that I have this flabby stomach and a chubby face but I
have quite thin legs and slim but broad shoulders so I reckon that I’ll change when
I get older and fit in a bit more with what’s expected, if I keep doing this training
and the stomach exercises’. (Milan, 13 years)
There is a consequence in failing to meet expected standards in body size and

shape; the young dancer may be asked to leave the school, this is a graphic
demonstration of the high value placed on in being thin. During puberty
genetic potential in terms of physique will start to become apparent. This
may make it clear that a particular body shape may not fit the requirements
to become a professional ballet dancer. One teacher supported this when
she explained:
‘I have some in my class who, I think, will be brilliant dancers, because their physique
is not ideal for the company here, but it will be enough for other companies and they
are stunning, but they won’t get in here’. (Teacher: Lucy)
In the contexts of the schools, images of the ideal were reinforced in the
form of paintings, statues, costumes and photographs of famous dancers.
In one of the schools classes took place between 12 and 2 pm, which per-
haps suggests to the dancers that it is not necessary to eat at a time that
is typically known as lunchtime; it is more acceptable and desirable to be
thin (Pickard, 2013: 14). Research by Hamilton et al. (1988) reinforced
that those dance trainees most vulnerable to eating disorders were those
whose natural shape did not conform to the requirement to be very slim.
100 Chapter 5
In the ballet environment a preoccupation with the body, competi-

tiveness, discipline and self-control bring high esteem and physical capital
(Bourdieu, 1990a). Some dance literature (Brady, 1982; Gordon, 1983;
Kirkland, 1986) suggested that female dancers in professional ballet com-
panies are encouraged to remain pre-pubescent, both physically and emo-
tionally because as obedient children they do as they are told. There are
also connections between the denial of sexuality that is stressed in some
interpretations of anorexia (Hamilton et al., 1988; Buckroyd, 2000) and
perceived expectations in the ballet world. Gordon (1983) argued that
dancers ‘don’t learn, as they grow up, to accept their sexuality and integrate
sexual feelings into normal functioning. They don’t want to grow up; they
want to remain children’ (1983: 147). Adolescence is a time when hormonal
changes bring about a powerful upsurge of sexual feelings but the mainte-
nance of low weight greatly diminishes sexual feelings (Buckroyd, 2000;
Laws, 2005). Furthermore the normalised conditions of dance training is
that it takes place where groups of people are gathered together dressed
in tight fitting clothing that is designed to reveal the body and dancers
are encouraged to analyse and compare the bodies of others. In addition
there is often touching and a significant amount of physical closeness to
the bodies of others in ballet classes and in pas de deux work. Such inti-
mate and ritualised interactions of the body could be viewed as ways to
facilitate a greater understanding of relationships and progress to sexual
maturity, as preparation for future adult sexual relationships. Yet the ado-
lescent dancer, male or female, is expected to actively deny any sexual feel-
ings or arousal in these circumstances (Gordon, 1983; Buckroyd, 2000).
A particular appearance of the body, in terms of size and shape, signifies
as a socially acceptable aesthetic.
Chapter 6
Gendered Experiences of Pain
‘Where I’m from, if you’re a boy you don’t do ballet.’

— Kenzi, 12 years
Ballet Boys
To return to the historical roots of ballet for a moment, from the fifteenth
to the late eighteenth century, dance as a formative discipline, social prac-
tice and theatrical art was predominantly a male domain. ‘Men danced
female roles; men developed and transmitted technique; men invented a
system of dance notation; men created and produced ballets’ (Nordera,
2007: 174). Prejudices against a male’s choice of ballet as a leisure activity or
profession have arisen out of stereotypes that were developed regarding the
dancer’s body, attitudes and sexual orientation around the 1830s onwards
with a parallel made between dance and homosexuality and the relative
homophobic reactions. Male dancing rose to prominence after Ballet Russes
and during the 1970s; at the same time, ironically, as the women’s rights
movement reached its peak. The shift was accompanied by much ‘dancing
is masculine’ propaganda in the press and in a spate of books. Male dancers
such as Rudolf Nureyev, Mikhail Baryshnikov and Edward Villella were
hyped as strong, virile and athletic stars (Burt, 1995). This ideal form of
masculinity is portrayed to be something to which men can aspire but is
also linked with sexuality as it endorses heterosexual masculinity; these
male dancers are seen as attractive to women.
102 Chapter 6
For a man, the technical or athletic side of dance is a rational challenge. Once mas-
tered, it provides him with the opportunity to display strength, skill and endurance,
as well as with the vocabulary and means to achieve creativity. (Youskevitch, 1969:
23, cited in Daly, 1987/88).
Here the technical and athletic facets of dancing are justified alongside
rational thought, which deems dancing as ‘appropriate’ man’s work so a
version of acceptable ‘traditional’ masculinity prevails. This is based on
particular bodily performance and practice that promotes competitiveness,
aggressiveness and toughness. Conversely, one explanation of the macho
male display in ballet is that the male dancers are trying to show that they
are not effeminate, where ‘effeminate’ is a suggested proxy for homosexual.
Segal (1997) argued that it is class and race that are the chief factors for
inequalities, but it is gender and sexuality that present the major threat to
hegemonic masculinity. The perceived normal, traditional and ‘natural’ ver-
sion of masculinity still dominates in ballet today (Burt, 1995). However,
this narrowing of the male dancer’s expressiveness to the more macho side
of male behaviour is also restrictive and constraining for men.
Social restrictions on sexuality have shaped the way in which tradi-
tional ballet is staged. Making ballet macho, characterising it as athletically
masculine and resolutely heterosexual, has been a common attempt to
counter effeminate stereotyping in the ballet world. Various kinds of social
stigma exist in relation to men and dance ‘including narrow definitions of
masculinity, heterosexist justifications for males in dance, and internalised
homophobia in the field’ (Risner, 2009a: 57). There is also a silence of gay
or bisexual men (as well of lesbian women) in dance. The ballet boy and
man tends to experience social isolation and may experience teasing and
name calling, verbal and physical harassment, verbal threats and threaten-
ing behaviour and physical harm or injury (Risner, 2009b). What is most
interesting to me and indeed to others before me (Gard, 2001, 2003a,
2003b, 2006; Risner, 2009a, 2009b) is that given the social stigma associ-
ated with male dancing, men do dance and there are male ballet dancers.
Some emerging research also suggests that boys are questioning dominant
norms of masculinity (Gard, 2001, 2003a 2003b, 2006; Risner, 2007).
The traditional culture of ballet has been built upon the reinforcement
of heterosexual and masculine norms and in this way ballet demonstrates

and reinforces the power of homophobia:
In a heterosexual and patriarchal society, the male body cannot be marked explicitly
as the erotic object of another male look: that look must be motivated in some way,
its erotic component repressed. (Neale, 1983: 14)
The physically powerful, acrobatic and assertive style of the male dancer
introduced through the western tours of Russian companies is in line with
the norms of heterosexual masculinity and represents the male dancer by
angular and muscular form, a wide use of space, strength, stability and
power. A range of masculine identities exist for example related to race,
class and sexuality, nevertheless in order to represent ballet’s traditional
visual imagery, the male dancer must embody and portray a traditional,
heterosexual, predominantly white middle class male. Despite the social
stigma, ballet men tend to benefit disproportionally because of their sex
(Garber et al., 2006). Once they are recruited, they enjoy privileges partly
because of their ‘endangered status’ (Fisher, 2009: 36), they face less com-
petition in getting professional jobs and are often promoted to roles in
ballet management and as choreographers. This history and view of the
traditional male ballet dancer is therefore influential in the construction
and development of the male ballet dancer’s habitus and identity as a male
ballet dancer.
Endorsing Hegemonic Masculinities
The idealised masculinities that Connell (1987, 2005) discussed in rela-

tion to the term ‘hegemonic masculinities’ included dominance, physical
strength, competition and heterosexuality. These attributes are endorsed in
the social world of ballet in the form of gendered ballet performance. The
male ballet dancer’s presence and the ways the audience read that dancer’s
presence is mainly determined by visual cues. In the portrayal of specific
104 Chapter 6
images of masculinity, the male dancer needs to look powerful. The male
role in ballet is a traditional one which represents the male dancer as athlete
and in controlling and manipulating the female as part of the pas de deux.
The post pubescent body of a male dancer is therefore favoured. The role
of the male ballet dancer was summarised by Stokes in 1942:
He shows her off. He has the air of perpetual triumph, and when the time comes for
his own variation he bounds, leaps, bounces and rejoins the ballerina in the wings
amid applause. (Stokes, 1942: 81)
One young male dancer Rich encapsulated his understanding of the role
of the male ballet dancer in performance, which is similar to that depicted
by Stokes. Rich portrayed the male role as one that encompasses use of
space and strength:
‘We’re there to lift the girls and show them off and then to show off ourselves. We
just run and jump using as much of the stage as we can. Em, but it has to be elegant
and beautiful.’ (Rich, 14 years)
Male ballet dancing exerts energy, force and strength but must adhere to
the ballet aesthetic of beauty and perfection. Milan explained the ‘macho’
male ballet dancer in performance.
‘We have to be confident, almost arrogant on stage, as though we are the best man
ever: good body, good strength, good stamina. We have to be very macho. But we
have to be quite light on our feet, elegant-like, look quite thin and not too hairy and
not too muscular. Perfect really (laughs). That’s what the audience want to look at
and come to see.’ (Milan, 13 years)
The focus on strength, stamina and muscles during performance fits with
social expectations of masculinity and the pre-occupation with portraying
male dancers as athletes (Gard, 2003a, 2003b, Brown, 2006a; Risner, 2009a,
2009b). Demonstrating athletic prowess is considered essential in establish-
ing an ‘unambiguous, heterosexual, male identity’ according to Gard (2000:
27). However, the male ballet dancer must also express grace and preciseness
in his movements, which are not qualities that are usually associated with
macho behaviours. The pas de deux, or duet, demonstrates the appearance

of strength from the male and the ability to lift, support and control the
female dancer. As a male dancer reaches puberty they are often separated
from girls and engage in ballet classes that concentrate on the development
of travelling sequences, jumps and upper body strength in preparation for
learning how to lift in the pas de deux. Despite that the majority of the boys
whom I tracked for my research had just begun training for lifts during the
latter part of the study, preparation for learning how to lift was viewed as a
significant component of a male dancer’s training. Nick (16 years) described
this as developing a ‘body as muscles’ and claimed that it is:
‘a time when you’re more of a man rather than a boy. It sorts the men from the boys!
(laughs) You get a good body and we all show off our muscles ‘cos you see your body
change and the muscles come, but it’s hard work to get body as muscles. You have to
do weight work and you ache quite a lot. It’s for being a fully fledged dancer. The girls
we lift probably don’t even weigh as much as we’re lifting in the weights, funny that.’
For male ballet dancers, lifting and supporting the female ballerina is a key
aspect of training that defines their role. So for boys studying ballet the
shift into preparing for the role of lifting and supporting can be a way of
‘defining the men from the boys’. The boys, at a time when they are chang-
ing through adolescence, see the physical changes occur in their bodies in
muscle presence, development and definition.
There is physical pain associated with the sculpting of the angular,
muscular male form into one who can potentially partner a ballerina and
command the stage. It has been suggested that athletic pain is recognised
as playing a role in defining men as masculine (Nixon, 1992, 1993, 1996;
Young et al., 1994; Connell, 2000; Gard and Meyenn, 2000; Roderick et al.,
2000; Howe, 2001; Pringle, 2001, 2005, 2008, 2009) and that male pain is
often rendered legitimate and visible. As well as examples of muscle strain
in preparation for lifting from the older boys in the study, other occurrences
of physical pain and injury were described by all the boys involved in the
study. The boys were all keen to share their ‘war wounds’. For example,
Gary, 14 years, stated:
106 Chapter 6
‘I’ve really been in the wars, I’ve chipped a bone in my ankle (holds up ankle and
points to affected area), I’m pulled muscles in my shoulders, back, hyper extended
my elbows and knees (points to each of the areas as they are described), allsorts
really but it just shows that I’m tough to keep coming back for more. I can take it.’
There was evidence of competition amongst some of the boys to manage

pain and strain from ballet training and this was seen as necessary for
group membership:
‘It is important not to be flimsy if you hurt or are injured, even if they really hurt.
You don’t let your mates see you’re hurting. You just get on with it.’ ( Jon, 12 years)
Some boys deemed that pulled muscles were minor therefore corroborat-
ing the shared social meaning attributed to pain and therefore legitimising
pain as normal and expected.
‘Em, I’ve not had, not major injuries. I have never broken anything. I’ve pulled a
muscle in my neck’. (Kenzi, 12 years)
To rationalise physical injury is to claim that it is ‘natural’ for males to

engage in these activities and that tolerating pain is an important part of
‘becoming a man’ (Gard, 2000: 24). Society generally actively discour-
ages emotional expression of pain in boys. As Bendelow and Williams
(1998: 263) found that ‘several male respondents felt that expressing pain
would brand them as “sissy” or “effeminate”, and would imply that they
were homosexual.’ Gard and Meyenn (2000: 26) claimed that ‘institutions
such as organized sports, and especially contact sports are viewed publi-
cally as responsible for “making men” and often require males to endure
accidental and intentionally inflicted pain.’ Similarly Pringle (2001, 2005,
2008, 2009) found in relation to ‘sports of violence’ such as rugby union,
that the risk of possible injury was deemed as an indicator of ‘manliness’.
Western masculinities are ranked by the ability of individuals to endure
bodily pain (Gard, 2000; Gard and Meyenn, 2000; Pringle, 2001, 2005,
2008, 2009) and this appears to be an important part of the male ballet
dancer’s habitus.
Prejudice as Pain
Ballet is viewed as a form of artistic self-expression but male artistic self-

expression does not fit easily with social constructions of gender because
to express emotions is seen as a feminine trait (Gard, 2000, 2003a, 2003b;
Connell, 2005; Brown, 2006a; Risner, 2009a, 2009b). Ballet therefore is
still seen as a more girl-friendly activity. Boys who wish to pursue a career
in dance may feel alienated, excluded by their peers or as though they are
on the gender margins (Davies, 1993) due to the long standing association
between male dancers and homosexuality (Burt, 1995). Beyond reports
of muscle strain through preparation for lifting and the physical pain of
injury, emotional pain suffered as a result of responses from others, seemed
to be where the boys featured in this thesis suffered most. It was a common
occurrence for the boys to share a range of stories and experiences that they
related to bullying. This example from Jon (11 years) corresponds to being
different for engaging in an activity that goes against the traditional and
expected patterns of behaviour for a boy.
‘Being a boy and dancing makes you different. I don’t like being different. Before,
when I wasn’t here I used to get “Oh my God, you do dancing, you’re such a wimp!”
and stuff like that. I find girls actually tease boys more though.’
It may seem surprising that girls were also involved in taunting Jon as one
may assume that other boys would be trying to reconcile, persuade or
change Jon’s behaviour in relation to their own views of what constitutes
masculinity. This supports feminist work that has shown how girls are also
implicated in maintaining and policing the gender order (Davies, 1989;
Lees, 1993; Francis, 1997, 2005; Plummer, 1999). Rich shared a similar
experience:
‘I don’t like being different. People tease you and say you’re weak and wimpy but
actually you’re really strong’. (Rich, 14 years)
The use of words such as ‘weak’ and ‘wimpy’ implies that Rich is not a ‘real’
man because a real man is strong. This connects with cultural practices of
108 Chapter 6
heterosexuality, notions of romantic narratives and heterosexual romance:

that the male role is to take an active lead in rescuing the passive female,
hence the need for the male to be strong.
Through engagement in the ballet training programme at the con-
texts of study, the boys were able to legitimise their interest in and com-
mitment to ballet partly because they saw other boys with a similar
interest and commitment. The acknowledgement that ‘it is ok to dance’
is significant, Gary, 13 years, recalled a sudden, poignant and important
life-changing event:
‘I think it was at 7 or 8 when my teacher said to my mum there’s a school in London
that would be able to further his skills and make use of his talent. I got the letter and
went off to London for the audition. When I got there I was really excited. It was all
new and there were all these different boys doing ballet which was great, you know,
‘cos I’d always been stuck in a class surrounded by girls taking the piss and being silly
and I had no support from them. When I saw all these other boys doing it I was
amazed! So it was a real booster and it changed my life, in that second’.
Gary expressed an emotional moment, perhaps of relief when he felt more

positive and secure about himself particularly in relation to his identity
and development as a male ballet dancer. Before this time, Gary had expe-
rienced mainly negative responses to his activity as a boy doing ballet;
interestingly, it seems particularly from the girls in his class. ‘In that second’
there was a sudden and dramatic realisation that other boys do ballet and
take ballet seriously; other boys like him. Accordingly, Gary described
this event as a major moment that changed his life and motivated him to
commit further to ballet and work towards becoming a performing and
professional dancer. This example supports the varied notions of the evo-
lution of identity (Strauss, 1959; Bury, 1982; Denzin, 1986; Walters and
Gardner, 1986; Giddens, 1991; Wainwright, 1995; Becker, 1997), which I
have discussed in previous work (Pickard, 2012) and I suggest particularly
relates to Connell’s (2005) ‘body reflexive practices’. Not all of the boys
involved in this thesis were able to manage emotional taunts or reconcile
differences so easily however:
‘Where I’m from, if you’re a boy you just don’t dance, it’s not normal, and if you do
you do street, hip hop or crumping, if you do any other dance you don’t tell anyone
and you keep it secret. A boy does football, boxing or rugby, that’s it. If a boy dances
he must be a poof. That’s it. Some people at my school found out that I danced, I don’t
know how. Anyway they wouldn’t stop bullying me. It went on and on so my mum
moved me from the school. But it still carries on outside school. They live close so
I’m giving up. It’s not worth it. If I dance, I don’t have any mates. I reckon it’s better
to have mates. Ballet’s too hard right now.’ (Kenzi, 12 years)
Kenzi was trying to embody the ballet dancer’s habitus and negotiate an
identity as a male ballet dancer alongside occupying other social worlds
and therefore negotiating the ‘rules of the game’ (Bourdieu, 1990a) and
the habitus there, too. Alongside the difficult backdrop of wedded views
and beliefs about what constitutes appropriate male behaviour and homo-
phobic attitudes, Kenzi was also trying to reconcile taunts about apparent
class distinctions as evidenced in the previous chapter. Kenzi had to weigh
up his cultural capital gains and losses in his decision making process and
for him, the other social worlds which he inhabited won.
It was not always classmates who were the ones described as being
suspicious of a boy doing ballet. Gary spoke of how his parents were wor-
ried about his interest in pursuing ballet:
‘I used to do a lot of martial arts and my friend did ballet. I went to see him perform.
I’d heard that ballet was like martial arts. After seeing that ballet I kept thinking
about it and tried a few of the movements out. I kept pestering my parents all year
to let me go as I kept thinking about that ballet. Finally they gave in. I started ballet
and liked ballet more than martial arts so gave martial arts up so I could concentrate
on ballet.’ (13 years)
Gary continued to explain during an interview that his parents appeared

to be distrustful and guarded of ballet as an activity because it was seen as
a ‘girly’ or ‘sissy’ activity by both of his parents but particularly his father.
As Burt (1995), Gard (2003a, 2003b, 2006), Brown (2006a) and Risner
(2009a, 2009b) have discussed, such views as those expressed by Gary’s
parents are common and often translate as a fear and association between
boys engaging in activities where they are exploring more expressive, elegant
110 Chapter 6
or lyrical qualities and homosexuality. Martial arts, however, was seen

by Gary’s parents as a more acceptable activity for boys, perhaps due to
the fighting, apparent aggression and strength associated with it because
these are normalised behaviours for boys. However, there are many con-
nections between the disciplines of martial arts and ballet, not least the
power, control, co-ordination, poise and grace (Shan, 2005). Fortunately
for Gary, his parents agreed to support him in his engagement with ballet
where he has excelled. Some of the older boys were involved in negotiating
their identity as a male ballet dancer by making connections between ballet
and sports (Crawford, 1994; Gard, 2001, 2003b) that are more consistent
with traditional, heterosexual male identity, as evidenced in the words of
Rich and Nick:
‘A male ballet dancer is not just a man in tights. You need the strength of a rugby
player but be nimble like an athlete or like a runner.’ (Rich, 15 years)
‘To be a dancer you need more power in your muscles, in your upper body muscles,
than a football or a rugby player because you have to do lifts, and be strong and flexible
in your leg muscles, so you have to be stronger than in most sports.’ (Nick, 15 years)
There does appear to be a constant pressure and need for the young, male
ballet dancer to normalise male ballet dancing and to justify this through
reinforcing that ballet is macho and that the ballet dancer is athletic, just
like a ‘real’ man. In this way, the boys are negotiating a male identity inside
and outside the social world of ballet. However, it must be recognised
that some boys may be attracted to ballet because they are ‘outside the
heterosexual matrix’ (Butler, 1990). The boys were between 14–19 years at
the end of the study and may have been experiencing a range of different
desires during adolescence. Very few of the boys (or girls) shared informa-
tion relating to their personal sexuality with me during the four years of
the study but Rich was reflective:
‘I love the freedom that I feel in ballet. I think I’m me: elegant and probably gay.
Obviously I’m not really sure yet but I am attracted to boy bodies more than girl
ones.’ (Rich, 16 years)
So for the boys, the ballet habitus encompasses painful experiences as well
as potentially liberating ones.
Presence as Power
The development of female audiences for dance during the twentieth cen-
tury has been a factor in the development of male dance. The seduction
of male dancing is that the male dancer is performing as an object of the
gaze (Mulvey, 1975); however, what is significant in the construction of the
male ballet dancer’s habitus is in the accruement of capital linked to body
form, shape and representations of traditional athletic imagery through
his role in performance. It is important in ballet who looks at who and
how the male ballet dancer appears when he is the object of the gaze. The
male body as spectacle in dance is protected by defensive strategies that
reinforce dominant male interests of constructed masculinity. Within the
conventions of performer-audience relations, a male dancer can submit his
body to become the object of desire in performance as long as he retains
the dominant gaze so he must look out actively, barely acknowledging the
viewer and therefore resisting the attempt of the viewer’s gaze to objectify
him (Dyer, 1982). The male dancer’s embodiment of power and desire, as
an object to be looked upon, influences his presence on stage. As Berger
(1972) observed, ‘men act and women appear. Men look at women. Women
watch themselves being looked at’ (1972: 42). The intrigue of presence that
is evoked by male bodies dancing a language that signifies as feminine is
also an important aspect of their appeal (Claid, 2006). Male ballet danc-
ers have to present as powerful and yet express lyrical qualities. This does
disrupt safe categories of male identity as the male dancer is a play between
looking and being looked at. By gazing at the ballerina during a pas de deux,
however, the male dancer identifies himself with the males in the audience
and in doing so reinforces male power.
112 Chapter 6
Ballet Girls
Theophile Gautier’s life was an art critic from 1811 to 1872, he speculated
on the connection between dancers and the Greek ideal of female beauty
and asserted that the purpose of the female ballet dancer was:
A woman who appears half naked in a flimsy gauze skirt and tights to pose before your
opera glasses in the glare of eighty footlights with no other purpose than to display
her shoulders, bosom, arms and legs in a series of attitudes that show them off to best
advantage seems amazingly impudent if she is not as beautiful as Phaenna, Aglaia or
Pasithea. I am not very interested in seeing an ugly figure morosely jiggling about in
some corner of some ballet. The Opera should be some sort of gallery of living statues
in which all types of beauty are combined. Dancers, through the perfection of their
figures and grace of their attitudes, should serve to maintain and develop the sense
of beauty … They … selected as carefully as possible, whose task is to appear before
the public and instruct it in the ideas of elegance and good grace. (1837, 1986: 6–7)
This view of the ballerina as an object of display and desire preserved from
the Romantic period is still relevant. Disciplined, sylph-like, mesmerising
objects of beauty exemplify the ballerina. The ballerina is portrayed as an
elegant, en pointe fantasy creature encompassing all that is deemed feminine
by ballet society and audiences alike (Pickard, 2007: 40). Ballerinas are
viewed as flights of imagination and whimsical visions of desire that seem
to ‘entail hyper-feminisation’ (Gray and Kunkel, 2001: 21). Ballet classes
then, continue to be innocent ‘odes to sentimentality and to the romantic
vision of women: they are beautiful and delicate’ (Claid, 2006: 12). Stokes
described the ‘ideal’ female ballet dancer’s body:
The classical dancer’s body … is characterised by compactness. The thigh muscles

are drawn up, the torso rests upon the legs like a bust upon its base. The bust swivels
and bends but, in most adagio movements at any rate, the shoulders remain parallel
to the pelvis bone. Very bendy, every jump is accomplished with an effect of ease
and of lightness … In all such convulsions of the adagio the ballet dancer is showing
many gradual planes of her body in terms of harmonious lines. While her arms and
legs are extended, her partner turns her slowly round upon the pivot of her straight
point. She is shown to the world with utmost love and grace. (Stokes, 1983: 244–245)
In contrast, Bordo (1997) suggested that the ballet world’s reverence for
the wispy ballerina body reflects paradoxically, massive internalisation of
distain for feminine bodily qualities because there is little evidence of fleshy
areas, breasts or hips.
Although fashion in the nineteenth century created all women as
a kind of spectacle, theatrical dance was one of the few cultural activi-
ties that framed women, and specifically women’s bodies for view. Ballet
became sexualised as the ballerina became an object of desire. The ballerina
became eroticised in the nineteenth century as costuming and balletic
images established the erotic pre-eminence of the ballerina’s legs. ‘Breasts
or bellies, physical features associated with motherhood, garnered no atten-
tion’ (Foster, 2003: 445). Foster eroticised and phallocised the ballerina’s
legs and claimed that they ‘belie the phallic identity of the ballerina. They
signal her situatedness just in between penis and fetish’ (2003: 445), she
described the image further claiming that the ballerina’s ‘leg movements
symbolize those of a penis’:
Sheathed in unblemished nylon from high hip bone to pointe shoe, most often a
distinct skin color and texture from both skin and costume, they seem at times almost
detached from the rest of her body. Their astonishing straightness, length, and the
flexibility of hip and thigh muscles that permits their extreme separation from one
another contrast with the supple, softly flowing arms and arching torso. Then the
pointe shoe, a recapitulation of the leg’s length and line, forms a slightly bulbous tip
at the end of the ankle’s thinness … She becomes so insubstantial and yet so resilient.
(Foster, 2003: 444–445)
Very few critics and scholars have investigated the patriarchal underpin-
nings of ballet and it is difficult to truly posit who or what the ballerina
icon would be outside the masculinised constructs that have created it. Daly
(1987/88) in her essay Classical Ballet: A Discourse of Difference argued that
the female form in ballet has been inscribed as a representation of differ-
ence and that this is an entrapment by the ‘male gaze’ (Mulvey, 1975). Daly
also asserted that this entrapment has been rationalised under the guise
of ‘romanticism’ or ‘classicism’ rather than confronted as the patriarchy
representation of the female form it is. This paper was significant in that
it provoked further feminist concerns of the rigorous physical demands of
114 Chapter 6
ballet alongside the idealized ballet body. Furthermore, Vincent’s (1981)

book Competing with the Sylph exposed the sacrifices that girls and women
made in pursuit of the ideal ballet body where there was open criticism
of the schools and companies that promoted this ideal, revealing how the
ballet training system ‘damaged’ the dancer’s body. Gelsey Kirkland’s auto-
biography (1986) Dancing on My Grave chronicled the love/hate relation-
ship that she experienced in being a ballerina during the George Balanchine
years and the complexity of the world of classical ballet and her position
as a female dancer. She described the ‘cultural approach to the body’ and
how cultural norms engaged her in disciplining and restricting her body
through agonising ‘self-surveillance’ and ‘social regulation’ (Bordo, 1993:
35) through her rise to fame, her descent into drug abuse and her struggle
with a severe eating disorder. In an attempt to develop a fair analysis of
gender difference in ballet, Novack (1993), drawing on her own experience
as a dancer, argued that despite the stereotypical notions of female ballet
dancers as fragile, frail and in need of support from men, ‘ballet allows for
great achievement in a physical art form by female performers’ (1993: 39).
The identifying symbols of the ballerina are ‘her tutu, toe shoes, tights,
and, most importantly her image as an inhuman, delicate’ (McLean, 1991,
cited in Mitchell and Reid-Walsh, 2008: 73). Putting on the pointe shoe
signifies an important transition towards becoming a ballerina (Carter,
2000) because the pointe shoe is the hallmark of ballet, the signifier, signi-
fied and sign of transcendence and illusiveness:
Perhaps nothing better symbolises ballet’s removal from the primal earth principle
and resistance to gravity that the strapping of the female foot into virginal pink and
heaven-bound toe shoes. (Fraleigh, 1987: 142)
The pointe shoe restricts and binds the muscular strength of the female
body, simultaneously representing both control and fragility. A dancer en
pointe achieves not only physical elevation but implies social and moral
elevation so embodies the ballet aesthetic of beauty and perfection.
Pointe work or dancing on the tip of the toe in specially designed pointe
shoes that have been stiffened with glue, enable the dancer to balance her
entire body weight on a tiny flat surface. This is traditionally restricted
to female dancers and involves separate ballet classes to the boys. Pointe
work is seen as a clear goal and an important achievement by many young
female ballet dancers. Young dancers tend to begin pointe work at around 12
years old as ankles, toes, feet and abdominals need to be strong enough to
take the weight of their body (Koutedakis and Sharp, 1999). Many young,
female ballet dancers claim that they look forward to their first experiences
of pointe work as often they see this as an acknowledgement that they are
‘being a real ballerina’ (Sima, 13 years).
Rites of passage have often been described in relation to boys becom-
ing men and in traditional hunter/gatherer societies this tended to be
characterised by pain through battle scars (Messner, 1992; Burstyn, 1999;
Connell, 2000). Moving from the soft ballet shoe to the pointe shoe can
be seen as a rite of passage. Often the pointe shoe is pink in colour (because
pink represents females in western society) with satin ribbons and hidden
bows. However, dancing on the toes does hurt but many young female
dancers aspire to and continue to regularly experience the pain of being
en pointe. Here is an example from Tracey:
‘I love being on pointe. You look so graceful and elegant and the music just carries
you. You just have to strap your toes up, put lots of padding in and learn to pull up
out of your pointe shoes, then it doesn’t hurt’. (Tracey, 14 years)
It was a common occurrence that the girls expected pointe work to hurt
but that the pain was worthwhile due to the portrayal of lyrical and beauty
qualities such as grace and elegance. As I have suggested previously in this
thesis, the dominant view of the body appears to be one of body as a thing or
machine that the mind controls. The feet then were viewed by the dancers
as simply the tools of their trade. Although some young girls feared their
en pointe experiences because it often brought great discomfort, they did
find strategies for managing the pain:
‘I was excited but also really worried about first going on pointe but it didn’t hurt as
badly as I thought it would. It’s really after you stop you realise how much it hurts. We
do a little bit of pointe work each time and build up. Now I put my feet in mentho-
lated spirit to toughen them up. I strap my toes tightly and use these special cushion
116 Chapter 6
pads in the toes of my shoes. I also bang and squash my shoes to make them softer.
I’m not sure any of it helps as I always get lots of blisters and rubs.’ (Leah, 13 years).
The ‘toughening’ of the feet is an important part of the competitive envi-

ronment of ballet and I suggest in the ‘becoming’ a female ballet dancer.
Pointe work ‘bestows bunioned and blistered feet decidedly at odds
with that glamorous persona’ of a ballerina (Abra, 1987/8: 33) and tends to
mean potential discomfort such as regular nails that bruise. Further injury
such as sprains, fractures and tendonitis are also common (Nunes et al.,
2002). The potential pain of being en pointe, a core part of the role of the
female ballet dancer, and the development of pain threshold when blisters,
rubs and open sores are evident can be seen in relation to Bourdieu’s culti-
vation of cultural, and in this case, physical and artistic capital because the
currency of tolerance equals success. The routine and ritual of strapping of
toes, the anticipation and expectation to suffer for the art appears to be seen
as an integral part of learning ‘the rules of the game’ (Bourdieu, 1990a) and
indeed is supported and encouraged by the social world of ballet culture.
The experience of pointe work was seen by the girls as a reward for their
commitment, hard work and training; that their bodies were acceptable
for the next level. Tracey spoke of how she was focusing on developing a
greater tolerance of pain:
‘Normally I can do like about an hour and a half en pointe. They [feet] feel fine because
I normally put in lots of padding and stuff and after a while they start to go a bit
numb. Then I might feel certain parts rubbing and then I can’t ignore it and I get a
feeling in my stomach and my head where I’m screaming inside “take them [pointe
shoes] off now!” But I can’t so I just cope with it but I can sometimes feel blood in
my shoes but I carry on smiling. It could be I’ve got the padding in the wrong place.
If you’re on stage you just have to cope, there’s no choice so I have to keep going with
it now because it’ll be worth it’. (14 years, my additions in brackets)
Tracey accepted that pain and discomfort are a core part of what she wants
to do: ballet. Not only is Tracey learning about how it feels to dance through
pain and discomfort but also about the importance of the silence of pain.
Furthermore, she is learning to project a persona during her expression of
the movement that suggests to anyone watching that she is enjoying the
movement; she is smiling through the pain. Overcoming pain was seen
as an achievement in relation to battling against the body and winning. I
asked the girls:
‘What advice would you offer to someone who was finding it difficult to manage
the pain of pointe work?’ (Angela)
‘Well if it was me I’d feel a bit ashamed. I mean sometimes I do things and I think
“Oh, my God I want to be in bed now!” but you don’t go on about it. I wouldn’t
really call it pain’ (Megan, 13 years).
An important disposition of the ballet dancer’s habitus is the belief that

pain should be managed and that ‘the show must go on’, regardless of pain
or injury and this deeply held belief becomes embodied in the dancer. The
discipline of their calling demands management and mastery of the body
so that ‘you just get on with it’ (Megan, 13 years). These dancers have been
specially selected to dance so the expectation is that they will just manage.
Those dancers who have a high pain threshold and mental toughness are
seen as those more likely to be the ones that succeed in the profession.
I discussed in the previous chapter how the young ballet dancers
were recognising the value of being able to endure emotional and physical
pain, discomfort and suffering. In addition it was not expected or accept-
able within the social world of ballet for the young dancers to complain
about levels of emotional or physical pain but to re-frame the experience
to become a positive one. Tracey’s example (above) also alluded to this
when she spoke of how ‘it’ll be worth it’. The construction is a new body
‘ready to speak the balletic language of linear transcendence’ (Claid, 2006:
23); in transcendence ballerinas do not show that they have or are in pain.
So during ballet classes and performances the ballet dancer must learn to
conceal and silence the pain. The dancer must also be aware of presenting
a particular performance of the self (Hertz, 1909; Mauss, 1934; Goffman,
1959, 1971, 1979; Douglas, 1966, 1970; Butler, 1990; 1993) that manipulates
the audience into accepting the illusion that they are not simply a flesh-
and-blood body but an ‘inhuman, delicate’ beautiful and perfect being who
does not feel any pain or discomfort. Conversely after the ballet class or
118 Chapter 6
the performance the young dancers engaged in ritualised behaviour that

involved comparing and parading wounds, Megan explained:
‘When everyone takes off their pointe shoes they’re all sighing, groaning and things.
People will say how many blisters they’ve got.’ (13 years)
Leah also corroborated this:
‘When we all take our shoes off it’s funny that we all compare how many sores or
blisters we have and whether there’s blood, then we all limp home.’ (13 years)
The comparing of ‘sores and blisters’ was when the invisible became visible.
It was like the wounds were being paraded as a trophy signifying the ‘proof
that you’ve worked hard’ (Sima, 13 years).
The dancer who can stand the most pain and discomfort as evidenced
through the visual checking and comparing of the tools of the trade: the
feet, gains status within the group and accrues greater physical capital. Such
celebration of ‘battle scars’ is usually associated with traditional male sports
as athletic pain is associated as a defining feature of masculinity (Nixon,
1992, 1993, 1996; Young et al., 1994; White et al., 1995; Connell, 2000;
Gard and Meyenn, 2000; Roderick et al., 2000; Howe, 2001; Pringle,
2001, 2005, 2008, 2009). This ceremonious and passionate practice, as
each girl took their turn to remove their shoes while the rest of the group
watched and then reacted to the sight, confirmed group membership and
the shared social meanings ascribed to the pain; the greater the reaction,
the higher the capital and status. It is through this contagious emotional
force of the ‘collective effervescence’ that pain is sustained as a sign of the
vocational habitus of a dancer (Durkheim, 2001). Perhaps this does fit with
social expectations and patterns of behaviour of a heterosexual feminine
perception or response to pain, for example connections can be made here
to when women speak incessantly in all-mum groups about their ‘ghastly’
labour and childbirth experiences. The ‘bonding via war wounds’ phenom-
enon may be less gendered than is assumed.
Historically, ‘physical exertion and assertion were considered to be
harmful to girls.’ The social understanding of ‘motherhood’ dictated that
girls were seen as passive carers rather than as ‘active providers’ (Wellard et al.,
2007: 79). In relation to wider social expectations of gender and pain thresh-
olds, giving birth for example is an exclusively female pain, constructed as a
sacrificial pain where women are expected to fear the pain. Bergum (2004: 5)
argued that ‘the offer of medication confirms the fear that, yes indeed, we
will not be able to stand it.’ The commitment to and engagement in the
physical activity of ballet, which is painful, ‘undermines women’s categori-
zation as people who avoid pain and need protection from pain wherever
possible’ (Lock, 2006: 164). Yet Bendelow (2000) found in her study of
gender and pain that the view expressed by both women and men was that
women have a ‘natural’ ability to cope with pain that was lacking in men
and this was explained in terms of biological and reproductive function-
ing. On the other hand female pain is often seen as being exaggerated and
is less likely to be taken seriously because it could not possibly be as ‘bad’
as male pain (Hoffman and Tarzian, 2001).
Processes of Legitimisation
The process of constructing a ballet body and ballet dancer requires the
dancer to accept and commit to routinely pushing the limits of their body
and in enduring physical and emotional pain in pursuit of perfection. The
rules of the ballet body in pain are that dancers are:
constantly operating on the edge of their pain tolerance level in order to express
beauty or powerful emotions. One does not see the pain; unspoken, it lies hidden
in the biography of the individual dancer – behind the movements. Pain is a power-
ful expression of emotion and aesthetics … an emotional condition that is beautiful.
(Roessler, 2006: 44)
Legs do not usually turn outwards or lift above hip height in the ‘6 ’o clock’
position, necks do not lengthen naturally, backs do not arch easily and
spontaneously and not all bodies are naturally slim; they must be trained,
persuaded, shaped, day in and day out, through years of practice. This cannot
120 Chapter 6
be done without pain. Through pain, muscles, bones and flesh are moulded
to create ballet culture’s conviction of ‘normal’. The pain diminishes when
the body has learnt and memorised its shape and position. The development
of an ability to endure increased levels of pain through conviction in the
dichotomy of good and bad pain, leads the young dancers in learning to
ignore, de-sensitise and conceal pain. The tolerance of pain or high pain
threshold is also demonstrated by the adult dancers in the companies and
by the teachers as normative practice. This capacity to switch off from and
ignore the pain reveals the recognition, acceptance and concurrence that
pain and discomfort are simply part of the everyday life of a developing
dancer. Bourdieu (1980) referred to the spoken and unspoken assump-
tions or ‘doxa’ as ‘the silent experience of the world’ (1980: 111–112). He
claimed that the paradox of doxa is that the assumptions are rarely subject
to scrutiny or examined (Bourdieu, 1980). ‘Doxa’ has also been referred
to as ‘that which goes without saying’ (Eagleton, 1990: 158). What is of
paramount importance is the significant validation of the denial, suppres-
sion, re-framing and silencing of pain in the social world of ballet, which
becomes a core part of the ballet dancer’s habitus.
The silence of pain connects to the articulation of the ballet language
and aesthetic as a physical expression, revealing itself to the dancers and
between the dancers in the embodied work itself. The ballet dancer’s artic-
ulation of movement requires the silent acknowledgement of pain. This
theme of pain is especially interesting in relation to the mind-body dualism,
as it could be the case that dancers (trained from an early age) do learn to
think of their bodies as machines and objects, which need to be controlled
and to which pain, injury and harm are acceptable because ‘they’ (the sub-
ject: the dancers) are not hurt; it is just their bodies. Pain is reflected in the
culture (field) institutional structure of the ballet school and through the
individual agency of the dancer (habitus) as they are locked in a relation-
ship of ‘mutual possession’ (Bourdieu, 1990a). They are dependent on each
other for production and reproduction. The young dancers’ attitudes to
pain are embodied as they epitomise the connections between the body,
society in the form of the school, and ballet culture.
Pain is a warning sign that something is wrong in the body and yet
ballet dancers practice the sensation of pain in the exact opposite of its
purpose. For ballet dancers, pain is a signal that things are right and a
signal to continue so rather than trying to diminish the pain, it seems
that ballet dancers are encouraged to strive to increase the pain (Claid,
2006: 41). Indeed pain and suffering play a central role in the develop-
ment of artistic sensitivity and in this way it is given heroic status. The
ballet body in process as construction means that the young dancers are
in pursuit of the ideal or imagined, body. They experience their own, real
body daily, and this body hurts, aches, bleeds and can break. It struggles to
fulfil the technical and aesthetic demands placed on it. Within the power
relations of the field of classical ballet, those who operate as gatekeepers
to the profession (teachers, choreographers, artistic directors) and critic
and audience demands dictate which bodies are most closely aligned with
the ideal. The ideal ballet body has a specific form, it embodies the balletic
hexis and as much as it is able, the seductive illusion of the ballet aesthetic.
The two bodies: real and imagined, constantly interact, but as is inevitable,
the nature of this interaction is unequal. Young ballet dancers’ bodies are
constantly changing and during adolescence the whole body is undergo-
ing changes that are both visible and invisible. Changes in height, weight,
proportion and placement means that the dancer experiences their body
as both the route to and an obstacle to the realisation of their ambitions.
Dame Antoinette Sibley captures the crux of the constant struggle that is
at the core of the ballet dancer’s habitus:
from childhood to retirement you must force your body into the studio and put it
through its paces – exacting, unnatural, exhausting paces – on six days out of every
seven. You must accept constant criticism with thanks, accept praise with humility,
and accept a regimen that dictates what you eat, when you can rest, how much you
can play. You must accept – or ignore – pain and disappointment, and resign yourself
to never-ending fatigue. And when you think you will go mad trying to perfect what
you know can never be perfected, you must continue trying. (Newman, 1986: 5)
In the next chapter I consider the young ballet dancer’s impetus to continue
with an activity that puts the body through ‘unnatural, exhausting paces’
and that may not appear to be positive or rewarding. However, it may be
that the experience of pain in the context of ballet is actually viewed as a
source of power for the young dancer.
122 Chapter 6
Pain as Power?
The ideal body is a persuasive force in ballet and to push through the bound-
aries and constantly find new limits and possibilities in the body did seem
to be viewed as a source of power. One teacher suggested that there was:
‘a great sense of achievement is learning to do what many others fail at: overcoming
pain. It makes you strong as a dancer but also for life.’ (Teacher: Steve)
Another teacher also claimed that:
‘I’ve heard people say: “Unless I hurt all over when I get into bed I don’t feel satisfied.”
I never felt quite like that but I do think you get this will to push your body and your
body gets tired and it aches but I used to think “I’ll never be able to do anymore.”
But you do and that’s quite satisfying; that power.’ (Teacher: Adele)
Furthermore, Anna spoke about pain as a lived, embodied experience:
‘Strange though it probably sounds, I love being in pain, not agony, just a feeling
of pain or sore. It could be my shoulders (puts hands on shoulders) or legs aching
(rubs right leg) or my shoe rubbing on my foot or rubbing an old sore or a blister.
I like to think about whether it’s bleeding yet and I like it if I feel a trickle of blood
in my shoe (laughs). I push myself each time by looking in the mirror to make sure
that it doesn’t show on my face that I’m in pain, I keep pulling up out of my shoes
and I try to keep going for longer and longer without peeping inside my shoe until
the end when I take them off. Lately I’ve been quite shocked at how much redness,
peeling skin and blood there is. I don’t think I should be comfortable in class though.
When I’m on stage it’s all completely different because I don’t feel any pain at all until
I’m finished then I’m usually in so much agony that I can hardly walk.’ (17 years)
According to Loland (2006: 56) a dancer can ‘live’ totally within a perfor-
mance where the dancer can be totally absorbed and ‘transcend distinc-
tions between body and mind and between self and the social and physical
environment.’ During this interaction in space and time the dancer ‘is’ her
body and is unlikely to ‘feel’ or think about pain until the performance
is disrupted, for example when the dancer moves off stage, during scene
changes and intervals. However, arguing for the practice of pain as a form
of agency and power comes close to suggesting that there is an element of

pleasure to be experienced in this dynamic. This is controversial, particu-
larly in relation to young dancers.
In order to accumulate physical and artistic capital and status in
‘becoming’ a ballet dancer, the young dancers engaged in a pattern of
constant replication and repetition of ballet technique and in monitoring
their body shape, size and appearance. This accumulation means that the
bodies of the young dancers are recognised as possessing greater exchange
value. The young dancer is then able to move closer towards translating
their physical capital in the constructed ideal ballet body. This body has a
particular form, exemplifies the balletic hexis (Bourdieu, 1990a), and can
express outstanding ballet technique and artistic intention in the symbolised
seductive illusion of the ballet aesthetic. Capital, and therefore status and
power, is increased through the acceptance and practise of the sensation
of pain and in the striving to enhance the amount of pain that a dancer
can tolerate. Pain and suffering are also perceived by the young dancers
as playing a vital role in the development of physical capital and artistic
sensitivity and in this way pain is given heroic status.
Chapter 7
Ballet Bodily Pleasures
‘I’m free when I dance. I love the flow, yeh. I get excited tingles all over
my skin when I try something new ‘cos it’s a risk. You don’t know what
might happen. You could fall over or anything. But then I’m really calm,
I feel the skin calm down but my heart is pumping and then my body
makes it all happen. I perform and then I’m so knackered.’
— Milan, 15 years
Thus far within this book, I have suggested that the young dancers are
involved in a lived dualism, that they regard their bodies mechanistically,
as an instrument, and that their minds operate and control their bodies.
This assertion is supported by the social world of ballet, as evidenced by
the teachers and, indeed, in the biographies and autobiographies of pro-
fessional ballet dancers. Conversely the young dancers featured in this
longitudinal study also communicated and validated, on copious occasions
during the four years, the excitement, enjoyment, satisfaction and fulfil-
ment that they experienced from participating in ballet. In this chapter
I examine the young dancers’ articulations of ballet bodily pleasures and
the social consequences. I also assess whether Bourdieu’s description of
habitus adequately accounts for the physiological experiences of the body.
Pleasure, like pain, is notoriously difficult to define or articulate. It
refers to a state of feeling of being happy or satisfied, a release of tension,
or a pleasing or enjoyable sensation or emotion (Helm, 2002). Pleasure
associated with moving, whether related to dance, physical activity or sport,
has received comparatively little attention in academia (Pronger, 2002;
Booth, 2009; Pringle, 2009). Work that has discussed pleasure has tended
to either focus on subjective or hedonistic experiences or how pleasure can
126 Chapter 7
enhance another socially driven outcome such as increased participation

and engagement. ‘Hedonistic’ accounts place emphasis on the quality of
personal or subjective experience, pleasure and enjoyment as a way of achiev-
ing ‘happiness’ (Bailey et al., 2007). However, such hedonistic accounts
tend to offer a reductionist view of participation, often pertaining to fun
or for a short-term gain; pleasure as a passing sensation. A limitation of
the hedonist theory is a lack of attention to the activity with which the
pleasure is associated (McNamee, 1994) and the longer-term effects that
contribute to continued participation.
There is evidence to suggest that regular exercise of any kind has ben-
eficial effects, such as the development of greater strength, fitness, co-
ordination, confidence and an increase in adrenaline and endorphins from
being physically active. Consequently physical activity can contribute to the
enhancement of self-esteem and other positive psychological states (Fox,
2000; Green, 2000, 2002; McAuley et al., 2000; Tremblay et al., 2000;
Flintoff and Scraton, 2001; Prior et al., 2003; Evans, 2004; Evans et al.
2004; Winsley and Armstrong, 2005; Welk, Eisenmann and Dollman,
2006). Studies in relation to gender have found that pleasure derived
from being physically active also has potential to be liberating (Theberge,
1987, 2003; Gilroy, 1989; Scraton and Flintoff, 1992, 2002; Whitson, 1994;
McDermott, 1996; 2000; Wright and Dewar, 1997; Deem and Gilroy,
1997; Gard, 2000, 2006; Flintoff and Scraton, 2001, 2005; Garrett, 2004;
Young, 2005; Risner, 2009a, 2009b). This liberation or empowerment
particularly corresponds to perceptions of bodily competence (Theberge,
2003) and ‘the confident sense of self that comes from being skilful in the
use of one’s body’ (Whitson, 1994: 352). Most work documenting positive
effects of dance relate to participation in dance in mainstream schools,
community dance, amateur dance classes and performances. The findings
often describe dance as being fun and enjoyable with opportunities for
expression and creativity and the potential for greater body confidence and
knowledge (McRobbie, 1993; McNeill, 1995; Bond and Stinson, 2000/1,
2007; Embrey and Rose, 2002). Physical experiences, including dance, that
induce feelings of ‘happiness’ and enjoyment have also been associated with
identity development (Stinson et al., 1990; Greenwood-Parr and Oslin,
1998; Gard, 2000, 2001, 2003a, 2003b, 2006; Biddle et al., 2004; Wright,
2004; Hamera, 2005; Penedo and Dahn, 2005; Bailey et al., 2007; Risner,
2009a, 2009b; Maivorsdotter and Lundvall, 2009).
The concept of ‘Flow’ (Csikszentmihalyl, 1975) has been described
as a consequence of pleasure and fun in relation to motivation. However,
Csikszentmihalyl (1975) was dismissive of pleasure as he depicted this
simply as a conscious state when a need is satisfied, whereas fun was asso-
ciated with an activity matching and challenging ability. During the fun
state, self-consciousness is considered to be absent, sense of time is altered
and the participant has a clear sense of control. After the activity, the sense
of self is stronger. Csikszentmihalyl (1975) related rich experiences to the
concept of deep engagement and flow as:
a dynamic state – the holistic sensation that people feel when they act with total
involvement … as a unified flowing from one movement to the next, in which he is
in control of his actions and where there is little distinction between self and the
environment, between stimulus and response, or between past, present and future.
(1975: 36)
However, Csikszentmihalyl’s work focused on the psychological and does

not attend to the physiological sensations in the body. Some studies of danc-
ers have investigated pleasurable feelings and motivation and have made
some references to the physiological experiences (Manley and Wilson, 1980;
Alter, 1984; Bakker, 1988, 1991; Kalliopuska, 1989, 1991; Marchant-Haycox
and Wilson, 1992; Taylor and Taylor, 1995; Nieminen, 2000).
Work around notions of pleasure and physical activity, sport and dance,
with a few exceptions that I discuss later in this chapter, has tended to
focus predominantly on description of feelings associated with pleasure
and psychological characteristics or consequences. I wish to explore the
complexities of pleasure in ballet with an emphasis on the young dancers’
perceptions of physiological experiences of pleasure in their bodies and
how this interconnects with psychological meanings as well as their social
relevance. There are tensions here with regard to the work of Bourdieu,
however. The young dancers evaluated their lived and felt experiences
in relation to the socially constructed context of the ballet school, their
narratives describe emotional, physical and pleasurable sensations in the
individual body of the dancer. It is important to acknowledge this feeling,
128 Chapter 7
emotional and expressive body in order to make assessments of the meanings

associated with pleasurable experiences. The ballet bodily pleasures relate
particularly to the young dancers’ physical experiences, their achievements
and ideas around gendered restrictions upon the body.
Bodily Freedoms?
I have spoken about the social structures that orientate the young dancers
towards a particular form of understanding of the body and the dominat-
ing force of the ballet aesthetic with its required distinction and shaping
of the body. The imposed structure then may well suggest restricted bodily
freedoms. Paradoxically, the ballet dancers in this study spoke about physi-
cal sensations of pleasure alongside feelings of freedom as experienced in
their body, when they talked about moving and performing. Megan related
feelings in her body to the joys of moving through the space:
‘I love moving through the space when I’m travelling and it’s like I’m free and flying
when I’m jumping. I can really express myself through my arms and face. It’s like I’m
in a dream. I know that I listen to the music but my body just moves in time with the
music, I don’t have to make it do anything. Em … It just does. I feel the speed and
colours that come into my mind em, em, but my body just moves in time with the
music. I don’t really know how, but it is beautiful’. (Megan, 13 years)
This description may be part of ‘becoming’ a dancer and learning what to

say through the available discourses of dance. For example teachers in both
of the contexts of study spoke about the value of portraying enjoyment to
an audience when performing ballet. The teachers also related this aspect
of performance to the expression and artistic sensitivity of past and present
professional ballet dancers. Furthermore, the majority of parents in the
interview data talked about the importance of their child being happy and
enjoying their participation in ballet. The sensory stimulation and unified
fluid transition between movements with the total involvement that Megan
described appears to relate to Chikszentmihalyl’s (1975) concept of ‘flow’.
However, the physiological aspect of this depicted pleasure seems to me to

be essential to the experience. Megan is depicting the complexity of pleas-
ure, so recognition must be given to the range of factors that contribute
to the pleasurable experience. In relation to his ‘circuit of body reflexive
pleasure’ (Wellard, 2012: 26) argued that ‘consideration needs to be made
of the social, physiological and psychological processes which may occur
at any level and with varied influence.’ Megan expressed the physiologi-
cal experience of moving through the space when travelling and jumping
and related this to a sensation of flying. Megan is aware of portraying the
movement through the use of her arms and face but then spoke about the
experience as being like ‘a dream’; she described how the movement and
music are connected and how she is perhaps lost in the music.
A key aspect to consider is the more holistic notion of the body, which
is evident in Megan’s words. This more holistic view of the body is in con-
trast to the previous suggestion that the young dancers appeared to perceive
their bodies rather like a machine. In the example above Megan spoke of
being aware of feeling ‘the speed and colours’ that came into her mind and
that this translated into her body in movement but she claimed that she was
not aware of making her body move. It could be that the ballet technique is
so engrained in Megan’s body and movement/muscle memory, that she can
habitually dance when she hears the music and so just focuses on express-
ing the movements or ‘the speed and colours’, which she claimed she also
felt and expressed through her body. This ability to express and convey the
movement, in Bourdieu’s terms affords her much cultural and what I have
termed artistic capital. The power and status associated with expression
may also help to explain how a young dancer can recognise or understand
a physical experience or sensation through a gained knowledge of what it
is to be a ballet dancer and occupy a ballet dancer’s world.
The unnatural in the form of ballet technique is made natural or in
Bourdieu’s terms, the ballet technique required for the movement sequence
has been acquired as part of the unconscious ballet dancer’s habitus through
repetition and practice. Additionally, the psychological experience of the
body is that ‘it is beautiful’ implying that the memory of the experience
is positive. The assured positive connection may be because Megan has
‘felt’ what she is striving for; the ballet aesthetic: to be beautiful and to
130 Chapter 7
depict beauty. Megan is not alone in this felt evaluation as there were many
other similar examples from the young dancers; where they appeared to
be making more holistic connections in the body. A young male dancer,
Milan, explained how he was able to concentrate on using his imagination
during the expression of movement:
‘Sometimes I come to class and I think “Oh, here we go again, more of the same, prac-
tice, practice, practice” but then I catch sight of myself sometimes in the mirror and
I think “wow, you look good”. I’m surprised. Or especially when we’ve learnt a new
phrase of movement and I drift into performance mode when I’m really expressing
the music and I forget everything else that is going on with my family and with my
mates and stuff and just concentrate on using my imagination and being me.’ (15 years)
Amidst the predictability and repetition of the regular ballet class Milan
described more spontaneous occurrences such as being surprised by his
body and physical ability. The opportunity to ‘forget everything’ can
feasibly become compelling. Many of the young dancers’ perceptions
were described in relation to being free; feeling like one is flying and with
regard to being beautiful, feeling beautiful or depicting aspects of beauty.
Perhaps this feeling of freedom is related to time and space away from the
mundane or everyday social world. Part of the ballet dancer’s habitus is
therefore providing this space. This relates to a variety of cultural leisure
practices such as why people might go to a night club for example as
Malbon (1998: 269) discussed; the social world of the night club provides
a space for a sensory and stimulating experience of clubbing as a form
of escapism, ‘a temporary escape from obligations.’ More recently Riley,
Griffin and Morey (2010) have analysed youth participation in electronic
dance clubbing, raving and partying. These leisure activities ‘created local
and informal spaces of autonomy characterised by a celebration of com-
munity, sociality and hedonism’ (Riley, Griffin and Morey, 2010: 33). The
space in relation to ballet is interpreted as a space of one’s own where a
young dancer like Milan can ‘just concentrate on … being me’ but is it
really a space of their own?
Nick (14 years) illustrated the related physiological, psychological and
social factors involved in a pleasurable experience in ballet:
‘There’s nothing better than dancing ‘cos it can feel like you’re flying if you’re doing
a jump or a turn or a leap across the floor. It feels like you’re in the air for ages but
it is really only a few seconds. To be able to just do it without thinking about it is
amazing em, erh, well I think it’s just beautiful and gorgeous. Just hanging in the air.
I love it. You get lost in it and the time flies too. Like, one minute you’ve started the
class and the next minute it is all over, do you know what I mean? You get it. But
when I’m on stage I have no idea what’s happening. I’m just so in it.’ (Nick, 14 years)
For Nick, and many of the other dancers featured in this book, the bodily
interaction and felt bodily pleasures within the socially constructed under-
standing of the body were a regular occurrence and were remembered ‘in
the form of anticipation and reflection’ (Wellard, 2012: 27). The positive
evaluation of experience becomes movement memory history or body
history and for the young dancers, I suggest that this is significant jus-
tification for the continued involvement in ballet. These descriptions of
ballet bodily pleasures can be read in relation to the social structures and
world of ballet and as a way of affirming commitment. However, are the
experiences of ballet dancers unique? Could the rugby players that Pringle
(2009) described, for example, be experiencing the same or similar pleasur-
able sensations in the body?
There were many examples in my data related to achievement of par-
ticular movement and ballet technique and consequently physical capital.
The following two examples captured the relationship between the physical
body, the important meaning making within the social setting of the ballet
class and the increase in capital that the experience afforded:
‘The day I did a triple pirouette I felt that I’d really achieved something. It had been
so hard for me to perfect. I kept getting a great feeling inside every time I thought
about what I’d finally managed to do. I felt so strong and it changed me. I was so
confident. Em. I was so proud of my body and really pleased because I did it with
everyone there. This ranked me higher in the group. Everyone was happy for me and
with me.’ (Sima, 14 years)
‘Sometimes I feel awkward and embarrassed in front of other people ‘cos I think
they’re all better than me. I remember this one day though when everything just
kind of clicked. I was great. I had height, grace, poise, great landings, spotting was
right, the lot. It felt so good you know. Just such a buzz … can’t really tell you. It’s
like when you jump up and down on the spot for a while, you feel kind of dizzy but
132 Chapter 7
all your blood’s flowing right, that kind of feeling. Anyway, it changed everything
‘cos I think people see me differently now.’ ( Jon, 13 years)
The pleasures derived from these experiences relate to physiological sensa-

tions and body knowledge and confidence. In the competitive environment
of the ballet school, where there is the constant watching and comparison of
the self and other dancers in the struggle for capital and status, to be ‘ranked
higher in the group’ or to move from feeling ‘awkward and embarrassed’ to
being seen ‘differently’ is useful for a dancer’s development. Additionally,
the teacher holds power with regard to the assessment process and the
dancers’ future selection to continue at the school or possible rejection
(Evans, 2004).
I have discussed some aspects of the physical experience of ballet and
possible connections with a sense of achievement and motivation. I now
explore aspects of pleasure that the young dancers conveyed through their
verbal articulations and bodily movements, concerning gendered restric-
tions on the ballet body and experienced sensual and erotic pleasures.
Gender Representations
Heterosexual cultural frameworks demand that males perform as subjects

in positions of control and to express emotion therefore signifies as femi-
nine. Given the dominant and prevailing social stigma associated with
dance being a predominantly female art form (Gard, 2003a, 2003b, 2006;
Risner, 2009a, 2009b), a notion preserved since the eighteenth century,
many of the male dancers featured in this study evidenced that they had
to justify their decision to dance. Opportunities in ballet to embrace,
explore and experience the body in ways that differ from narrow defini-
tions of masculinity seemed to be a motivating factor for the majority of
the boys. Gary was aware of cultural limits on the body and the macho
expectations:
‘If you dance you’re different to everyone else. Other boys I mean. Every boy likes
rugby and football but only some like dancing. I like being part of a different club.
It’s cool. You just have to be proud of what you do and then slowly other people come
round to your way of thinking and also see that it’s cool. They’re actually a bit jealous
then as I can drop my guard a bit and be emotional with my body. I get to try things
that they just can’t do with their bodies. I have freedom and permission to try dif-
ferent things I suppose. I don’t always have to do that macho crap!’ (Gary, 15 years)
The ballet dancer’s habitus then can provide a space to formulate a social
identity, which in other gendered spaces may be difficult. Rather than
having to compromise his enjoyment by gender requirements to manage
and project his body according to performances of hegemonic masculinities
(Connell, 2005), Gary has described the enjoyable embodied experience
of ballet where he has ‘freedom and permission’ to discover the wider pos-
sibilities of his male physical body. On the other hand, the boys still have
to position themselves in a gendered hierarchy, as evidenced earlier in this
book. The boys recounted their endurance of pain as prejudice and have
had to negotiate their masculine identity inside and outside of their ballet
habitus: ‘because of ballet being viewed as a feminine activity, all males
who dance, whether gay or straight, are always treated with suspicion and
in danger of being classified as effeminate, girly or not real men’ (Risner,
2009a: 1). As I have already argued, the habitus of ballet is complicated
for the male because of the gendered requirements within it and exter-
nally. There is a tension between efforts from the ballet world to make
ballet macho through the projected image of the traditional heterosexual
male dancer in performance and the wider possibilities of the body that
are offered through ballet schooling. Jon described his perceptions of the
range of bodily possibilities: ‘You need the strength of a rugby player but
get to be graceful and elegant and nimble like an athlete or like a runner’
( Jon, 14 years). The male ballet dancer is in a privileged position as male but
marginalised by prejudiced views that exist in relation to men and dance
(Sanderson, 2001; Gard, 2003a, 2003b; Leihikoinen, 2005; Risner, 2009a,
2009b). Jon’s words suggest that ballet engages boys in learning how to lift
girls but also how to express dynamics of music and movement. It is these
opportunities; to explore the potential and pleasures of the male moving,
134 Chapter 7
dancing body alongside expressive artistry, which creates a different space

of engagement to that of sport.
A young female dancer, Leah (14 years) spoke of the liberating poten-
tial of her body and how she experienced her body as a powerful source
of happiness:
‘It’s really hard to describe, do you know what I mean? … I don’t think that there are
the words … Aah! … It’s, well … I’ll try … It’s like a wave of the sea in my tummy (ges-
tures around stomach). I’m warm all over but not too hot. It’s as though I’m shaking
but I’m still and controlled. I’m thinking really hard but not really concentrating. I
know that the movement is hard and could hurt but it’s easy and doesn’t hurt when
I start moving. I think it’s all in my centre … It’s like I’ve found my centre. I know it’s
the most exciting feeling and I’m really, really happy. Yeah, happy, that’s why I do it.’
Leah’s words resonate with work that asserts that women will invest in
their bodies if they experience them as strong, powerful and a source of
kinaesthetic or sensual pleasure (Scraton and Flintoff, 1992, 2002; Wright
and Dewar, 1997; Flintoff and Scraton, 2001, 2005). Furthermore, oppor-
tunities to experience physical skill and expertise ‘can be empowering for
young women allowing them to resist many of the dominant and limiting
discourses around femininity and gender’ (Garrett, 2004: 223). Anna’s
comments are significant in relation to traditional cultural assumptions:
‘What would you like to do in the future?’ (Angela)
‘I’ll be dancing professionally. I obviously want to be doing ballet but as long as

I’m dancing and performing I don’t mind. A lot of friends outside here talk about
when they want kids and stuff but I have no interest in any of that. I can’t imagine
getting married or having kids … not for a long time anyway, if ever. I’m just going
to concentrate on dancing and do really well at it. My mum says that I’m so focused
but she supports me.’ (Anna, 16 years)
There are similarities to constructions in relation to sports such as football,

rugby and gymnastics here. There are obviously ways in which a form of
distinction from others is created in that every ‘game’ has a habitus, but ulti-
mately, it could be argued that the experiences are the same. According to
Bourdieu the broader social structures operate with a focus on the physical
body and the performing body, which in order to be successful must be

removed from other views of the body and forms of body management, such
as mother, father and so on. Ballet is a short lived and ‘young’ career that
is focused predominantly on youthful bodies, with most dancers retiring
by aged 35 years (Lee, 2002; Roncaglia, 2006), hence dancers do not need
to or want to think about families or children. This is perhaps similar to
sports professionals. So in contrast to traditional expectations where the
obvious ‘feminine script’ is
about women deriving their identity from relationships in domestic situations and
particularly … that all women … want to be mothers … motherhood is proof of
adulthood … Social attitudes and institutions support the assumption that women’s
ultimate role is motherhood (Letherby, 1994: 525)
Anna has no urge to identify with possibly becoming a mother in the future
despite her friends engaging in such conversations. Anna is determined
and focused on her goal to be a professional dancer.
Indeed for the young female dancers, on the one hand they appeared to
wield bodily confidence and control in potentially challenging traditional
ideas in relation to the female body and their physical potential or limit,
through their expression of ballet. On the other hand there was evidence
to suggest that the girls were particularly vulnerable to eating disorders
and were limited to conveying a traditional, idealised ballet aesthetic in the
form of the ballerina. Bourdieu in Masculine Domination (2001) turned
his attention to females practising sport and acknowledged the potential
that such deep engagement has to transform individual perceptions and
understandings of the body:
intensive practice of a sport leads to a profound transformation of the subjective

and objective experience of the body. It no longer exists only for others or … for the
mirror … Instead of being a body-for-others it becomes a body for oneself; the pas-
sive body becomes an active and acting body. (2001: 67)
I have already discussed the ‘gaze’ (Mulvey, 1975) as an objectifying and sig-
nifying force with regard to the presentation and representation of gender
images in ballet during a previous chapter. Bourdieu (2001) regarded the
136 Chapter 7
female sporting body as having potential for generating both a material

and a symbolic challenge to masculine domination and the gaze. However,
Bourdieu (2001) was cautious about this potential subversion to traditional
norms and expectations. Mennesson (2000) for example, in her study of
women boxers reported that although the female sporting body could
generate body-for-self experiences and material change, its images could
also be used to reaffirm and perpetuate accepted gender attitudes.
I observed that some of the young dancers’ were aware of the social
value of the ballet body aesthetic and that they appeared to experience
their own bodies as aesthetically pleasing:
‘I want my body to look good so that I can show off. I want muscles and a six pack.
Ballet makes you look good and it wants you to show off your body so it’s all good.’
(Gary, 14 years)
Furthermore, as Leah stated:
‘I love looking at myself in the mirror, at the shape of my legs, where the muscles are
and how they look in my shoes. I love looking at my slim waist and I love it when
other people comment on how lovely I look. Ballet training has made me like this
which I why I love it so much and why I want to keep this shape.’ (13 years)
In both of these examples, I suggest that there is a strong connection

between the ballet body and identity as a ballet dancer as well as a tradi-
tional gendered identity in terms of aesthetics. The appearance of the body
signifies as a source of pleasure for these dancers but there is also awareness
that an individual’s body may be admired and enjoyed by others. These
dancers expected and appeared to want others to look at their bodies; they
wanted to be seen. In contrast to traditional gender limits on the body,
the female body as well as the male body here are not ‘neutralized’ bodies
(Grotz, 1994) but rather are represented as body confident and positive.
Bourdieu’s conceptual theory as a way of understanding the social
world of ballet remains useful, but the wider argument in relation to the lack
of recognition of bodily pleasures as a factor in participation is neglected, as
it is in wider sport. A focus on purely gendered discourses or explanations
do not necessarily account for these pleasures. For example Pringle’s (2009)
descriptions of male rugby players are read in terms of a male discourse of
pleasure and pain, which may detract from a fuller explanation of the con-
tribution of physiological pleasure, which could be viewed as genderless,
but is most often read through gender. Connell’s (2005), ‘body reflexive
practices’ and Wellard’s (2012) ‘body reflexive pleasures’ are useful as a
means of going beyond such a concentration on gender. I focus the rest of
this chapter on exploring physical, sensual and erotic experiences of the
moving, ballet body.
Sensual Persuasions
The range of physical and emotional sensations experienced in the moving

ballet body that were allied with liberation and motivation could also be
recognised as rich, intense and sensuous, as evidenced by Milan:
‘I’m free when I dance. I love the flow, yeh. I get excited tingles all over my skin
when I try something new ‘cos it’s a risk. You don’t know what might happen. You
could fall over or anything. But then I’m really calm, I feel the skin calm down but
my heart is pumping and then my body makes it all happen. I perform and then I’m
so knackered’ (Laughs). (Milan, 15 years)
The excitement and thrill in trying something new and taking a risk, the
sensation that resonates with touching or stroking the skin, the pumping
heart, the performance and the climax that is described by Milan, is perhaps
a unique account of ballet bodily pleasures. However, such rich description
offers a powerful source of sensual pleasure and motivation to continue.
Similarly, Tracey also recalled physiological reactions and made connec-
tions with her ballet body in motion and the feeling of love:
‘I can’t even describe it … how I feel when I’m dancing … It’s a totally consuming love
in and with my body and an adrenaline high.’ (Tracey, 16 years)
138 Chapter 7
Tracey conveyed her deep involvement and related it to the love of her
body, her body confidence and the chemical reactions in her body that
she correlated with a feeling of ‘high’. Booth (2009) in describing surfing,
considered the broader dimensions of pleasure and discussed ‘moments’ of
pleasure that cause a temporary destruction of the stability of perception.
Although perceptions of pleasurable experiences related to the individual
dancer are of vital importance, pleasure in the case of the young dancers
was more than ‘moments’. Pleasure is also ‘more than just an intrinsic, sub-
jective, highly individual experience’ (Wellard, 2012: 22). It is necessary
therefore to examine the significance of pleasures gained from being with
other dancers in the context of the ballet school.
When I observed the young dancers in the formal ballet classes, I would
go to each of the ballet studios before the ballet class started in order to
watch the young dancers arrive into the class and warm up. I would also
stay after the class had finished for the cooling down session. In the school
in the South of England the girls and boys were taught separately at aged
9, whereas in the school in the North of England the boys and girls were
taught together and were only separated when they were being taught spe-
cific ‘girls’ training’: en pointe and ‘boys’ training’ for example preparing
to lift. In both of the school contexts, I noted that there was often much
physical contact between the young dancers, girls with girls and boys with
boys. In addition in the school in the North of England there was also tactile
response between the girls and boys. This physical contact was exhibited
through tapping or slapping each other to gain attention or as part of cama-
raderie and through touching a range of body parts for example, foot, leg,
knee, inside thigh, lower and upper back, stomach, shoulders, hands, face
and neck. The contact occurred during warm-up exercises, stretches, and
in partner appraisal and support with placement, alignment and balances.
Some young dancers would give each other foot or back massages during
the cool-down sessions or relax with each other by leaning on each other’s
bodies or by lying on the floor with and on each other. Sometimes a dancer
would lie in the lap of another dancer on the floor and one might stroke
the face of the other or play with their hair while they chatted. Some of the
dancers in the school in the North of England would lean on and then lift
each other or engage in chasing and leaping and catching each other. The
connections that I have described between girls and girls, boys and boys and
girls and boys happened within the warm-up or cool-down sessions prior
to the start of the formal ballet class or at the end and during the majority
of the time the teacher was not present. There were no real distinctions in
the types of contact and touching according to gender mix except that a
boy and boy pairing in the school in the North of England seemed to lift
each other more than in other observations and a girl and girl pairing in
the school in the South of England seemed to play with each other’s hair
comparatively more than any of the boys did.
Such comfortable, intimate, sensual interactions between the dancers
are, I propose, a crucial part in developing relationships and in gaining a
sense of belonging to the community of dancers and for community cohe-
sion. The mutual engagement in arriving at the studio early in order to
warm-up and staying after class for cool-down enabled the young dancers
to engage in negotiating meanings about their own body and the bodies of
others. These interactions influenced the individual and the social group
experience of ballet. The social here is not a source of constraint and limita-
tion but a source of membership because being with others offers oppor-
tunity and potential. There is a contradiction at play here though in that I
suggested during a previous chapter that a key part of the social world of
ballet is for the dancer to actively deny or suppress arousal or sexual feelings
concerning being able to manage the situation of other dancers being in
tight fitting clothing that reveal the body and the expected touching and
physical closeness relating to the pas de deux. Conversely, the crucial inter-
actions between the dancers that I observed, involving physical affection;
touching, holding and caressing, I wish to argue should not necessarily be,
although could be equated with, sexual stimulation.
I asked the young dancers about the amount of touching and physical
contact that is involved in learning ballet. Anna (17 years) is worth quot-
ing at length because she explained that the practice of touching and the
physical contact has been replicated over a number of years:
‘I’ve been learning ballet since I was 4 and it’s just normal for your dance teacher to
move your leg, or shoulder or something. It’s the only way you really know what they
mean when they’re asking for something. They can say you’re raising your shoulder or
140 Chapter 7
something when you’re turning but you might not be able to feel that you’re doing it, or
be able to see it ‘cos you’re turning. Because your teacher has always moved or adjusted
your body you find you start doing it to other people when you watch them doing some-
thing. It’s the quickest way you can really communicate what they’re doing wrong ‘cos
it takes a long time to say and it’s like you’re really helping them if you touch them or
move them. I guess ‘cos we’re all just used to touching each other during partner-work
or corrections we automatically touch each other when we see each other and when
we’re warming up and that. I’m really close to the group here so we hug each other and
admire each others’ bodies I suppose. It’s a bit competitive too. I think sometimes it’s a
bit like monkey’s grooming each other in the cool-down time. I do really like watching
other girls dance though. I think ballet makes us all look so lovely – the straps on the
leotards make our shoulders look nice, the leotards have quite high legs so they make
our legs look long, the tights make the legs look a nice shape. I think it’s amazing to
see how we use our arms, legs, hands, face, whatever … We’ve got to get used to people
watching us up close and personal ‘cos that’s what we’re training to do.’
In the way Anna described the visual and physical connections with the bodies
of others, the bodies were being experienced, expressed and anticipated in
a sensual way through which the young dancers could physically and emo-
tionally relate to each other. This norm has stemmed from early and regular
experiences of the teacher having close physical contact with the dancer,
which is embedded as part of the teaching methods within the ballet habitus.
The young dancers were also aware that the close physical contact that
they experienced as ‘normal’ in the location of the ballet studio was not the
same as that which is deemed the norm outside of the ballet school context.
All of the young dancers featured in this longitudinal study participated
in non-residential ballet classes therefore they inhabited and negotiated
other habituses outside the ballet school context. Gary (14 years) clarified
the differences in the expectations of behaviour at the ballet school and at
his mainstream school:
‘Yeah, at first I had to get used to how much people touch you in ballet. With my
other mates we do slap each other, jump on each other sometimes and wrestle and
that but it just happens when you’re mucking around. Here we kind of focus on
the holding, lifting and stuff and we’re meant to touch each other so you find you
definitely touch more with people here. I don’t think my other mates would really
get it and would probably read something into it. If you’re not in it you wouldn’t
kind of understand.’
This regular, physical contact between the dancers and, in particular, the
boys, also resonates with the work of Gard (2000, 2001, 2003a, 2003b,
2006). Gard described how physical contact emerged as central to boys’
experiences and choices in relation to participation in sports. When describ-
ing the ‘ball and all’ tackle in boys’ rugby Gard (2000) argued how this
represented ‘a level of body contact which might indicate intimate, even
sexual contact between the two bodies were it not taking place on the sport-
ing field’ (Gard, 2000: 20). Within white Western heterosexual culture,
intimate contact of this kind particularly between men has been tradition-
ally viewed as unacceptable.
Ballet appeared to offer the young dancers space, time and opportuni-
ties to explore, discover and test bodily relationships and sensual pleasures
through close physical contact. There are possible relational and generative
possibilities in relation to gender in any social setting according to Brown
(2006b). He claimed that: ‘material embodied changes, rising from practice
and then feeding practice in a generative sense can slowly … challenge and
transform the gendered habitus of both the viewer and the viewed (Brown,
2006b: 164). Given the evidence in my data, it is feasible to argue that in
the social world of ballet, the ‘gendered habitus’ (Brown, 2006b) is not as
simple as binaries of gender where femininities are linked with the female
sexed body and masculinities with the male sexed body (Butler, 1990, 2004).
A range of diverse meanings in gender production was apparent from the
young dancers within and around the context of both of the ballet schools,
particularly in the times and spaces when teachers were not present. At the
material level of the habitus, these practices disrupt traditional masculine
and feminine ways of experiencing the body. Such observations suggest that
gender is more diverse than the dominant, traditional, hetero-normative
limiting categorisations of gender. The circuit of ‘body-reflexive-practice’
(Connell, 2005) is complex as it involves moving between the institution-
alised systems, social relations and symbolism to personal practices and felt
sensations in the body. I will now continue to develop notions of pleasures
as felt and evaluated by the young ballet dancers and will return to the idea
of generative possibilities of the gendered habitus as part of the discussion
in the final chapter.
Chapter 8
Pleasure, Power and Perfection
‘I feel that I’m at my best when I’m feeling pain just where I can bear it but
I’m on top of it … At the end of the class or performance, if I’ve felt the
pain but it hasn’t bothered me then I feel so good and I get goose bumps.
It’s sort of fun really and I want the feeling again and again.’
— Lie, 15 years
In a previous chapter, I raised the notion that there may be pleasure and
power to be experienced in enduring pain and I will now examine this
further. To begin with, the body in ballet is determined by its successes but
also by its limitations so when the dancer exceeds their past limitations,
whether in terms of technique, body shape or size, pain threshold or in
conveying artistic intention, they embody the value of achievement, which
is also linked to capital and status. Bodily lived limits are constantly tested
and expanded within the social world of ballet where pain is viewed as a
route to enhancement or development as evidenced in the social construc-
tion of ‘good pain’, ‘nice hurt’ and ‘bad pain’.
In the social context of the ballet class I suggest that a simplistic pain/
pleasure dichotomy is inadequate because bodily limits are explored out
of an apparent desire from the young dancer to do so, in order to move
beyond the normal or previous self. This is motivated by the socially con-
structed need to strive for perfection. Sigmund Freud’s (1920) ‘pleasure
principle’ is worth referencing here. Freud (1920) claimed that people are
generally predisposed to search for pleasure and instant gratification and
seek to avoid pain; there is also an ongoing attempt to transgress the pro-
hibitions imposed on enjoyment and to go beyond the pleasure principle.
The result of transgressing the pleasure principle is not more pleasure but
144 Chapter 8
pain because there is only a certain amount of pleasure that one can bear.
The ‘reality principle’ is the counterpart to ‘the pleasure principle’ and com-
pels people to defer instant gratification and sometimes dictates a denial
of pleasure for the sake of ‘something more dependable even if postponed’
(1920: 10). Georges Bataille (1991) focused on the extreme experiences of
pleasure and pain that are to be found in what he defines as ‘Erotisme’. He
argued that through the ‘fusion of beings’ (both physical and spiritual)
eroticism can create a bond and a community (1991: 23). Roland Barthes
(1976) also described an excess and limitless possibility of experience as
the expression of the inexpressible or ‘jouissance’ or ‘bliss’. ‘Jouissance’ is a
challenging term to define; ‘it is formless … internally erotic, pleasurable
and infantile’ (Claid, 2006: 88). The empirical evidence suggests that ballet,
rather than just a constructed process of symbolism, offers opportunities
within the expression and performance for the effervescence of ‘jouissance’.
Perhaps Tracey’s example of how she feels during a performance illustrates
‘jouissance’ or bliss:
‘It’s like I’ve lost myself totally in that time. I feel a big blood rush all over my body
but I can’t describe anything else really. It’s a big feeling, that’s all I can say. It’s not
really a high because it’s quite calm really but it is exciting. I have talked to some of
the others about it and they have talked about similar things but it’s too hard to put
in words.’ (15 years)
It may be that the young dancers are gaining intense and memorable pleas-
ure from ballet in the forms of the bodily freedoms, mastery of movement
and sensual experiences, which I have discussed earlier in this chapter, and
that the sensations in the physical body, psychological consequences and
important relevance and meaning in the social setting of ballet are strong
and gratifying. Therefore because such positive sensations in the body are
produced and reproduced through the practice of ballet the young danc-
ers believe that the pain is worthwhile. In the performance of ballet the
dancers’ desires are further rewarded:
In ballet, the moment of performing provides the climax: the height of pleasure, the
release of withheld desires, the loss of oneself into another form. This is the reward
for the sweat and tears. (Claid, 2006: 45)
So it seems probable that for the young ballet dancer, the motivation to
increase pain tolerance and to be able to push the boundaries of the body
is significant in order to sustain and maintain their pleasure experiences.
However, is there also a measure of pleasure in the actual experience of the
sensation of pain? Evidence from some of the young dancers seemed to
support the idea that feeling the sensation of pain and controlling pain was
in part empowering as this example from one young dancer Lie illustrated:
‘I feel that I’m at my best when I’m feeling pain just where I can bear it but I’m on
top of it. There is a good pain but I mean when it doesn’t bother me that I could have
blisters, bleeding in my shoes or achy hips, whatever. The best dancer’s are the one’s
who fight against their bodies and win. I want to be the best so you have to focus and
be really strong. I tell myself sometimes, “you’ve just got to do this and then you can
rest’ or ‘it’ll be good for you to toughen up.” At the end of the class or performance,
if I’ve felt the pain but it hasn’t bothered me then I feel so good and I get goose
bumps. It’s sort of fun really and I want the feeling again and again.’ (Lie, 15 years)
As I have already proposed in this book; the young dancers in the context
of ballet schooling were learning to, and were encouraged to, practice the
sensation of pain. The purpose of such practice was not as a warning to the
body, but to silence the body and pain, ignore the pain and use the pain as
a signal to continue working. The latter point I think has further signifi-
cance as it may be that the young dancers are determined to continuously
push the limits of the body, perhaps so that the pleasurable sensations of
freedoms, sensuality, achievement and so on become more apparent. Or
else perhaps being on the edge and holding onto the edge of the pain bar-
rier is able to offer particular physiological and psychological pleasure and
consequently, increased physical and artistic capital and status. Here the
sensations of pain and pleasure do begin to blur or merge. Pringle (2008,
2009), in his Foucauldian reading, related pleasure to excitement, thrill,
danger and violence in rugby. He concluded that the rugby players under-
stood physical pain and violence as pleasurable and motivating. The hidden
and silent pain that is masked by the elegance of ballet where grace, poise
and preciseness are overtly presented yet, in the case of the female dancer,
that the ballet shoes may be stained with blood, comes close to being an
example of self-mutilation and violence.
146 Chapter 8
The notion of enjoying pain or feeling pain as pleasure does move into
the realms of masochism: ‘the tendency to take pleasure (including but
not exclusively sexual pleasure) from one’s own pain and suffering’ (Bale,
2006: 68). However, this suggestion is not unusual in relation to many
other sports and athlete development (Pirie, 1961; Philips and Hicks, 2000)
and alternative or ‘extreme’ sports (Pringle, 2005, 2008, 2009; Lyng, 2008;
Booth, 2009). Pain may be compensated by the body’s natural endorphins
so the similar feeling of ‘high’ felt during the pleasure experiences, which
I have discussed, can also apply to pain (Bale, 2006). The hierarchical
teacher-dancer relationship could also be analysed as one of dominance
(sadism) and submission (masochism) with praise and criticism being used
to encourage physical disciplining. Ballet schooling may hold an addictive
attachment for these young dancers, coaxed by a desire to succeed and
become a professional dancer. For the young dancers; desire for pleasure
and probably pain, alongside fear of failure are always present as forms of
persuasion in the pursuit to become a professional ballet dancer. There
are connections to be made here to Drucilla Cornell’s (1992) concept of
‘the philosophy of the limit’ or power of limitation and the resourcing
interplay of ‘puissance’, the flow of desire and ‘pouvoir’, the channelling of
desire (Deleuze and Guattari, 1983; Pronger, 2002). The context of ballet
schooling offers a site for ‘puissance’ and ‘pouvoir’:
‘I knew that I’d cracked the movement and that I had performed it well and I was
absolutely thrilled by it, but it matters even more and gets me more excited that I
want to try even harder, if my teacher thinks I’ve done well too. I always get correc-
tions and sometimes it feels too much, that I’ll never get any better, that I’m stuck.
Once you get a “good” from her, especially in front of the whole class that feels good
and makes me think “Yes, keep going.” That “good” will keep me going until the next
set of corrections.’ (Leah, 13 years)
Much of what is experienced during ballet schooling appears to be highly

scripted, managed and controlled with the imposed discipline, structure,
repetition and conventions. The less predictable opportunities found in
the freedom of expression and sensual encounters that are experienced by
the individual dancer and in the interactions with the group of dancers in
each of the school contexts were important sources of pleasure. Conceivably
though there may also be an element of intriguing instability in physically

managing pain and negotiating the line between safety and injury. I sug-
gest that there appears to be a reciprocal relationship between pleasure and
pain. This may be recognised as a compulsive search for bodily pleasures
that originate from states of emotional and bodily discomfort, pain and
suffering or the enjoyment of pushing the boundaries of the physical body
and in this sense, the sensation of the pain itself. Or perhaps it is simply a
distorted memory of the experience of pain outweighed by the heightened
pleasures that the young dancers have experienced after all the challenges,
struggles and pains that some of the young dancers have described, which
appear to be exhausting and deeply difficult emotionally.
The intense pleasure-pain power relationships do reveal ballet’s embod-
ied eroticism. Such eroticism is built into the choreography of the pas de
deux where the audience is teased continuously by the real physical bodies
and the illusion and desire that they embody and create. This enjoyment
is experienced by the dancers and the audience through the heightened
tension. In ballet performance male bodies experience the act of desiring
to be desired as an act of power; they can experience pleasure as a macho
body but also as an expressive body. For the male dancer admitting and
submitting to expression of graceful, lyrical qualities as pleasure, perhaps
more as an object of desire, is often associated with passivity and vulner-
ability and offers a more contradictory reading of the performance of
gender. Similarly, it is reasonable to suggest that the female dancers may
be submitting their bodies to the pleasures of moving, being watched and
in feeling beautiful. Their agency may well be most apparent in the holistic
view of the body via pushing the boundaries of their bodies, the pleasure
they gain from their physical potential and the sensation and control of
pain. Female and male ballet bodies change, alter and transform not just
through acting upon their physicality through ballet techniques but they
are also modified as a feeling, emotional and expressive body. Pleasures like
pain must have meanings beyond the immediate experience and are key
factors for sustained commitment to ballet.
The cultural (field) of ballet expects the ballet dancer to express and
convey artistic intention of choreography through ballet technique. Given
that it is the norm for ballet dancers to hide emotional and physical pain and
148 Chapter 8
suffering they learn to present and perform an on stage illusion. Therefore it

could be argued that the young ballet dancers must appear as though they
are enjoying or gaining pleasure from ballet. The dancer is aesthetically valu-
able if they succeed in their performance or aesthetically devalued if they fail.
Pleasures of the body, like pain, do not translate easily into written language
or static image. However, engaging desire, feeling the promise of possibility
and in realising the potential of the body, and the pain, I suggest have appeal
and power for the young dancers. The ‘body reflexive circuit’ (Connell,
2005) of bodily interaction and bodily experience via the socially structured
ballet body fantasy leads to lived limits of the body and consequently bodily
pleasures. Bodily limit as pain in the pursuit of pleasure and perfection are
deeply important components of the habitus and are therefore socially medi-
ated. Put another way, pleasure and pain are key elements in structuring the
relationship of the individual (habitus) to the cultural form (field) of ballet.
Indeed ‘the messy and complex reality’ (Crossley, 2004) in the con-
trolling of desire and agency through painful endeavour becomes, I wish
to argue, the constructed and contradictory politics of pleasure. It seems
that the complex politics of pleasure of bodies is a territory of conflicting
potential vulnerability, oppression and empowerment. It is also important
to consider that the habitus according to Bourdieu, is long lasting, rather
than permanent, generative rather than determining (Bourdieu, 2005: 43)
and therefore there is creative potential for the habitus and for invention and
improvisation. There could then feasibly be agency in ballet bodies in pro-
cess and in the performing product. The young ballet dancers, both female
and male, could potentially turn their apparent submission into power.
Theory of Belief and the Ballet Body
I suggest that the social structures and hierarchy of ballet perpetuates an

unequal system that is dominated by white, middle-class, slender and gen-
dered bodies. The production and reproduction of the ballet dancer’s habi-
tus and gendered ballet body, although differs marginally between the two
institutions and contexts featured in this study, is based on very similar

norms, values and meanings. The bodies are identified and selected through
a rigorous audition process from a young age as ‘naturally talented’ and
‘special’ or ‘unique’, and only these bodies are deemed worthy of access to
ballet schooling. Since only those who have a ‘calling to dance’ are selected,
other, less special bodies are rejected. In this way certain social groups are
exercising power over others. This positioning yields certain bodies as
inferior, lacking, dangerous, deficient and abnormal (Grotz, 1994; Skeggs,
2004). In the process of ‘becoming’ a ballet dancer, ballet technique and
the ballet decorum of respect and politeness become engrained in the body
during schooling as a bodily hexis. This bodily hexis, in turn, becomes the
habitual self, inside and outside the ballet school in relation to mannerisms
and the way one walks, sits, eats and so on. There is a strong relationship
between the ballet dancer’s body and their identity as a ballet dancer. The
ballet body is a symbol of the society or habitus in which it inhabits, but
the young ballet dancer’s ‘theory of belief ’ in the game of ballet (Bourdieu,
1990a) and attached meanings and values, also relates, away from ballet
culture, to broader social structures and contexts. Ballet bodies are viewed
by dancers as having a privileged and distinctive position in society and
are read in particular ways by those inside; ‘a work of art has meaning and
interest only for someone who possesses the cultural competence, that is,
the code, into which it is encoded’ (Bourdieu, 1984: 2). The consumption
of ballet enables the young dancers to become ‘legitimate agents’ (Bourdieu,
1984: 400) and in this way orthodox in being able to view, read, treat and
understand their bodies in a particular way and decipher a code. Patterns
of taste or distaste towards objects of consumption are developed for a par-
ticular cultural purpose with ‘bodily techniques’ (Mauss, 1973) or bodily
hexis (Bourdieu, 1984) and are designed to distinguish the body in terms
of what it represents or symbolises. Consequently ballet dancers as a group
distinguish themselves as being different or ‘better’ than other groups.
Bourdieu was critical of the mechanisms that make such distinctions and
how hierarchy and repetition breeds. ‘I have always been astonished …
that the established order, with its relations of domination, its rights and
privileges and injustices, ultimately perpetuates itself ’ (Bourdieu, 2001:
1–2). I will expand on these points later here.
150 Chapter 8
The ballet aesthetic of beauty and perfection is based on social and

historical constructions of feminine and masculine identities. The ballet
aesthetic is a powerful and pervasive force that is embedded in the culture
(field) of ballet and in the ballet dancer’s desire for and embodiment of an
idealised and gendered ballet body and to perform as an object and creator
of desire. The ‘deepest dispositions of the habitus’ (Bourdieu, 1984: 190)
are revealed in the ‘belief in the body’ (Bourdieu, 1990: 66); the way that
the young dancers view and treat their bodies in the pursuit for the ideal
and imagined body of perfection. The process of construction of the ballet
body involves the young dancers committing to the discourse of ‘natural
talent’ or calling to become a ballet dancer and learning to view their real
flesh-and-blood bodies as a malleable machine to fight with, which can be
manipulated and shaped through discipline, hard work and emotional and
physical pain. This acceptance of pain becomes an unquestioned, taken-
for-granted aspect of the social world of ballet as the agent is caught up in
the game or ‘illusio’ (Bourdieu, 1984). Bourdieu termed this as the paradox
of ‘doxa’ (Bourdieu, 1984). High pain tolerance and effective management
of emotion in the form of resilience is rewarded through approval from
teachers in positions of power and an increase in accruement of cultural,
physical and artistic capital. Capital gains afford power and status in the
competitive context of the ballet class and amongst the social group. The
powerful and seductive discourses of ‘natural talent’ and resilience are in
tension and yet are fused together simultaneously within the ballet habi-
tus and are again examples of ‘illusio’; the self deception necessary to keep
players involved in the game.
The bodily practices in ballet are distinctive in the social world of ballet
and ballet habitus but also create broader understanding as the norms,
expectations and values merge into and feed off the broader social context
and social structures. The self is embedded within the biography: past,
present and future (Holstein and Gubrium, 2000). The explorations of
the lived experiences of the young ballet dancers featured in this book are
probably not that different from young people committed to becoming an
athlete or sportsperson. For example Gearing’s (1999) work on narratives
of identity in ex-professional footballers provides some interesting con-
nections to my own ‘ballet body narratives’ as well as those of the young
dancers featured here. Gearing (1999) found that the past experience of
ex-footballers continued to give meaning to their lives as they moved to
middle and old age. The dancer, just like the footballer, the swimmer or the
gymnast for example has to use their experience and biography as the lens
through which they view the world. They are highly likely then to draw on
their ‘master identity’ (Armato and Marsiglio, 2002) in order to maintain
their place in the social world. Capital has varying effects and exchange
value as it is drawn upon in various contexts and among social groups. The
accruement of physical and artistic capital is crucial to gaining power and
status in the ballet habitus and in this way the young ballet dancers want
to know how to distinguish themselves from non-ballet dancers. Capital
then specifies the nature of the habitus and defines the terrain on which
collective communities and identity form. The concept of ballet dancer
creates a hierarchy that is seductive and compelling; some bodies are simply
considered more special and able than others.
Bodily Relationships
Historically ballet was predominantly a pursuit of the male elite but the
Romantic period changed the nature and focus of ballet as it became
feminised and men were rejected. Key Russian influences and conscious
marketing from the Ballet Russes reinstated men in ballet. What was pre-
served from this historical period was the powerful ballet aesthetic and
separate but complimentary roles in classical ballet: the female icon of
the ballerina and the male athletic, virtuoso dancer. The gendered habitus
of ballet performance; the feminine and masculine with regard to move-
ment vocabulary, technique, narrative, costume and especially the pas de
deux structure ‘inscribes gender difference as an aesthetic virtue’ (Daly,
1987/8: 57) and is recognised as carrying cultural, physical and artistic
capital. The potency and chastity of the public spectacle of the ballet
body in performance is that the body is simultaneously presented to and
distanced from, yet accessible to the audience and this is erotic. Aesthetics
152 Chapter 8
of the ballet body then cannot be properly understood without attention

to such performance. Pleasure-pain relationships exist in this performance
of feminine and masculine identities though; pain as prejudice for the
boys; the pleasure in the permission for the boys to explore the macho
and the expressive body in ballet performances and classes and the pain of
en pointe for the girls; the pleasure of the real physical body creating and
embodying an illusion of beauty and perfection. The voices and experiences
of the young dancers’ suggest that the gendered habitus is not as simple
as binaries. There is some merging of traditional masculine and feminine
behaviours in the space of the ballet school as it appears to offer social
membership as a source of opportunity for all the young dancers, male
and female, to express, explore and test bodily relationships, individually
and with each other.
Politics of the Ballet Body as Process and Product
Bourdieu’s theoretical framework is a way of understanding the social world

of ballet; however, there are tensions between Bourdieu’s social body and
the individual body. The empirical evidence in this study suggests that
the body is constructed but is also a felt body within the social context of
ballet. Bourdieu accounts particularly for what bodies do. The social and
cultural processes inscribe, speak and are manifested in the bodies of indi-
viduals in their thoughts, actions, bodily dispositions and habits so that
they appear natural and automatic. The young dancers’ desires and dreams
are implicated in a matrix of power relations; the ballet dancer’s yearning
to pursue painful pleasures and perfection flows from a practical belief in
the game. Bourdieu’s work does not, however, fully account for the physical
and psychological experiences of felt sensations in the ballet body.
The ballet body can be viewed as an object in ballet practice; however,
the agent’s physical and psychological sensations and experiences are also
important in the development of the ballet body and in ‘becoming’ a dancer.
The empirical evidence denotes that the sensations of pain and the sensa-
tions of pleasure were viewed and experienced by the young dancers as sepa-
rate sensations and experiences at separate times. However, the sensations
do fuse together and have a reciprocal relationship through experiences
related to pleasurable play and at times painful perversion. The fusion of
physical and emotional experiences of pain and pleasure are situated at the
intersection of mind, body, culture and self. Fear, anticipation, panic and
adrenaline rushes can actually be pleasurable, as evidenced in this study, and
particularly with regard to extreme sports such as bungee jumping (Booth,
2009). The ambiguity between pain and pleasure implies that they may
be regarded as complementary and perhaps genderless, emotional states.
The empirical evidence of the sensual, intimate and the erotic experiences;
tactile touching and bodies being embraced, hugged and caressed, are sig-
nificant because pleasurable experiences in academia are largely unspoken.
Furthermore, there is a lack of interpretation or understanding of intimacy
in hetero-normative society. Within this fusion of pleasure and pain in pur-
suit of perfection, within ballet as aesthetic experience and erotic spectacle
and in the relationship of individual lived anticipation, bodily experience
and reflection, there appears to be a persuasion to participate and perform.
I argue therefore that there is a sense of agency and power here for the
young dancer. This ‘body reflexive circuit’ (Connell, 2005) and ‘circuit of
body reflexive pleasure’ (Wellard, 2012) are significant in understanding
the constructed and contradictory politics of the ballet body. Ballet bodies
can experience pleasure and power in pushing the boundaries of the body
and in the fantasy of desiring to be desired.
The ‘creative potential of the habitus and its interaction in the social
world that creates struggle and change or continuity’ (Brown, 2006b: 164)
is evident here because the lived experience is a terrain of contradictions
where dominant ideas and practices could be contested and manipulated
as well as produced (Bourdieu, 2001). Age is also an important factor in
relation to perception of the world; the dancers featured here are young,
developing dancers engaged in non-residential ballet training. The young
dancers were involved in negotiating their growing and changing physi-
cal body and the range of emotions and feelings that this crucial period
154 Chapter 8
of human development brings. The young dancers were also involved in

negotiating the structures, values and meanings of the other social worlds
that they inhabited; each with its own habitus and ‘game’. Each habitus
negotiates between objective structures and practices and therefore each
habitus can provide a structured space and a sense of belonging. As I have
already mentioned, the ballet habitus provides a sensory and stimulat-
ing space away from the mundane, which the young dancers assumed as
their space where they actively engaged in exploration and enjoyment of
the individual physical and emotional body but also the bodies of others
within the group. These practices enabled the dancers to view and treat
their bodies holistically rather than as a lived dualism where the body
was likened to a separate machine that the mind controlled. The shared
meanings and understandings of the body as something that should be
explored, touched and admired is significant to the ballet dancer’s habi-
tus. Perhaps there are generative possibilities within the gendered ballet
habitus (Bourdieu, 2001) but transformative possibilities only exist in the
vision and collusion with the conditions that produce them. The borders
and boundaries of the body are not necessarily clearly bound as there is
a permeability of boundaries of the body but limits and boundaries are
drawn around only what the young dancers are willing or able to rec-
ognise. Distinctions and divisions in relation to the ballet body are not
necessarily simple binaries.
Distinctions and Divisions
As Wacquant (1992) stated, ‘an invitation to think with Bourdieu is of

necessity an invitation to think beyond Bourdieu, and against him when-
ever required’ (1992: xiv). Bourdieu neglected the issue of the moving
body. This book offers a deconstruction of binaries of distinctions and
divisions of the ballet body; what are produced and reproduced are dis-
tinctions of the ballet dancer rather than simple binaries. The distinctive
ballet body aesthetic orientation and bodily hexis is central to the identity
of a ballet dancer and is not just physical but is ingrained in the social and
therefore signifies the culture. However, the ballet dancer does not just
mimic particular beliefs, values and dispositions but actively applies them.
The assumptions are that the values are fundamentally good so the white,
middle-class and heterosexual cultural beliefs and perspectives are legiti-
mised (Skeggs, 1997, 2004; Burke, 2006) via performance. In addition,
the beliefs and dispositions that are produced and reproduced through
the ballet habitus are powerful and persuasive because the body becomes
ballet and is central to understanding ballet. Although it is seductive to
think that ballet dancers are different, unique or have a natural calling to
dance, all bodies are manipulated by the social, processes of becoming,
the development of the habitus related to a particular context and the
bodily hexis. This positioning of the body is embedded and enacted across
a range of different sites and cultural and social practices, for example, in
the case of the ‘natural’ footballer or for any sporting body. The body is
not simply a cultural text but the most readily available surface by which
to convey meaning and emotion as an expression of society. Importantly
though, the body does also have the capacity to express a range of values,
sensuality and power.
Bourdieu’s critique was of perpetuating, hierarchical and privileging
social worlds. The two established ballet schools, one in the North and one
in the South of England, as contexts for the young dancers’ both develop
and benefit from the commodification of the traditional ballet body with
its inherent values through the social hexis, as a cultural symbol. The impli-
cation is that the body is labour power producing further distinction and
reification that affirms their market position. However, it does also appear
that the young ballet dancer may benefit, too, through access to this rei-
fied social world as habitus via maintenance and development of the body.
The young dancers have access to a space where traditional gender roles are
centralised and perpetuated but simultaneously the dancers can explore
and engage with the body in ways that blur the boundaries of distinc-
tions and divisions in relation to masculine-feminine, pleasure-pain and
oppression-empowerment.
156 Chapter 8
Final Word
This book has examined the distinctiveness of ballet culture and, in particu-
lar, four aspects of the young ballet dancer’s embodied identity – habitus,
pain, pleasure and gender – through a central focus on the developing
ballet body. The young ballet dancers have lived and described their desires,
experiences, perceptions and understandings of ballet bodies and notions
of gender, pain, pleasure and perfection. Based on their rich and revealing
narratives, I argue that bodies are a reflection of their habitus. The young
dancers’ aesthetic orientation and presentation of a gendered performing
body was and will continue to be shaped by the social world of ballet and
the pervasive ballet aesthetic. The work has demonstrated application of
a Bourdieusian analytical framework as a means of understanding the
perpetuating social order and construction of the ballet body through the
notion of ‘distinction’ and the relationships between the field of ballet, the
ballet habitus and the young ballet dancers’ accruement of capital in the
production and reproduction of ‘the logic of practice’ of ballet.
Ballet has its historical roots in class based hierarchies. The ballet
dancer’s habitus is produced through dedication to ballet at an early age
as a ‘calling’ and significantly an allegiance to the notion of ‘natural talent’.
A belief in so-called ‘talent’ is a powerful and seductive discourse but sig-
nificantly it is a cultural judgement and a social construction based on
biological determinism and meritocracy. Those selected for ballet training
via an audition process are predominantly white and are from a particu-
lar social class background; middle or upper working class (Wulff, 2001)
and can also meet the cost of the training. The identification of ‘natural
talent’ or innate ability through the audition process declares particular
bodily forms as being distinctive and superior in comparison with others
and this serves as a perfect justification for the rejection of those bodies
not ‘born for ballet’. The ballet habitus legitimises the construction of
certain groups as lacking or inferior and replicates hierarchy through the
ballet aesthetic of beauty and perfection and its gendered idealisation of
the ballet body. Furthermore, I argue that the integral ‘belief in the body’
(Bourdieu, 1990a: 66) relates to the young ballet dancer’s own identity as
a dancer and also, away from ballet culture, to broader social structures
and contexts. The white, middle-class and heterosexual cultural values and
perspectives continue to be perpetuated.
Dominant beliefs about the body are powerfully conveyed during
the repetitive structures and ‘logic of practice’ of ballet schooling via the
ballet teacher in a position of power. The regular ballet class is where ballet
technique becomes engrained in the body and the unnatural becomes
experienced as natural. The purpose of ballet schooling is to acquire an
unconscious ballet habitus, which includes the core values of the culture
of ballet, the construction of a ballet bodily hexis and the performance
of particular feminine and masculine identities. During the competitive
context of ballet schooling it is assumed that the young ballet dancers will
embody the discipline of ballet, endure emotional and physical pain, ‘suffer
for one’s art’ and treat their bodies like a machine. The young ballet dancer
must therefore develop resilience and determination in order to compete for
power and status, accrue capital and fully engage with the ballet body as an
aesthetic project. The powerful discourses of ‘natural talent’ and resilience
are held together simultaneously within the ballet habitus.
Dichotomies of ‘good pain’ and ‘nice hurt’ and ‘bad pain’ are deeply
held beliefs within the culture of ballet although I assert that these terms
are fictive accounts constructed within the practice of ballet to legitimise
pushing the boundaries of the body. The social world of ballet trades on
notions of illusive, transcendent images of bodily perfection, a demand
for a particular size and shape and a bodily aesthetic with an absence of
flesh. The young ballet dancers learn an important ‘rule of the game’; to
constantly scrutinise their own body dressed in tight fitting clothing and
the bodies of others in the ballet studio mirrors for signs of perfection
and imperfection. The traditional culture of ballet has been built upon
the reinforcement of heterosexual and feminine and masculine norms
and in this way ballet demonstrates and reinforces the power of ‘the gaze’
(Mulvey, 1975) and homophobia. The male ballet dancer’s presence in
performance is physically powerful, athletic and macho and the female is
an en pointe fantasy creature. Ballet is a form of artistic self expression but
158 Chapter 8
male artistic self expression does not fit easily with social constructions of
gender; to express emotions is a feminine trait. In the social world of ballet,
the practice of pain is therefore gendered with the young male dancers’
experiencing and negotiating predominantly emotional pain inside and
outside the ballet habitus in the form of prejudice. This prejudice is with
regard to stereotypes where a parallel and connection is made between
dance and homosexuality. For the young female dancers pain is experienced
in a physical way through en pointe. Significantly body power, community
cohesion and identity as a ballet dancer, is enhanced and displayed through
the young dancers actively and knowingly silencing the material body in
pain. It is argued that the sensation of pain as a lived, embodied experi-
ence and the exploration of boundaries and possibilities of the body can
be experienced as a source of power.
Alongside the pain there are also significant and memorable felt bodily
pleasures that have physical and psychological affect for both the individual
body and social group. Considerable meaning is attributed to the moving,
dancing and expressive body, the exploration of potential with regard to
gender representations, sensual experiences and the eroticism of bodily
relationships. The desire to be a ballet dancer means engaging with the
practice of bodily limit as pain and pleasure. I claim that both pain and
pleasure have motivating appeal and power for the young dancers. The
‘body reflexive circuit’ (Connell, 2005) of bodily interaction and experi-
ence via the socially structured ballet body fantasy leads to lived limits
of the body and consequently bodily pleasures. Pleasure and pain are key
elements in structuring the relationship of the individual (habitus) to the
cultural form (field) of ballet. Tensions, contradictions and complexities
in the ballet dancer’s habitus are therefore revealed in the blurring of the
boundaries of the body through the fusion of intense painful and powerful
pleasures that are indeed ballet’s embodied eroticism.
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Index
Aalten, A. 6, 8, 9, 42, 74, 85 Bale, J. 84, 146

Abercrombie, N. 54 ballerina 4, 79, 82, 89, 92, 96–97, 112–116,
Abbott, A., and Collins, D. 58 135, 151
Abra, J. 116 ballet, ballets 1–6, 9–10, 16–17, 41–42,
Abraham, S. 92, 93 45, 60–63, 66, 70–71, 76, 78, 81,
Adair, C. 6, 7, 9 89, 93, 98, 100–101, 103, 107, 110,
adolescence 65, 95, 100, 105, 110, 121 114, 116–117, 120–122, 127, 130,
Adshead-Lansdale, J. 7, 14, 39 132–133, 135, 139, 141, 143–144,
aesthetic, aesthetics, aesthetically 5, 10, 33, 155, 158
65, 71, 76, 78, 86, 92–93, 96–98, aesthetics 1, 6, 7, 9–11, 19, 64, 67–68,
100, 119, 148, 153, 156–157 74, 79, 81, 83, 89, 91, 104, 114, 121,
agency, agents 14, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 28, 123, 128–129, 135, 150–151, 156
34, 35, 50, 123, 147, 148, 149, 150, audiences 11, 12, 92
153 biographies 79
Ahem, D.K., and Lohr, B.A. 86 ballet body, bodies, bodily 6, 8, 10, 45,
Alderson, E. 10 61, 65, 76, 91, 95, 114, 119, 121, 123,
Alexander, J.C. 36, 37 125, 131, 136–137, 148–149, 151–158
Alvesson, M., and Skoldberg, K. 18 aesthetics 71, 136, 155
Anderson, A., and Williams, J.M. 83 narratives 17, 150
Ankerson, R. 56 ballet boys 101–102
anorexia, anorexic, anorexia nervosa 92, classical ballet 5, 39–43, 45, 54,
93, 97, 98, 100 61–63, 67, 75–76, 92, 114, 121, 152
Armanto, M., and Marsiglio, W. 151 companies 8, 40, 70, 92, 94, 100
Archer, M.S. 58 culture 60, 64, 79, 85–86, 90, 95, 102,
artistic, artistic capital, artistry 14, 61, 116, 120, 156–157
63, 75, 76, 77, 78, 79, 107, 116, 121, ballet dancer 5, 6, 9, 11, 15, 17, 18, 42,
123, 128, 134, 143, 145, 147, 150, 151, 54, 60, 62, 75–78, 81–83, 93, 105,
157, 158 110, 112, 117, 119, 121, 123, 125, 136,
Ashley, M. 88 144, 149–152, 155–158
audition 55, 56, 58, 59, 61, 70, 82, 149, 156 decorum 41, 45, 70, 79, 149
habitus 19, 39, 41, 45, 54–55,
Bailey, R. 126, 127 59–61, 80–81, 106, 107, 111,
Bakhtin, M. 11 117, 120–121, 129–130, 133, 140,
Balanchine, G. 7, 66, 92, 114 148, 150–151, 156–158
184 Index
school, schooling 13, 15–19, 40, 45, 55, Bond, K., and Stinson, S. 42, 126
57, 61, 65, 67, 76, 79–80, 83–84, Booth, D. 125, 138, 146, 153
86, 127, 129, 132, 140, 145–146, Bordo, S. 8, 46, 93, 97, 98, 112, 114
155, 157 Bourdieu, Bourdieusian 11–15, 19,
class, classes 1, 2, 3, 6, 45, 62–64, 21–39, 42–43, 45, 53–55, 59–62,
72, 74, 85–86, 115, 117, 130–131, 64–65, 69, 75–76, 78, 80–82,
138, 150, 157 93, 97–100, 109, 116, 120, 123,
teachers 10, 59, 68, 73, 85–86, 157 125, 127, 129, 134–136, 148–150,
styles 40, 64, 75 152–157
technique 5, 40, 41, 54, 63, 74, 75, 83, Bourdieu, P., and Wacquant, L. 13, 14, 15,
123, 129, 131, 157 19, 21, 22, 25, 69
training 5, 9, 55, 59, 64, 66, 67, 70, 73, boy(s) 65, 67, 71–72, 82, 105–111, 115,
78–79, 83–84, 86, 106 132–133, 138–139, 141, 152
balletic 14, 39, 45, 60, 121, 123 Brady, J. 88, 100, 102, 105
Banes, S. 12 Braidotti, R. 46
Barthes, R. 7, 144 Bray, A., and Colebrook, C. 51
Bartky, S.L. 50, 97, 98 Brazel, J.E., and Lebesnok, K. 93
Bataille, G. 144 Bridgwood, A., and Skelton, A. 92
Baum, A. 99 Brinson, P. 7
beauty, beautiful 6, 9–11, 64, 69, 76, 79, Brinson, P., and Dick, F. 42, 83, 86, 87, 92
81, 96, 104, 112, 114–115, 129–131, Bronhorst, P. 92
150, 152, 156 Brown, D. 32, 104, 107, 109, 141, 153
aesthetic 60, 67 Brown, I. 73
Becker, G. 108 Buckle, R. 77
belief 13, 25, 149–150, 152, 155–157 Buckroyd, J. 55, 59, 63, 66, 78, 85, 92, 93,
Bendelow, G. 119 100
Bendelow, G., and Williams, S.L. 106 bulimia 92
Benn, T., and Waters, D. 6, 9, Bull, D. 89
92, 93, 98 Burke, P.J. 155
Bentley, T. 79, 88 Burstyn, V. 115
Berger, J. 111 Burt, R. 7, 102, 107, 109
Bergum, V. 119 Bury, M. 108
Biddle, S. 126 Bussell, D. 67, 79, 88, 89, 90
Bloch, M. 18 Butler, J. 8, 46, 76, 110, 117, 141
body, bodies, bodily 12, 14–19, 21, 23,
27–29, 31, 33–35, 42–43, 47–53, 57, Calhoun, C. 21
59, 60, 62–64, 66–67, 70, 72–75, capital, cultural capital 11, 14, 18–19, 21,
77–78, 82, 84–90, 92–93, 97–100, 25, 30, 33–34, 39, 61, 71, 75, 81, 98,
102–103, 105, 110–113, 115, 117, 109, 111, 116, 123, 129, 131–132, 143,
122, 127–130, 132–135, 138–141, 151, 156–157
143–147, 150 Carmichael, K. 84
Index 185
Carter, A. 14, 39 Deem, R., and Gilroy, S. 42, 126

Carter, K. 114 Deleuze, G., and Guattari, F. 146
Claid, E. 6, 9, 10, 11, 79, 111, 112, 117, Denzin, N.K. 108
121, 144 Descartes, R. 46
classical ballet see under ballet Desmond, J.C. 14, 39
Cohen Bull, C.J.C. 6, 31, 40, 42, Distinction, distinctive, distinctiveness 13,
commodification 155 21, 33, 34, 59, 65, 128, 134, 149, 150,
Connell, R.W. 8, 32, 103, 105, 107–108, 154, 155, 156
115, 118, 133, 137, 141, 148, 153, 158 La Domination Masculine 32
construct, constructed, construction, Douglas, M. 8, 117
Constructionalist body, construc- doxa 25, 26, 120, 150
tive 1, 19, 45, 47, 51–52, 57, 81, Dyer R. 111
83–85, 90–91, 94, 107, 111, 117, 119,
121, 123, 127, 131, 134, 143–144, Eagleton, T. 26, 120
148, 150, 152–153, 156–158 embody, embodied, embodied identity,
Cope, E. 7 embodiment, embodying 5, 8,
Copeland, R., and Cohen, M. 9 13–15, 18–19, 29, 33, 35, 39, 45,
Cornell, D. 146 52–54, 61–66, 71, 79, 81–83, 86,
corps de ballet 40 91, 103, 109, 121–122, 133, 141, 143,
Coyle, D. 56 147, 150, 152, 156, 158
Crawford, J. 110 Embrey, L., and Rose, E. 42, 126
critics 12, 36 emotion, emotional, emotionally 14, 19,
Crossley, N. 13–14, 22, 24–25, 30, 36–39, 42, 52, 54, 62, 74, 78–81, 83, 97,
62, 148 100, 107–108, 117, 119, 125, 127,
Csikszentmihalyl, M. 127, 128 128, 132–133, 137, 140, 147, 150,
Csordas, T.J. 90 153–155, 157, 158
culture, cultural 15, 18, 23, 29, 40, 42, 45, 47, empirical 14, 144, 152, 153
51, 57, 61, 63, 65, 76, 77, 82–84, 89, empowering, empowerment 126, 134,
91–92, 98–99, 107, 113–114, 129– 145, 148, 155
130, 132, 134, 147–150, 152, 153, 155 Ericsson, K.A. 56
Curry, T.J. and Strauss, R.H. 83 Ericsson, K.A., and Charness, N. 56
erotic, eroticism, erotisme 132, 137, 144,
Daly, A. 7, 12, 102, 113, 152 147, 151, 153, 158
dance, dancer, dancers, dancing 8, 12, 16, ethnographic, ethnography 14, 15, 19
19, 22, 33, 34, 39, 40, 41, 43, 45, Evans, J. 76, 126, 132
50, 53, 55–59, 61, 63–69, 71–74,
79–80, 85–92, 94–104, 106–109, Farrell, S. 89
111, 114–116, 118, 120, 122, 127–135, Fawkner, H.J. 83
138–141, 143, 145–148, 153–154 Feathersone, M. 96
Davies, B. 107 female, feminine, feminised, feminist,
De Mille, A. 88 femininities 8, 31, 32, 35, 46, 51,
186 Index
53, 57–58, 60, 64–65, 69, 77, 79, 101–103, 107, 114, 119, 126, 128,
91–92, 97–101, 104–105, 107–108, 132–137, 139, 141, 147–148, 150,
111–113, 115–116, 118–119, 132, 134– 152–156, 158
136, 141, 145, 147–148, 150–152, Gere, D. 12
155, 157, 158 Giddens, A. 108
Ferber, A.L. 17 Gilborn, D., and Youdell, D. 59
field 13–14, 21, 24–26, 34, 40–41, 56, 61, Gilroy, S. 42, 126
63, 66, 69, 121, 147–148, 150, 156, girl(s) 65, 67, 77, 82, 104–105, 107–110,
158 112, 114–117, 133, 138–140, 152
Fisher, J. 103 Goffman, E. 8, 117
Flintoff, A., and Scraton, S. 42, 126, 134 Goldberg, M. 97
‘flow’ 127, 128 Gordon, S. 75, 100
Fonteyn, M. 66, 77, 78, 79 Gray, K.M., and Kunkel, M.A. 6, 112
Foster, S.L. 6, 7, 73, 113 Green, J. 126
Foucault, Foucauldian 7, 12–13, 34, Greenwood-Parr, M., and Oslin, J. 126
47–51, 82, 97, 145 Grenfell , M., and James, D. 21
Fowler, B. 21, 24 Greskovich R. 77
Fox, K.R. 126 Grosz, E. 53, 136, 149
Fraleigh, S.H. 114
Fraleigh, S.H., and Hanstein, P. 7, 14, 39 habilis, habitus, habitute 12, 14, 15,
Francis, B. 65, 70, 107 21–43, 53, 62, 65, 69, 71,
Freeman, J. 57 78, 79, 82, 93, 103, 109,
Freud, S. 143 118, 125, 134, 141, 149,
Frosch, J.D. 15 152–155
Haight, H.J. 92
Gaffney, A. 85 Halberstam, J. 8
Gallagher, S. 52 Hamera, J. 127
Garber, G.E., Stankiewicz, M., Sandell, R. Hamilton, L.H. 6, 9, 77, 99, 100
and Risner, D. 103 Hamilton, L.A., and Hamilton,
Gard, M. 42, 102, 104, 106, 107, 109, 110, W.G. 42, 78
126, 132, 133, 141 Heller, K.A. 59
Gard, M., and Meyenn, R. 105, 106, 118 Helm, B.W. 125
Gardner, H. 59 Hertz, R. 8, 117
Garner, D.M. 93 Hewlett, T.E. 46
Garner, D.M., and Garfinkel, P.E. 93 hexis 13, 29, 31, 61, 64–65, 71, 75, 79, 121,
Garrett, R. 42, 93, 126, 134 123, 149, 155, 157
Gautier, T. 112 Hoffman, D.E., and Tarzian, A.J. 119
Gearing, B. 150, 151 Holstein, J.A. and Gubrium, J.F. 150
gender, gendered, genderless 6–8, 14–15, Howe, D. 83, 105, 118
19, 21, 31–32, 39, 41, 45, 50–51, Howe, D., Davidson, J.W. and
53, 58, 61, 70–71, 77, 79, 82, 98, Slobada, J.A. 57, 60
Index 187
Hume D. 52 Lees, S. 107

Hutton, L., Bridgwood, A., and Letherby, G. 135
Dust, K. 92 Levinson, J. 9
Liederback, M., and Compagno, J.M. 42,
ideal, idealised 1, 11–12, 76–77, 82, 89, 91, 83, 86, 87
95, 99, 103, 112–113, 121–123, 135, Leihikoinen, K. 133
150, 156 lived experience(s) 8, 61, 81, 94, 122, 127,
identity, identities 12, 18, 45, 47, 150, 153, 158
50, 55, 61, 71, 72, 81, 103, Lock, R. 119
104, 108, 110–111, 126, 133, Loland, S. 78, 122
135, 136, 149, 150–151, 155–158 longitudinal 15
illusio 25, 150 Lyng, S. 146
Ingold, T. 34, 53
injured, injury 42, 54, 82, 84–86, 88–89, Mac an Ghaill, M. 70
102, 105, 106, 107, 147 McAuley, E. 126
McDermont, L. 42, 126
Jackson, J. 53 McLean, A.L. 114
Jagger, G. 8 McMurrary, N.E., and Summers, R.J. 83
Jenkins, R. 21, 37 McNamara, J. 18
jouissance 144 McNamee, M. 126
McNay, L. 31, 32, 35
Kadel, N.J. 7 McNeill, W.H. 42, 126
Keaney, E. 92 McRobbie, A. 42, 126
Kent, A. 88 Mainwaring, L.M., Krasnow, D., and
Kirkland, G ., with Lawrence, G. 42, 88, Kerr, G. 83, 86, 87
92, 96, 100, 114 Maivorsdotter, N., and Lundvall, S. 127
Kitcher, P. 46 Malbon, B. 130
Koutedakis, Y., and Sharp, N.C.C. 46, male, masculine, masculinised, mascu-
75, 83, 86, 87, 115 linities, masculinity 8, 31–32, 60,
Koutedakis, Y., and Yamurtas, A. 92 64–65, 69–70, 77, 79, 91, 98–111,
Krasnow, D. 78 113, 115, 118–119, 130, 132–133,
Krasnow, D., and Kerr, G. 83 136–137, 141, 147–148, 150, 152,
Krasnow, D., Kerr, G., and 155, 157–158
Mainwaring, L. 83, 86, 87 Masculine Domination 135, 136
Mauss, M. 8, 23, 53, 82, 117, 149
Lane, J.F. 21 Melzack, R. 90
Laws, H. 83, 86, 87, 100 Melzack, R., and Wall, P. 90
Lazarus, R.S. 83 Mennesson, C. 136
Le Grange, D. 93 Merleau-Ponty, M. 52, 53, 67, 74
Leder, D. 47, 51, 82, 91 Messner, M. 115
Lee, C. 135 Miller, J. 46
188 Index
mind/body 46, 73, 153 phenomenal, phenomenological,

mirror 96, 97, 122, 130, 136, 157 phenomenology 19, 22, 45, 51–52,
Mitchell, C.A., and Reid-Walsh, J. 114 67, 74
Moesch, K. 56 Philips, M., and Hicks, F. 146
Monoghan, L. 14 physical, physical capital, physique, physi-
Morris, G. 8, 73 cally 11, 14, 18–19, 33, 39, 42, 50,
Mulvey, L. 111, 113, 135, 157 54, 58, 61–63, 74–79, 81–83, 86,
89–90, 95–96, 98–100, 102–103,
narratives 15, 16–17, 19, 47, 150, 156 105–106, 113–114, 116, 118–120,
naturalistic 19, 45–46, 52, 67 123, 125–135, 137–141, 144–147,
natural talent, naturally talented 45, 56, 150–155, 157–158
58, 60–61, 73, 79, 149–150, physiological 46, 84, 125, 127, 129–130,
156, 157 132, 137, 145
Newman, B. 79, 121 Pickard, A. 55, 68, 76, 93, 95, 98, 99, 108,
Nixon, H.L. 83, 92, 105, 118 112
Nordera, M. 101 Pirie, G. 146
Novack, C.J. 6, 7, 9, 99, 114 pleasure, pleasures, pleasurable 14–15, 19,
Nunes, N.M.A. 116 42, 74, 78, 123, 125–132, 136–138,
141, 143–148, 152–153, 155–156, 158
Ollis, S. 56 Plummer, D. 107
pointe, en pointe 2, 3, 60, 67, 83, 112,
pain, painful 14–15, 19, 42, 74, 78–91, 97, 114–117, 138, 152, 157–158
101, 105–107, 111, 115–122, 133, 137, Porter, R. 46, 88
143–148, 150–153, 155–158 pouvoir 146
positive pain 84–85 practice, (logic of/theory of ) practice,
Paprizos, A.L. 86 practise, practising 14, 21, 31–35,
participant observer 15 39, 42, 45, 47–48, 54, 60–63,
pas de deux 41, 104–105, 111, 139, 147 69–70, 73–75, 82–83, 95, 97, 101,
Penedo, F.J., and Dahn, J.R. 127 107, 119, 122–123 129–130, 139,
perfect, perfection, perfecting 6, 11, 19, 141, 144–145, 153–157
60, 67–69, 74–75, 79, 81, 89, 96, Pringle, R. 105, 118, 125, 131, 145, 146
98, 104, 112, 114, 117, 119, 121, 131, Prior, N. 36, 126, 136
143, 148, 150, 152–153, 156–157 Pronger 125
perform, performance, performing, per- psychological 93, 126–127, 129–130,
formativity 11–12, 19, 29, 45, 59, 144–145, 152, 158
62–63, 65–67, 69, 75–79, 81, 84, puberty, pre-pubescent 99–100, 105
89, 91, 95, 99, 103–104, 108–109, puissance 146
117–118, 122, 125–126, 128, 130,
133–135, 137, 143–145, 147–148, Radnor, H., Koshy, V., and Taylor, A. 59
150, 152–153, 155–157 Redding, E. 57
Perleth, C. 59 Redding, E., and Wyon, M. 7
Index 189
reflective, reflexive, reflexivity, (body) socialised, sociological, socialisation,

reflexive practices 18–19, 53, 74, sociology 15, 21–23, 41, 51, 54,
108, 110 62, 83
regulated liberties 35 Soloman, R. 83, 86, 87
Rich, E., and Evans, J. 93 Sosniak, L.A. 56
Riley, Griffin and Morey 130 Stacey, J.M. 7
Risner, D. 42, 102, 104, 107, 109, 126, 127, Stinson, S. 6, 9, 126
132, 133 Stokes, A. 104, 112
Robbins, D. 21 Strauss, A.L. 108
Roderick, M. 83, 105, 118 structure, structured, Structuralist 14,
Roessler, K.K. 83, 119 22–23, 26, 29, 33–34, 37, 43, 55, 57,
Roncaglia, I. 135 62, 82, 84, 90, 128, 131, 134, 146,
Rust, F. 7 148–150, 154, 157–158
suffer, suffering 78, 81, 121, 123, 146–148,
Sanderson, P. 133 157
Sassatelli, R. 14 Sundgot-Borgen, J. 92
Schnitt, J. Mand Schnitt, D. 92 Swartz, D. 21
Scraton, S. and Flintoff, A. 42, 126, 134 Sykes, J. 73
Segal, L. 102 symbolic power 28
sensual, sensuous, sensuality 132, 134, 137, symbolic violence 28
139, 140–141, 144–146, 153, 155, 158
sexuality 11, 50, 51, 53, 100, 102, 103, 110 Tajet-Foxell, B. 86
Seymour, L., with Gardner, P. 88 talent, talented 56–57, 59–60, 69–70
Shan, G. 110 technical, technique, techniques of the
Shearer, M. 92 body 23, 39, 53, 59, 66, 68, 73–77,
Sheets-Johnson, M. 8, 53 79, 82–83, 86, 90, 101–102, 121–123,
Shilling, C. 14, 34, 39, 47–48, 50–51 129, 131, 143, 147, 149, 152, 157
Shusterman, R. 21 Theberge, N. 42, 126
Sibley, A. 79, 89, 121 Thomas, H. 7, 14, 39, 99
Simmel, L. 46 Thomasen, E., and Rist, R.A. 62
Simonton, D.K. 59 Tremblay, M. 126
Skarderud and Rodgers 92 Tucker, R. and Collins, M. 57, 59
Skeggs, B. 33, 41, 59, 65, 149, 155 Turner, B.S. 8, 14, 39, 51, 97, 98
Sloboda, J., and Howe, M. 56
Smith, G. 14 Van Camp, J. 12
Smith, M.J. 47 Van Rossum, J.A. 56
Sober, W. 46 Vincent, L.M. 6, 9, 114
social world of ballet /world of ballet 5, Volinsky 9
11–12, 18–19, 33, 54–55, 59, 62, 64,
76, 78, 80, 90, 94, 98, 100, 116, Wacquant, L.J.D. 8, 14–15, 39, 154
120, 125, 131, 150, 157 Waddington, I. 83
190 Index
Wainwright, S.P. 8, 108 Wolff, J. 6, 7

Wainwright, S.P., and Turner, B.S. 42, 54, Wolman, R. 92
63, 90–92 Woodward, K. 50
Wainwright, S.P. Williams, C., and Woolen, P. 7
Turner, B.S. 42, 54, 63, 91–92 Wright, L.J.M. 126
Walters, J., and Gardner, H. 108 Wright, L.J.M., and Dewar, A. 42, 126, 134
Warren, G.W. 62 Wulff, H. 8, 40–41, 58, 75, 156
Watson, J. 8, 46
Welk, G. 126 Yannakoulia, M., Sitara, M., and Matalas,
Wellard, I. 118, 129, 131, 137–138, 153 A.L. 92
White, P.G. 83, 118 Young, I. 42, 126
Whitson, D. 42, 126 Young, K. 83, 98, 105, 118
Wilmore, J.H. and Costill, D.L. 46 Youskevitch 102
Wilson, E.O. 46
Winsley, R., and Armstrong, N. 126 Zieglar, A. and Heller, A. 59

Angela Pickard, Ballet Body Narratives Pain, Pleasure and Perfection in Embodied Identity

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Angela Pickard, Ballet Body Narratives Pain, Pleasure and Perfection in Embodied Identity

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Ballet Body Narratives

Pain, Pleasure and Perfection in

Ballet Body Narratives

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Cover image © Maksim Šmeljov – fotolia.com

ISBN 978-3-0343-1786-3 (print)

© Peter Lang AG, International Academic Publishers, Bern 2015

All rights reserved.

This publication has been peer reviewed.

Ballet, Bodies and Becoming

I have become a dancer through a process of construction that began in

through a regime of restricted food intake from about age 12 onwards.

classes. I was doing a lot of ballet at this time so I had to be organised

Ballet, Dance and Body Studies

The body is of paramount importance in ballet. The body matters in ballet,

in terms of body symbolism (Hertz, 1909; Douglas, 1966, 1973), ‘techniques

offers some insight into the vulnerability of professional ballet dancers.

The Ballet Aesthetic

set vocabulary and mathematical virtuosity of the language embellish the

Ballet and Bourdieu

I have used Pierre Bourdieu’s conceptual schema as a way of thinking about

power is embedded in discourses and the concepts of discipline and resist-

within a network of ties, obligations and duties; however, as Shilling (1993)

Ballet Body Narratives

This book is the outcome of a longitudinal, sociological ethnography. I

The Young Dancers

Alongside an investigation of the embodied identity of young ballet

My own background and current experience in dance, my interests and my

Ballet, Body and Bourdieu

In this chapter I examine Pierre Bourdieu’s conceptual framework. I begin

Bourdieu’s Conceptual Schema

There is a great deal of critical appraisal of the work of Pierre Bourdieu.

In order to overcome the agency-structure dualism, Bourdieu developed

According to Bourdieu, societies are differentiated into interlocking fields.

because they operate at the level of the unconscious or semi-conscious.

The concept of field is inseparably bound to that of habitus. Habitus com-

On the one hand, each individual’s habitus will be different as no two

belongs to a group or variety of groups and develops his or her habitus in

frequent repetition of acts. These acts become a fundamental and intimate

Capital is anything that counts, however tacitly, as afforded with an exchange

– learning, teaching, creating, performing and watching’ (Cohen Bull,

Bourdieu and Gender

Although gender is a key theme throughout this book, here I summarise

in a subordinate position and excluded from masculine privilege; this

I am interested in how the structures within the social world of ballet

Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste

In his study Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste (1984)

The Logic of Practice

an understanding of the body. He saw time as involving ‘a practical ref-

However, it is important to recognise that just because individuals do

However, Bourdieu’s conception of habitus is not about blind adherence

Bourdieu and Dance

The Field of Classical Ballet

The classical ballet world is considered to be a distinctive and exclusive world

secretaries. A ballet production is the combined product of dancers, chore-

The Ballet Dancer’s Habitus

but as at this point I wish to allude to what I consider to be two signifi-

and therefore treat their bodies. Bourdieu’s critique was of a perpetuating

Thinking through the Body

As the body is of paramount importance in ballet, it is pertinent therefore to

The Naturalistic Body

1994). Some reactionary politicians have seized on socio-biological accounts

The Social Constructionist Body

moulding human conduct. He argued that it is under disciplinary power