White swans are good. Black swans are evil. In a traditional Swan Lake, dancers dust themselves with pale powder. The perfect ballet dancer is slender, long-limbed and definitely white.
But talented black dancers are fighting the stereotyping of the art form and breaking down the barriers of racism in the conservative art form.
In Britain Cassa Pancho runs Ballet Black, a company of black dancers and Asian dancers and a ballet school for children of all backgrounds in West London.
Pancho founded the company because she was ‘driven to distraction’ by the stereotypes and myths she heard about black dancers even though she personally does not ‘look black’.She cites stereotypes such as ‘black women have big bottoms’, ‘black women have feet that are unsuitable for pointe work’ and even ‘black people don’t want to do ballet’.
‘Being of mixed-race parentage (Mum’s a Brit, Dad’s from Trinidad) the issue of the lack of black people (women in particular) in ballet has always been a bit of a puzzle to me. I mean – where are they? And that’s not a cue for violins for the poor, hard-done-by black people, or me thumping a tub, but a genuine query. Is it merely a question of no interest? I think not. Perhaps the archetypal image of the ballerina is one that is just too hard to get past for some black dance students.’
Pancho is not the first dancer to try to break down these barriers. Back in 1955, before the civil rights movement, African-American dancer Arthur Mitchell made history when he was selected for the New York City Ballet.
The great choreographer George Balanchine wrote roles specifically for Mitchell, such as the pas de deux in Agon and the role of Puck in A Midsummer Night’s Dream but while that gave Mitchel tremendous profile it did not get past the absence of black faces in the corps de ballet.
Mitchell went on to found the Dance Theatre of Harlem in 1968, when he told Dance Magazine that he intended to ‘disprove the myth that Negroes can’t do classical ballet’. The company’s mission is to present a ballet company of African-American and other racially diverse artists who perform the most demanding repertory at the highest level of quality.
But while black dancers are prominent in many contemporary dance companies and companies like Harlem and Ballet Black have provided new pathways for black ballet dancers, traditional ballet companies have been slow to cast black-skinned dancers.
Many argue the aesthetics of ballet depends on the homogeneity of the dancers and that a black dancer breaks up the line. A correspondent to the New York Times column The Ethicist typified this point of view when she wrote, “Last Christmas, I took my grandchildren to The Nutcracker, a ballet I love. My enjoyment was severely marred by the appearance of a black snowflake and then, even worse, a black Snow King. The aesthetic incongruity was inconceivable. The entire ballet was spoiled. It is analogous to a one-legged midget playing Tarzan. Does this make me a racist?’ The paper’s Ethicist Randy Cohen responded that, yes, the correspondent’s response was racist. Cohen says charges of ‘aesthetic incongruity’ are based on perceptions of race because viewing ballet is always about suspension of disbelief. ‘Remember, we’re talking about dancing snowflakes here, yet none of the dancers were crystalline specks of frozen water.’
Leigh Witchell, admnistrator of the online ballet forum Ballet Alert sees the lack of black dancers are in part an economic issue, a reflection of the overall disadvantage blacks still suffer in many countries. ‘Ballet is expensive to train with very little financial gain possible. I’m not denying the racial component, but the divide is as much economic as racial. How much are a year’s worth of pointe shoes for training? Or ballet lessons? Without subsidy, it’s out of reach for anyone out of the upper middle class.’
Writing in the Guardian Sarah Marsh and Olivia Goldhill note there are only two black dancers out of 64 in the English National Ballet and four out of 96 in the Royal Ballet. Women dancers seem to be further disadvantaged with the black female body type seen as further from ballet’s ideal than the male.
Christopher McDaniel, a black dancer at Los Angeles Ballet says casting opportunities are often limited for black dancers. “I’m lucky to have directors who cast me on ability. But a lot of black men are cast in full-mask roles, like the Mouse King or the wolf in Sleeping Beauty. It’s also common for black men to be cast in aggressive parts,” he told the Guardian.
Similarly black women dancers say they are often cast in exotic or athletic character roles but not in the princess parts. Pancho hopes to explode those myths and provide a pathway where young black dancers can grow up to be good swans and sugar plum fairies.
