What Effect Does Being Trained and Socialized as Female Have on Nonbinary Ballet Dancers?
Even five years ago, it would have been difficult to imagine that there would be a number of openly nonbinary dancers at prominent ballet companies. The image of a young, talented dancer who, after coming up through the “men’s” track, now performs in both pointe shoes and as the supporting partner in slippers in a fuller reflection of their gender identity has become synonymous with the phrase “nonbinary ballet dancer.”
Paradoxically, this well-deserved celebration has unwittingly replicated a phenomenon familiar to most nonbinary and gender-expansive individuals: It has illustrated nonbinary identity as being just one thing, when its expressions are as many, varied, and unique as the individuals who identify as such. It overlooks, in particular, nonbinary artists who were trained and socialized as female dancers—a very different proposition in the hyper-competitive, predominantly female world of ballet. What impact has that upbringing had on these artists’ identities, and why have they been less visible in the professional ballet world?
The Pressure to Conform
“In every class of little ballet kids, there’s 20 little people being socialized as girls and maybe one little person being socialized as a boy,” says Katy Pyle, the dancer, choreographer, and educator who founded Ballez, a company dedicated to introducing lesbian, queer, and transgender people and perspectives into the ballet canon. That disparity can heighten the pressure to conform for dancers who are trained and socialized as female.
“I wanted to follow all the rules, be unproblematic, and just get through the school-to-company pipeline,” says Kiara DeNae Felder, 33. The Les Grands Ballets Canadiens soloist identified as queer in terms of their sexual orientation several years before arriving at her nonbinary identity during the pandemic pause. “Ballet has pretty rigid gender standards,” they note, “and there’s an overarching heteronormativity.” It wasn’t until after Ruby Lister’s apprentice year at New York City Ballet, when Lister was hired into the corps, that Lister brought up their nonbinary identity. When their “Meet the Dancer” page went up on the company’s website in April 2022, they asked that it be updated to use they/them pronouns instead of she/her, and to not refer to them as “Ms.” Lister. “Then it was like, ‘Oh, we didn’t know, now we’re going to tell everyone that works with you,’ ” Lister, now 22, recalls.
Dancers socialized as girls “are told that they’re replaceable, they’re not important, they need to fit in,” Pyle notes. “Whereas if you come into ballet class and are perceived as a boy, you are special, you are unique, and you can be different because we’re desperate to have you here.” The levels of self-confidence that result from this different messaging have ripple effects, largely reflected in the proportion of men who historically end up at the front of the room as choreographers and directors in their own right. Within ballet, it might also be behind the relative invisibility of queer women and nonbinary dancers who were assigned female at birth, even as gay men have become largely accepted. Dancers perceived as women have less leeway than their male counterparts, and that extends to openness about queer identity.
Out in the Studio
As understanding of nonbinary identities has emerged into the mainstream and individual dancers have self-advocated, some ballet companies have begun to make their studios more welcoming and affirming spaces. At Ballet Zurich, for example, staff are not only learning and using dancers’ pronouns but also ensuring that guest choreographers and stagers are made aware before they are in the studio, taking the onus off the dancers to begin the conversation. The language used in classes and casting notices is also shifting in parts of the ballet world, referring to “dancers in pointe shoes and slippers,” or “the supporting partner,” rather than defaulting to “women” and “men.” And at some companies, casting has also expanded to include whichever dancers can meet the technical requirements, regardless of gender.
Still, mistakes happen. Ballet Zurich soloist Max Richter, 27, is understanding when they’re misgendered in the studio, particularly when they’re playing a female character or working with someone new. “My work self operates a little bit differently than my private life self,” Richter says. “At work, when it doesn’t happen, you know people are trying, but it’s confusing.” Lister acknowledges the privilege they have in “passing” as a cisgender woman, but they do sometimes get frustrated with colleagues who are the same age as them. “Usually I’ll bring it up later,” Lister says, “to be like, ‘If you use the correct pronouns, it makes it easier for so-and-so at the front of the room, and I’d really appreciate it.’ If we work together for a while, they get it.”
Unsurprisingly, Lister has found the most gender euphoria in the studio when they’ve felt affirmed and respected in their identity. Working with Omar Román de Jesús on Love Me While I’m Here for BalletCollective, “a lot of that euphoria had to do with the people in the room, not necessarily the type of movement I was doing,” they reflect. “The person at the front of the room was queer, and the people dancing with me were friends who respected my pronouns, and it was something being created on me—so I could do anything, and it would just feel like me.”
“I feel that any role I originate is kind of nonbinary,” Richter echoes, “just because if it’s a collaborative process, I’m really being myself and putting myself out there pretty vulnerably.” They recall when they first worked with Cathy Marston at Houston Ballet, collaboratively creating the role of the angel in her work Summer and Smoke: “I felt a gender euphoria that I hadn’t felt before because it was so personal.” (Richter feels a particular connection to the idea of angels being genderless, and even has a tattoo of the word “angel.”) But while working on the role of Cecilia in Marston’s Atonement at Ballet Zurich, “Even though it wasn’t technically a nonbinary character, I still felt really affirmed,” Richter notes. “I feel like I can really be myself in her process.”
Performing Gender
For all dancers, the portrayal of a character’s gender onstage is, ultimately, a performance. “The black-and-white, binary definitions of gender that we were trained to perform—they’re not really representative of most people,” Pyle points out. “There are some people who feel really happy and comfortable inside of these explicit roles. But most people—even cis people—have some part of the definition of femininity, or the definition of masculinity, that they’re uncomfortable with.”
So maybe it’s unsurprising that Felder, Lister, and Richter each—separately and without prompting—liken performing explicitly female roles onstage to performing in drag. “There’s a tradition that we enjoy and take part in,” Lister says, “but it’s just that: It’s a role. It’s a facet. It doesn’t have to affect my identity. All sorts of different people can exist and play these roles that we do. We have all these other parts.”
Detaching their identity from how they are perceived by the audience is of course easier said than done. “When you’re staring at yourself in a leotard and tights in a mirror for the majority of your day, it’s easy to get into that narrowing mindset again,” Lister admits. “But even when I’m onstage and I know that I could be perceived in a way that doesn’t align with myself—letting go of the control to be perceived a certain way, and knowing myself and feeling more at home in my body, helps me enjoy the things that I enjoy more.”
For Felder, the studio is a place where she can explore and lean into femininity in a way they aren’t always afforded elsewhere. “As a Black person socialized as a woman, often I feel that masculinity is projected onto me,” she says. “I feel like I’m not always perceived as soft and tender and delicate in society. Often Black women are ‘strong women’ or ‘aggressive.’ Things like that are projected onto us more than softness, but ballet holds a lot of softness that I don’t experience outside of it as much.”
Dancing in the Bodies They Have
Felder, Lister, and Richter sometimes muse about how they would approach roles that, though traditionally cast as male, don’t have technical requirements that preclude female-trained dancers. Richter doesn’t have an interest in setting aside their pointe shoes and learning to do lifts in order to dance classical male roles. Even if they did, as Lister points out, dancers who are perceived as female might not be able to meet traditional male standards without jeopardizing their contracts. “There’s a barrier to entry in ballet, and it’s your body,” they say. “I could get strong enough to do lifts. But then I’d have bulky arms, and when I put my arms in fifth, it’d look like my shoulders were up.” They also note the flexibility in their back that helps them achieve a high arabesque would make it hard to support another dancer’s weight overhead.
And from the get-go, the narrow aesthetic that ballet demands of dancers who are assigned female at birth, and the steepness of competition for contracts, discourages dancers whose physical attributes or movement quality might align more with ballet’s traditional depiction of masculinity. Pyle, for example, vividly remembers being told by teachers as a teenager that if they’d been “born a boy,” they could have had a great classical ballet career. Differences in training also have a part to play: Much of the ballet technique required of all dancers sets the stage for pointework, whereas lifts require a separate skill set. All these factors make it less likely that female-assigned nonbinary dancers will take up space across the same range of roles as some of their male-assigned counterparts.
But does that specific kind of visibility ultimately matter? To argue that all nonbinary dancers must fulfill both traditionally male and traditionally female roles would be to make the case that nonbinary identity means just one thing or looks just one way—which misses the point. Felder’s, Lister’s, and Richter’s definitions of nonbinary identity are as unique and varied as their artistic identities. Felder has an affinity for portraying fantastical or ethereal creatures and enjoys exploring femininity in various forms while digging into the many and varied movement qualities that ballet has to offer; Lister is drawn to movement, tension, and energy more than stories, and notes their relationship with ballet might be very different if they weren’t a Balanchine dancer; Richter is passionate about acting and developing their own approaches to characters, though they love contemporary work, too.
Where they overlap is a mutual love for an art form they’ve worked very hard to succeed in, and a certainty that understanding their identities has made them more comfortable in the studio and onstage. “Accepting my gender identity has helped me not be afraid to show myself in the studio,” Richter says. “I think dancers are trained to do what we’re told, and be this image of perfection. And I think I actually just let go of a lot of that with discovering my gender identity. It’s just me being myself, and not conforming to one thing at all. That’s really empowering.”
How can teachers and directors cultivate gender-inclusive ballet studio environments? Click here for advice.
