Speaker 1: The patada is a fundamental part of ballet. It's a duet,
Speaker 1: almost always between a man and a woman. It's something
Speaker 1: every professional ballet dancer confronts, usually in their adolescence. Like
Speaker 1: most things in ballet, partnering is harder than it looks.
Speaker 1: Dancing at pata dua tests the lessons you've learned in
Speaker 1: the ballet classroom. When she was eighteen, Adrianna Pears got
Speaker 1: the opportunity to choreograph a patada for the first time.
Speaker 1: It was two thousand and eight and it was for
Speaker 1: a student choreography workshop at the school Balancine founded, the
Speaker 1: School of American Ballet.
Speaker 2: And I was kind of going through my discovery of
Speaker 2: my own sexuality at the time. I just had my
Speaker 2: heart broken for the first time, and so I did
Speaker 2: this like very sensual, romantic potada. And the guy really
Speaker 2: is very passionate about this woman that he's dancing with
Speaker 2: and very excited and wanting to kind of dive in
Speaker 2: with her. And she's like there, but not fully, and
Speaker 2: I think there's something holding her back. And she lets
Speaker 2: him take the lead emotionally and then they go their
Speaker 2: separate ways and end apart. Doesn't necessarily have to do
Speaker 2: with my life totally at the time, But I think
Speaker 2: I was discovering what love was and what sexuality was,
Speaker 2: and I knew that I wanted to elicit some sort
Speaker 2: of like deep emotional response from the audience.
Speaker 1: At the School of American Ballet, Adriana had learned the
Speaker 1: mechanics of partnering, what it felt like to put trust
Speaker 1: in the boys in her classes to hoist her over
Speaker 1: their heads in a suspended overhead lift. Now, in making
Speaker 1: her own pada da, she began to understand what that
Speaker 1: movement conveyed.
Speaker 2: So I was using these lifts where she is really
Speaker 2: not doing anything with a very specific intention, and the
Speaker 2: way I used it was to show that the woman
Speaker 2: has no agency, or has less agency, or is making
Speaker 2: less like dynamic choices.
Speaker 3: About the relationship.
Speaker 1: For My Heart podcasts in Rococo Punch, This is the
Speaker 1: Turning Room of Mirrors America Lands, Part nine, how to
Speaker 1: Do Adriana remembers when she was a new student at
Speaker 1: the School of American Ballet and she first learned how
Speaker 1: to shape her fingers in the Balancine style, a more open,
Speaker 1: rounded hand with splayed fingers and.
Speaker 2: It feels like you're holding air and when you move
Speaker 2: through space, it breathes with you and it feels like
Speaker 2: very expansive and empowered. And I remembered just thinking to myself,
Speaker 2: oh yeah, this is good, Like this makes sense to
Speaker 2: me in my body.
Speaker 1: Adriana says her points us had always felt like a
Speaker 1: throne to her. She loved the feeling of lifting up
Speaker 1: onto the tips of her toes, of lengthening, of growing tall,
Speaker 1: but she had yet to confront the role her gender
Speaker 1: dictated in this art form.
Speaker 2: So I can think back to my first partnering classes
Speaker 2: at SAB was with Jock Soto, and he's a fabulous teacher.
Speaker 2: But what I can remember from those early days, first
Speaker 2: of all, I loved it. I had a great time.
Speaker 2: But it's very gendered, first.
Speaker 1: Of all, very binary boys and girls. Boys and girls
Speaker 1: who have already diverged in their training and how they dance.
Speaker 1: The girls have learned to dance on point, to be graceful, flexible,
Speaker 1: impossibly elegant. The boys have learned big jumps and tricks,
Speaker 1: and teachers have warned some of the boys not to
Speaker 1: be too graceful, too feminine. In partnering class, Adriana says
Speaker 1: her teacher would turn to the boys and say could
Speaker 1: pick a girl, and the boys would pick their partners.
Speaker 2: Grab a girl. That's like the terminology. So I just
Speaker 2: would okay, grab me, and then we would learn a combination.
Speaker 2: And most of it is just the guys having to
Speaker 2: figure out how to do it and build the strength,
Speaker 2: because you were talking like teenage boys who are not
Speaker 2: developed fully either. But it's like they get the opportunity
Speaker 2: to learn and to try and to fail and to
Speaker 2: grow and to build. And my job as a woman
Speaker 2: was to be grabbed and held and let them figure
Speaker 2: it out. And I and you put your trust in that.
Speaker 2: I never thought differently. You lift me, It's my job
Speaker 2: to look pretty and have good technique and like have
Speaker 2: my leg high and the guy just has to figure
Speaker 2: out how to keep you on your balance. At that
Speaker 2: time in my life, I was just I really was
Speaker 2: just absorbing.
Speaker 1: She also absorbed how they ended each partnering class. Boys
Speaker 1: had to do pushups, girls drilled. Asia pays these steps
Speaker 1: where you ra but lea slide your feet in and
Speaker 1: out and roll up on the point That stuck with her.
Speaker 2: The emphasis for the women was their technique and their
Speaker 2: lines and their esthetic, and for the men it was
Speaker 2: their strength and their core, and I definitely started thinking.
Speaker 1: About that a lot. A few years later, she got
Speaker 1: the chance to choreograph her first Potida, part of a
Speaker 1: student choreographic workshop at SAP. It was about two people
Speaker 1: in a relationship. The guy is all in, but the
Speaker 1: woman is less sure. She lets him pursue her, then
Speaker 1: she seems to pull away. She slides along when he
Speaker 1: lifts her high above his head.
Speaker 2: I think I was discovering what love was and what
Speaker 2: sexuality was in my own life, and I knew that
Speaker 2: I wanted to elicit some sort of like deep emotional
Speaker 2: response from the audience.
Speaker 1: In partnering class, Adriana had learned how to do these
Speaker 1: suspended overhead lifts where the man lifts the woman up
Speaker 1: high into the air. She used lifts like that her
Speaker 1: piece in a purposeful way to show the woman is passive,
Speaker 1: uncommitted to the relationship, complacent enough to let the man lead.
Speaker 1: What audience members responded to was a sensuality of the piece. Women,
Speaker 1: especially older women, approached her after your piece.
Speaker 2: I loved your piece. I really responded to that, and
Speaker 2: I thought to myself, WHOA okay? Well, and then I wow, yeah,
Speaker 2: I think I want to be a professional choreographer.
Speaker 1: In choreographing, Adriana found a new kind of freedom, an
Speaker 1: answer to the lack of control she sometimes felt in
Speaker 1: the ballet classroom. In the classroom, she'd been conditioned to
Speaker 1: stay silent, to obey the teacher. She made sure to
Speaker 1: fit the mold of the ballerina, pretty thin, feminine. But
Speaker 1: Adriana still needed to figure out how she fit. For
Speaker 1: one thing, the majority of professional choreographers are men. And
Speaker 1: then there was the fact that she still hid a
Speaker 1: big part of herself.
Speaker 2: I remember walking in the halls of sab and thinking, like,
Speaker 2: am I the only one like me who's ever walked
Speaker 2: these halls. I had never heard of anyone any queer
Speaker 2: women before, never at that time, No. Never.
Speaker 1: She was out to her high school friends and a
Speaker 1: few ballet friends, but mostly in ballet, She says she
Speaker 1: felt like she stuck out, as if she were carrying
Speaker 1: around a backpack all the time, an awkward accessory that
Speaker 1: everyone could see, but the secret of who she really
Speaker 1: was was tucked inside.
Speaker 2: I didn't have fully have language for myself, even about
Speaker 2: who I was, but I knew that people were already
Speaker 2: kind of like is she but like not really knowing.
Speaker 2: So when I got into the company at three Ballet,
Speaker 2: I was deathly afraid of making the other women uncomfortable.
Speaker 2: That was like my overwhelming experience. I was terrified, constant anxiety.
Speaker 1: By the time she was an apprentice, she was in
Speaker 1: a tenuous position. She had not yet secured an official
Speaker 1: spot in the company.
Speaker 2: In ballet companies, there's a lot of couples. At the time.
Speaker 2: I remember thinking to myself, I should get a boyfriend
Speaker 2: in the company to secure my job. And I remember
Speaker 2: having conversations with my friend of mine, who was also
Speaker 2: an apprentice gay man, and we were saying, like that
Speaker 2: might help us, because it's so messed up that I
Speaker 2: thought that that would actually give me some job security.
Speaker 2: And not to say that that is actually the case,
Speaker 2: but there was some insurance there if I could like
Speaker 2: really show that I was a straight woman, that somehow
Speaker 2: that would secure my spot.
Speaker 1: It was before one performance that it all came to
Speaker 1: a head. The women's dressing rooms in the theater are upstairs,
Speaker 1: but they had to take the elevator down to the
Speaker 1: stage level to get into their costumes, and.
Speaker 2: So all the quarter Valley women, all of them the whole
Speaker 2: company are all just like putting their costumes on in
Speaker 2: this like one room, and the dressers and some of
Speaker 2: the women were talking about how hot Hugh Jackman is
Speaker 2: and so somehow I was in the middle of this
Speaker 2: conversation that was happening all around me, and the dresser
Speaker 2: asked me which was putting my cost Munch asked me like, oh,
Speaker 2: what do you think about Hugh? And I was like,
Speaker 2: is that for me? Like I don't know, and she goes,
Speaker 2: oh really, But then like who is for you? Like
Speaker 2: what kind of guys do you like? And the whole
Speaker 2: room stopped talking and like looked to see what I
Speaker 2: was gonna say. She's like, no, no, really, like what's
Speaker 2: your like man flavor? And I was like, I, well, ah,
Speaker 2: I'm gay, and she goes, no, you're not, and I
Speaker 2: was like, oh.
Speaker 3: No, yeah, yeah I am.
Speaker 2: And again the whole room like no one moving, no
Speaker 2: one breathing, and I'm just like, this is my worst
Speaker 2: case scenario, Like I'm in Balanchine's house like with all
Speaker 2: these naked women, and I'm just like coming out in
Speaker 2: front of every against my will. And then one of
Speaker 2: my friends, Maya, she came to my aid and she goes, actually,
Speaker 2: I'm her flavor, and I was like, thank you, Maya. Okay,
Speaker 2: she cut the tension, and then it was like, okay,
Speaker 2: no one knew how to talk about it, and no
Speaker 2: one knew how to approached me about it, and everyone knew,
Speaker 2: but no one knew and ha, and I wasn't talking
Speaker 2: about it, and so it kind of like almost burst
Speaker 2: this bubble of like panic. So I'm kind of glad
Speaker 2: that happened, but wow, is it traumatic. So that's how
Speaker 2: I came out to all of the women in the
Speaker 2: Court of Ballet and New York City Valley in two
Speaker 2: thousand and nine.
Speaker 1: Like so many dancers, she didn't get a job after
Speaker 1: her apprenticeship, so she went to another prestigious ballet company,
Speaker 1: another company centered on Balanchine's choreography, Miami City Ballet. She
Speaker 1: stayed there seven years. She also Korea graft when she could.
Speaker 1: While there, she made a piece called Cafe Music. She
Speaker 1: took that first pott of dough she made at SAB
Speaker 1: and added two more movements, and this time she approached
Speaker 1: it differently.
Speaker 2: I took special care to pass who's leading and who's
Speaker 2: following back and forth, and that's just what it was,
Speaker 2: just what it was coming out of me naturally, but.
Speaker 1: It wasn't natural for these professional ballet dancers to dance
Speaker 1: this way.
Speaker 2: My friend Andre, who was the dancer, was having a
Speaker 2: hard time, like letting his partner, you know, hold him
Speaker 2: or pull him. And I remember the dancers asking me
Speaker 2: what is this about? And I said, it's about finding yourself.
Speaker 2: It's about finding who you are within your friendships, within
Speaker 2: your partnerships. When you're out at a club, when you're
Speaker 2: out at a bar, who are you and how do
Speaker 2: you relate to the people around you.
Speaker 1: As Adriana played with the push and of these new
Speaker 1: ways of partnering and who was taking the lead, she
Speaker 1: also rehearsed her original patata with that overhead lift, she
Speaker 1: began to realize how little choreographers consider the meaning of
Speaker 1: this movement. For her, in mena surrender of agency, but
Speaker 1: in practically all other examples she'd previously seen or danced,
Speaker 1: it felt like a showpiece, a feed of strength that
Speaker 1: hammered home an idea about the roles of men and
Speaker 1: women in dance.
Speaker 2: What I realized about suspend It overhead lifts is that
Speaker 2: they are very gendered because Traditionally, what we're used to
Speaker 2: seeing is a man lifting a woman, and you, whether
Speaker 2: it's conscious or not, understand that it can't be the
Speaker 2: other way around, because it's just not what we're used
Speaker 2: to seeing, and it's also not the way that women
Speaker 2: are trained or socialized.
Speaker 1: After that realization, Adriana core graphed many more ballet pieces,
Speaker 1: but she never used another overd lift. She didn't put
Speaker 1: them in any of her dances, not a single one.
Speaker 2: And when I do use a lift, we move through it.
Speaker 2: I kind of fold it into like the fabric of
Speaker 2: the movement, so there's never like a point where we're
Speaker 2: sitting there and being like that man is lifting that woman. Wow.
Speaker 1: At Miami City Ballet, Adriana continued to choreograph pieces. As
Speaker 1: she watched the partnering works being created and performed around her,
Speaker 1: she was struck with a familiar feeling, we.
Speaker 2: Are just fully accepting the fact that we are always
Speaker 2: seeing partnerships where the women have less agency, over and
Speaker 2: over and over and over again.
Speaker 1: In twenty fourteen, Adriana was he'd an invitation to choreograph
Speaker 1: a piece for New York City Ballet Dancers, her old workplace,
Speaker 1: where the director Peter Martin's had not offered her a
Speaker 1: contract to join the company after her apprenticeship. Now the
Speaker 1: company was going to perform her work.
Speaker 2: It was the first time I'm back in those studios
Speaker 2: for some I'm back in Lincoln Center since I had
Speaker 2: not gotten my job and Peter Martin's didn't hire me.
Speaker 1: When she returned to New York, Peter Martins was still
Speaker 1: the director of the company, decades after he'd been chosen
Speaker 1: to be Balancine's successor.
Speaker 2: And we went out to dinner right that took us
Speaker 2: out to dinner, and they made sure to tell me
Speaker 2: that I was going to be sitting next to Peter
Speaker 2: because he knew me, so that would make him feel comfortable,
Speaker 2: and that I was responsible somehow for that.
Speaker 1: Adriana says. Throughout the dinner, Peter was chumming with her,
Speaker 1: periodically touching her leg or her arm. Again. She felt
Speaker 1: like she was playing a role that did not fit.
Speaker 2: But like, is that just Peter's behavior. I don't think so.
Speaker 2: I think there's this like system, it's passed down. It
Speaker 2: has to be. I wasn't there. I didn't know, mister
Speaker 2: b I know the stories. I don't know what's true.
Speaker 2: I don't know what's not.
Speaker 1: Adriana grew up hearing stories and anecdotes passed down through
Speaker 1: generations of women who had danced for balancing. At the time,
Speaker 1: they felt useful, like don't think, just do it, offered
Speaker 1: a way to get out of her head when she danced,
Speaker 1: but there was one quote that always felt off.
Speaker 2: Ballet is woman, okay, but woman is what woman is straight,
Speaker 2: woman is thin, woman has makeup on. Woman makes her
Speaker 2: male director feel confident. If we're using like partnering as
Speaker 2: kind of a metaphor, I think it's like what the
Speaker 2: woman's role is, Like the men are in charge, the
Speaker 2: men make the choices, and we are We're gonna hold
Speaker 2: ourselves and put our foot out and point it and
Speaker 2: be the person who's following, not the person who's leading.
Speaker 2: I think it's like the same on stage and off.
Speaker 2: That's the legacy. It's like I don't even know if
Speaker 2: it's distinctly balanchines or just ballet's legacy, but it's like,
Speaker 2: those are the roles that we play ballet as women,
Speaker 2: but women don't have a say anything that happens to
Speaker 2: them or their bodies. Like that's what's passed down.
Speaker 1: The choices made about the choreography or staging in ballets
Speaker 1: can perpetuate that. There's a moment. In Peter Martin's rendition
Speaker 1: of Romeo and Juliet, at one point, the audience hears
Speaker 1: a loud slap, the sound of Juliette's father hitting Juliet
Speaker 1: and knocking her down, a detail that was never part
Speaker 1: of Shakespeare's play. The company also performed a work called Odessa.
Speaker 1: It was by a Russian choreographer, Alexey Radmonsky, and in
Speaker 1: the piece he staged a controversial gang rape scene. In
Speaker 1: twenty seventeen, the same choreographer, Redmonsky posted on Facebook about
Speaker 1: gender equality and ballet, and it got a lot of attention.
Speaker 1: He wrote, quote, sorry, there is no such thing as
Speaker 1: equality in ballet. Women dance on point, men lift and
Speaker 1: support women, women receive flowers, men escort women off stage,
Speaker 1: not the other way around. I know there are a
Speaker 1: couple of exceptions, and I am very comfortable with that
Speaker 1: end quote Above this caption, he posted an image two
Speaker 1: dancers in a patada. The picture was classic, almost stereotypical,
Speaker 1: but it had been photoshopped clearly in order to appear absurd.
Speaker 1: Instead of the man lifting the woman. The two tuoed
Speaker 1: point two ballerina lifts the man above her head in
Speaker 1: a suspended overhead lift. Adriana says when she saw it,
Speaker 1: the post made her physically ill. The idea that this
Speaker 1: extremely influential, world famous choreographer would say there was no
Speaker 1: equality in ballet and he was okay with that. Adriana thought,
Speaker 1: this cannot be the only way we understand gender in ballet.
Speaker 2: That was really hard. I can't accept that. I'm like
Speaker 2: not okay with that, and I'm absolutely not okay with
Speaker 2: moving forward with his art form just not having not
Speaker 2: be a consideration, especially with newarks being choreographed.
Speaker 1: Adriana lives in an upper Manhattan studio apartment. She wears
Speaker 1: a backwards baseball cap. When she opens the door, her
Speaker 1: big smile almost gleams through miss Small boxes still wait
Speaker 1: to be unpacked after a recent move. She rolls her neck,
Speaker 1: rubbing an injury that had her paralyzed in bed for
Speaker 1: a day. The shower stops running and Adriana's girlfriend emerges
Speaker 1: from the bathroom. Aila odey ALA's long brown hair is
Speaker 1: wavy and damp. She limps over her broken foot, still healing.
Speaker 1: Both of them are professional dancers. Adriana perches on her
Speaker 1: knees on the bed. Aila hobbles over and hops on.
Speaker 1: She snuggles into what seems like an Ala shaped nook
Speaker 1: in Adriana's arms. Adriana kisses her forehead and beams is.
Speaker 1: They share the experience of making art that they love.
Speaker 3: It is probably one of the most like freeing feelings
Speaker 3: to dance on stage. But obviously, just like ballet as
Speaker 3: an art form, there's a heavy influence of sexism racism.
Speaker 1: This is ala Odey, Adriana's girlfriend. AILA's currently a soloist
Speaker 1: at Carolina Ballet. The two of them see a lot
Speaker 1: of overlap in their experiences.
Speaker 3: Just like the world we live in, there are a
Speaker 3: lot of systemic issues that put people into a lot
Speaker 3: of boxes.
Speaker 2: Yeah, did you ever worry that like you would look
Speaker 2: too butch on stage?
Speaker 3: I mean constantly all the time, because I'm very like physically,
Speaker 3: I'm athletic. I'm not like your a little wafy ballerina,
Speaker 3: And so then it's like that's perceived to be more
Speaker 3: masculine and athletic because athleticism is stereotyped with masculinity, and
Speaker 3: therefore any movement I do is going to be perceived
Speaker 3: to be more masculine. So I always am thinking about
Speaker 3: like if I'm in like something that seems like a
Speaker 3: role that's more feminine or like the the male view
Speaker 3: of femininity, I'm like, oh my god, do I look
Speaker 3: like like a lesbian out here? You know? Is that
Speaker 3: an issue?
Speaker 2: When I first came to Mimasi Ballet, there was a
Speaker 2: one of the principal dancers said, oh, is age on
Speaker 2: a lesbian because she looks like one? Yeah, And I
Speaker 2: from like the moment I started working there, I was
Speaker 2: like so terrified that I was like, yeah, that the
Speaker 2: way that I dance somehow is like giving me away,
Speaker 2: and that people in the audience would be like that
Speaker 2: one dyke.
Speaker 3: You know, Like I don't know, but it was very scary. No,
Speaker 3: it is really scary, and like especially too. I mean,
Speaker 3: more of my fear was when I was closeted still
Speaker 3: in like people would point blank be like, oh, are
Speaker 3: you Leslian And then I'd be like no, I'm not,
Speaker 3: and they're like are you sure. I didn't even think
Speaker 3: it was possible to be a queer female identifying ballet answer.
Speaker 1: That was until three years ago, in twenty twenty. He
Speaker 1: lives at Carolina Ballet. She's sitting in a choreography workshop.
Speaker 3: I'm like sitting on the floor, you know, I was
Speaker 3: fresh in the company, and walks this blonde, tall, beautiful
Speaker 3: woman in a blue stripe button down, and I'm like,
Speaker 3: what is that? That is not a straight woman.
Speaker 1: It was Adriana walking in to help run the workshop.
Speaker 3: And I kept asking around, being like she gay?
Speaker 2: Is she gay?
Speaker 3: Like I was asking all of my friends and stuff,
Speaker 3: and they're like, I don't know, Like I don't know her,
Speaker 3: you know whatever. And so, actually, Adriana was the voice
Speaker 3: female queer ballet dancer I ever met. You're one of
Speaker 3: the first people I like really came out to because
Speaker 3: you walked in and I was like, oh my god,
Speaker 3: I'm not alone. And so then I damned you because
Speaker 3: you made a huge impact on me. Clearly, even though
Speaker 3: I you know, knew it was okay to be gay,
Speaker 3: I just was like, no, in my field, doesn't really
Speaker 3: exist because you know, there was no visibility for any
Speaker 3: queer women in ballet.
Speaker 2: It's not part of our world. It's not part of
Speaker 2: the conversations that like we're allowed to have through ballet. Right,
Speaker 2: So even though there have been queer women throughout history,
Speaker 2: we don't know who they are in the same way
Speaker 2: that I know like every single one of Valancine's actual partners.
Speaker 3: You know what I'm saying. It's like, it's so true.
Speaker 3: It felt impossible because I had just simply never seen that.
Speaker 1: Periodically, Adriana gets a text from another queer dancer to
Speaker 1: check out an Instagram post, almost like a treasure hunt
Speaker 1: for the stories of queer ballet dancers who came before.
Speaker 2: Her insta was on Instagram. Yeah, I did.
Speaker 1: Adriana scrolls through her Instagram feed looking for something.
Speaker 2: This is how this is like, I don't even know.
Speaker 2: I have to look it up. This is what I'm saying.
Speaker 2: So I actually don't know how to pronounce that lie
Speaker 2: I see. I don't even know how to pronounce it.
Speaker 2: But miss Fuller became an overnight sensation when she danced
Speaker 2: her patented Serpentine dance at fully Berger in Paris in
Speaker 2: eighteen ninety two. Fuller even managed to be openly lesbian
Speaker 2: while evoking virtually no titilation or disapproval in her public Interesting.
Speaker 2: Interesting So nineteen fourteen's photos from nineteen fourteen, There was
Speaker 2: also another one. Oh. Here it is Catherine Deville, first
Speaker 2: first black woman with the Bolshoy in nineteen hundred ish.
Speaker 2: Her dad was Creole, pushed back on doing Copelia in
Speaker 2: white face, and despite having two husbands, was queer Catherine Davillier.
Speaker 2: I think it is when I was younger, like early twenties,
Speaker 2: I could think of like maybe five or six, including myself,
Speaker 2: women around the world who were in professional ballet companies,
Speaker 2: not just not just names, like around the world people
Speaker 2: who were out, you know.
Speaker 3: And we're talking ballet specifically, like tights, point shoes, leotards.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there are a lot of people who were in
Speaker 2: ballet and were professional but then left because they were like,
Speaker 2: I'm you know, I can't be myself in this space.
Speaker 1: It's also hard to find any bit of queerness inside
Speaker 1: any of the big story ballets. The Classics ballet is
Speaker 1: known for.
Speaker 2: The gayest role in the ballet canon is Murta.
Speaker 1: Mirta is a ghost queen in the classical ballet. Jasell
Speaker 1: Giselle is ballet cannon choreographed by two men in eighteen
Speaker 1: forty one, beloved by audiences coveted by dancers. Basically, the
Speaker 1: plot goes like this a beautiful young peasant girl and
Speaker 1: a disguised nobleman fall in love.
Speaker 2: She falls in love with this guy who comes into
Speaker 2: town who is lying to her about who he is
Speaker 2: because really he's royalty, but puts on peasants clothes to
Speaker 2: get this girl because she's pretty, falls in love. Turns
Speaker 2: out he's actually a prince and is already betrothed to
Speaker 2: someone else, so he can't be with her anyway. She's
Speaker 2: very upset about that. Also, she has a weak heart,
Speaker 2: so weak, and.
Speaker 3: She's not allowed to dance.
Speaker 2: She can't dance, So when she finds out that he's
Speaker 2: been lying to her this entire time, she has a
Speaker 2: full on mental breakdown, goes crazy. Legitimately, it's a mad scene.
Speaker 2: She's like ripping her hair out and around the stage
Speaker 2: flat footed and point shoes because that's the only time
Speaker 2: we can walk flat footed, and when you're going crazy,
Speaker 2: and then she loses it, and then she dies.
Speaker 1: She collapses to the ground and she dies in some
Speaker 1: combination of over exertion and a broken heart, and then
Speaker 1: her spirit goes to the land of the Willies. The
Speaker 1: Willies are like a sisterhood of ghosts in the woods.
Speaker 1: Ghosts of unmarried women who died after being betrayed by men.
Speaker 2: They're all all scorn.
Speaker 3: There's scorn women who jilted brides, virgins who never made
Speaker 3: it before they got married. Yeah, and they've been hurt
Speaker 3: by their their men.
Speaker 2: And the queen of these jilted versions is Mirta. She's
Speaker 2: the jiltedest of the mall.
Speaker 1: Mirta is a force in this ballet, a terrifying figure,
Speaker 1: bitter and cool role conceived by the men who created
Speaker 1: the ballet almost two hundred years ago, and one of
Speaker 1: the most heteronormative ballets in existence.
Speaker 3: And she is a man hater. And so if you
Speaker 3: are a man and you enter the Land of the
Speaker 3: Willies during the nighttime, you are sentenced to dance to death.
Speaker 3: So Mirta dances all of them to death.
Speaker 1: After Giselle dies, the man who betrayed her, Albricht, goes
Speaker 1: to her grave to mourn. He asks forgiveness of her ghost,
Speaker 1: and he follows that ghost to the Land of the Willies.
Speaker 1: He meets Mirta, who sentences Albricht to dance to death,
Speaker 1: but then Gizelle steps in. She helps Albricht by dancing
Speaker 1: with him until morning, when the willies no longer have power.
Speaker 1: The strength of her love saves Albricht. Giselle returns to
Speaker 1: her grave, and Albricht lives. I always feel conflicted in
Speaker 1: the beauty of Jazelle's passivity. At the start of the ballet,
Speaker 1: She's rambunctious and just loves to dance and death. She's
Speaker 1: floating like a wisp, a ghost, almost a corpse, and
Speaker 1: some of the act to you patados. She's so passive,
Speaker 1: but that liquidity that comes from floating along as Albrecht
Speaker 1: pulls her is stunning to watch. I want to dance it.
Speaker 1: My feelings about Giselle aside. The ballet presents a choice
Speaker 1: for its women. You can be a Gizelle or a Mirta,
Speaker 1: one forgiving, one vengeful, both defined by their relationships to men.
Speaker 1: Mirta is powerful, but still she is one thing, a
Speaker 1: representation of failed heteronormativity. In the ballet, she's defined by
Speaker 1: the fact that she never married. Both roles feel like
Speaker 1: a box. In the winter of twenty twenty one, Adriana
Speaker 1: got the chance to tackle her unresolved feelings about the Patada.
Speaker 1: What the patada means for gender and for what roles
Speaker 1: we all play. She got an artist residency and drove
Speaker 1: up to the Catskills in upstate New York. With two
Speaker 1: dancers from American Ballet Theater. In a studio in the
Speaker 1: woods away from the city, they began to work.
Speaker 2: They had two weeks and the goal for that residency
Speaker 2: was to work on partnering with two dancers in point shows.
Speaker 1: She wondered what a patada would look like entirely on point,
Speaker 1: How would it even work?
Speaker 2: What is possible and what isn't. I thought I would
Speaker 2: just kind of play around and see what came, but.
Speaker 1: She found herself creating an actual piece instead, a new
Speaker 1: dance a potada. This patado, though, would be between two women,
Speaker 1: two queer women, something she'd never seen on a ballet
Speaker 1: stage before.
Speaker 2: I think a lot of queer stories are centered around
Speaker 2: pain and trauma. Pain and trauma are definitely things that
Speaker 2: queer people experience every day all over the world. But
Speaker 2: it's been important to me to create queer stories that
Speaker 2: come from a place of joy and love and respect. Specifically,
Speaker 2: this was one that I wanted to feel respectful, overwhelmingly respectful.
Speaker 2: And it's not one person manipulating the other, it's two
Speaker 2: people with equal agency working together to create something beautiful,
Speaker 2: and I think it's not necessarily romantic, although it is,
Speaker 2: but it's explicitly queer in that there is love fare
Speaker 2: and there is a tenderness. So I started to think about,
Speaker 2: like what partnering is, what is it actually what makes
Speaker 2: up a potative?
Speaker 1: She came up with these five pillars of partnering.
Speaker 2: First thing lifts, All types of lifts will go in
Speaker 2: that category. Then there's counterbalance, like counterweight, so you're pulling
Speaker 2: off each other, so there's an amount of tension between
Speaker 2: the two dancers. There's promenades, things that were one person
Speaker 2: is on balance and rotating.
Speaker 1: Like one person is posed on point. Historically, the woman
Speaker 1: she puts her hand on the man's arm and he
Speaker 1: moves her around in a circle so that she twirls
Speaker 1: slowly in place like the tiny ballery now you see
Speaker 1: inside music boxes.
Speaker 2: And then there's turns perewitz, so like spinning. And then
Speaker 2: the last pillar is what their connection is and what
Speaker 2: story they're telling and how they tell it. You think,
Speaker 2: you take that, you keep the hand.
Speaker 1: She wanted to work through these pillars in the studio
Speaker 1: one by one and find her own verse.
Speaker 2: That's it. There you go, prom and I love it
Speaker 2: and one, two, three, four, five, six. I don't want
Speaker 2: to just stick two dancers on point together and fit
Speaker 2: them inside the traditional rubric or traditional blueprint of what
Speaker 2: we understand.
Speaker 3: Partner to be.
Speaker 2: It needs to be our own, It needs to be authentic.
Speaker 2: And here there we go. Yeah, and as wide a
Speaker 2: lunge as possible.
Speaker 1: Here here is the piece became her answers to those
Speaker 1: five pillars.
Speaker 2: In this space, with these two dancers telling this story,
Speaker 2: a story of respectful queer affection. What's my answer to
Speaker 2: the idea of a traditional lift? What's my answer to
Speaker 2: these like to a partner turn? So you're stirring, stay connected?
Speaker 3: Yeah, we'll do it one time.
Speaker 2: But the other thing that I had to super dive
Speaker 2: into was point shoes and how that affects the physicality
Speaker 2: of partnerships. The person who has the flat shoe inherently
Speaker 2: and definitely has more agency than the person in the
Speaker 2: points you. When you're in a points you, you are
Speaker 2: not as grounded as a person in a flat shoe.
Speaker 2: You do not have as much strength. So, yeah, I'm
Speaker 2: in the room with the dancers. I'm trying to figure out, Okay,
Speaker 2: can you both be on point partnering each other. No,
Speaker 2: you can't because you're not stable, you're on your tippy toes.
Speaker 3: You can't do it.
Speaker 2: You cannot lift you physically, like physically cannot lift another
Speaker 2: human being when you are on a point show, you
Speaker 2: cannot do it. So what it ended up having to
Speaker 2: be is like they would kind of pass the leading
Speaker 2: and falling back and forth, which is what I do
Speaker 2: anyway in my choreography, but I would like try to
Speaker 2: have them on point, like as close as possible before
Speaker 2: and after to that passing of the leading and following.
Speaker 2: Oh so let I think, let Sierra be in charge
Speaker 2: of those arms coming down, so she's leading at that moment.
Speaker 1: Another thing they had to confront was trust. They had
Speaker 1: to learn a new kind of trust.
Speaker 2: Sierra, let her really carry you. She's got you and
Speaker 2: reach so you go into an attitude when I was
Speaker 2: talking about my partnering classes, where it was this trust
Speaker 2: that like the guy's gonna grab me and he has
Speaker 2: to figure out and you know what if he drops me,
Speaker 2: he has to figure it out. But when it's a
Speaker 2: woman like there's we had to really deal with the
Speaker 2: fact that we didn't have that trust in each other.
Speaker 2: I do not trust that a woman's gonna get me.
Speaker 2: I think I'm too heavy. I think she's gonna drop me.
Speaker 2: I'm gonna hurt her. Those are things that like we
Speaker 2: really have to like work through in order to do
Speaker 2: this work, because I am trained to have trust in
Speaker 2: a certain type of person doing a certain type of
Speaker 2: thing to my body, and that person usually is a
Speaker 2: man or identifies as a man.
Speaker 1: She remembers, on day one, she put the dancers in
Speaker 1: different positions and said, close your eyes, feel each other's weight.
Speaker 2: Move.
Speaker 1: What does it feel like when you take the other
Speaker 1: person's weight. Each day, Adriana and the dancers, Remy and
Speaker 1: Sira showed up and together they discover what worked and
Speaker 1: problem solved along the way, adding new sections to the piece.
Speaker 1: The beginning of the ballet was what they created last.
Speaker 2: I had them come out onto the stage and just
Speaker 2: stand there. I wanted it to kind of be like, yeah,
Speaker 2: you're going to see a gay podota, now you ready,
Speaker 2: and then they start moving. I kept thinking about this
Speaker 2: idea of carving space for each other.
Speaker 1: The two of them don't touch, they don't even make
Speaker 1: eye contact. Neither of them grabs the other, but they
Speaker 1: start to move around each other. Their arms flow and
Speaker 1: softly slice around the other's silhouette, like they're feeling what
Speaker 1: it is to.
Speaker 2: Be close, carving space around each other.
Speaker 1: Making space for each other, then moving within that space.
Speaker 2: Tracing each other's bodies but not touching each other. There's
Speaker 2: a respect in that, and the first time they really
Speaker 2: like look at each other. I wanted there to be
Speaker 2: like an establishing moment of I don't know, acknowledgment. I
Speaker 2: didn't want it to look like choreography that we've seen
Speaker 2: before with men and women. So what are different ways
Speaker 2: that they can be connected? Well, grab our foot and
Speaker 2: put it over your body like ways that they can
Speaker 2: be connected, that it's not just like hand and waste
Speaker 2: and back and forth.
Speaker 1: Watching it, I got shivers and then I started to
Speaker 1: well up. Just seeing two women on stage being centered
Speaker 1: in a way that has nothing to do with how
Speaker 1: men see them felt new. I realized I hadn't seen
Speaker 1: it before, not quite like this, not while they're in
Speaker 1: point shoes.
Speaker 2: We don't see women being tender with each other in ballet.
Speaker 2: We don't get to see intimate relationships between two women,
Speaker 2: tender and affectionate and loving. They dance separately from each other,
Speaker 2: trying to figure out what it is they're each saying.
Speaker 1: One of them dips the other back, like that classic
Speaker 1: tango move, what you've seen a man do to a
Speaker 1: woman a hundred times.
Speaker 2: She dips her, she immediately comes up onto point on
Speaker 2: point together, but you can see how they're just constantly
Speaker 2: passing back and forth. Who's leading, who's following, who's on point,
Speaker 2: who's not, who's in charge? And then I wanted them
Speaker 2: to end in some sort of partnered image. There's this
Speaker 2: balancing piece. Actually it's in Midsummer Night's Dream. There's this
Speaker 2: beautiful patada, beautiful PoTA, the second act of the diverse
Speaker 2: small patata, and it ends so slowly and suspended, and
Speaker 2: it kind of moves into this beautiful lift that kind
Speaker 2: of leaves you just completely breathless, and I wanted that
Speaker 2: for them. They walk to the back and she does
Speaker 2: a fore on point and it remy kind of pulls
Speaker 2: back on her. They're holding each other's weight. I wanted
Speaker 2: it to be slow and to kind of go into slow, suspended,
Speaker 2: partnered moment where they're working together.
Speaker 1: The music fades until it's gone. They still move in
Speaker 1: the silence slowing.
Speaker 2: And then it kind of fizzles into this like last
Speaker 2: moment of carving space together.
Speaker 1: When I watch the piece, it's like I feel Ballet
Speaker 1: is a woman in a new way, in a way
Speaker 1: that empowers in a way I don't think I've ever
Speaker 1: seen before.
Speaker 2: And now there's like a whole new of young people
Speaker 2: who are just like out Jill, feeling great and I
Speaker 2: love that, But Ballet hasn't changed. So like that's why
Speaker 2: it's like, we need to be making more diverse works.
Speaker 2: We need to be hiring, We need to be commissioning
Speaker 2: from more diverse people and telling more stories so that
Speaker 2: these people, these young people who are feeling great about
Speaker 2: themselves and feeling great about being queer, have a space
Speaker 2: to actually exist as themselves, so they don't have to
Speaker 2: do the thing that we always had to do, which
Speaker 2: was turn that part of us off.
Speaker 4: You know, next time on the Turning, when you finally
Speaker 4: do move on, there's a recovery period, and I think
Speaker 4: the recovery period takes about ten years on average to
Speaker 4: function in the quote unquote real world.
Speaker 1: The Turning is a production of Rococo Punch and iHeart Podcasts.
Speaker 1: It's written and produced by Alan Lance Lesser and Me.
Speaker 1: Our story editor is Emily Foreman. Mixing and sound designed
Speaker 1: by James Trout. Jessica Krisa is our assistant producer. Andrea
Speaker 1: Assuage is our digital producer. Fact checking by Andrea Lopez Crusado.
Speaker 1: You can learn about Adriana's continued work to showcase LGBTQ
Speaker 1: plus artists and stories in ballet at Queerdeballet dot com.
Speaker 1: Special thanks to Sierra Armstrong and Remy Young who danced
Speaker 1: and adrianas potted to overlook. Music for Overlook provided by
Speaker 1: composer Julia Kent. It can be found at music dot
Speaker 1: Julia Kent dot com. Our executive producers are jog Parati
Speaker 1: and Jessica Alpert at Rococo Punch at Katrina Norvel and
Speaker 1: Nikki Etoor at iHeart Podcasts. For photos and more details
Speaker 1: on the series, follow us on Instagram at Rococo Punch
Speaker 1: and you can reach out via email The Turning at
Speaker 1: Rococo Punch dot com. I'm Erica Lance. Thanks for listening.