Speaker 1: The patta da is a fundamental part of ballet. It's
Speaker 1: a duet almost always between a man and a woman.
Speaker 1: It's something every professional ballet dancer confronts, usually in their adolescence.
Speaker 1: Like 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 patada, she began to understand what that 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 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: dom 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.
Speaker 2: And it feels like you're holding air and when you
Speaker 2: move through space, it breathes with you and it feels
Speaker 2: like very expansive and empowered. And I remembered just thinking
Speaker 2: to myself, oh yeah, this is good, Like this makes
Speaker 2: sense to 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 she'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 1: But it's very gendered, first of all, very binary boys
Speaker 1: and girls. Boys and girls who have already diverged in
Speaker 1: their training and how they dance. The girls have learned
Speaker 1: to dance on point, to be graceful, flexible, impossibly elegant.
Speaker 1: The boys have learned big jumps and tricks, and teachers
Speaker 1: have warned some of the boys not to be too graceful,
Speaker 1: too feminine. In partnering class, Adriana says her teacher would
Speaker 1: turn to the boys and say pick a girl, and
Speaker 1: the boys would pick their partners grab a girl.
Speaker 2: That's like the terminology. So I just would okay, grab me,
Speaker 2: and then we would learn a combination. And most of
Speaker 2: it is just the guys having to figure out how
Speaker 2: to do it and build the strength, because you were
Speaker 2: talking like teenage boys who are not developed fully either.
Speaker 2: But it's like they get the opportunity to learn and
Speaker 2: to try and to fail and to grow and to build.
Speaker 2: And my job as a woman was to be grabbed
Speaker 2: and held and let them figure it out. And I
Speaker 2: and you put your trust in that. I never thought differently.
Speaker 2: You lift me, It's my job to look pretty and
Speaker 2: have good technique and like have my leg high and
Speaker 2: the guy just has to figure out how to keep
Speaker 2: you on your balance. At that time in my life,
Speaker 2: I was just I really was just absorbing.
Speaker 1: She also absorbed how they ended each partnering class. Boys
Speaker 1: had to do pushups, girls drilled ashia pes, 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 aesthetic, and for the men it was
Speaker 2: their strength and their core, and I definitely started thinking
Speaker 2: about that a lot.
Speaker 1: A few years later, she got the chance to choreograph
Speaker 1: her first Potida, part of a student choreographic workshop at SAP.
Speaker 1: It was about two people in a relationship. The guy
Speaker 1: is all in, but the woman is less sure. She
Speaker 1: lets him pursue her, then she seems to pull away.
Speaker 1: She slides along when he 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 the 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 City 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 so all
Speaker 1: the quarter Valley women, all of them the whole company
Speaker 1: are all just like putting their costumes on in this
Speaker 1: like one room, and the dressers and some of the
Speaker 1: women were talking about how hot Hugh Jackman is and
Speaker 1: so somehow I was in the middle of this conversation
Speaker 1: that was happening all around me, and the dresser asked
Speaker 1: me which was putting my cost Munch asked me like, oh,
Speaker 1: what do you think about Hugh? And I was like
Speaker 1: it's not for me, like I don't know, and she goes,
Speaker 1: oh really, But then like who is for you?
Speaker 2: Like what kind of guys do you like? And the
Speaker 2: whole room stopped talking and like looked to see what
Speaker 2: I was gonna say. She was like no, no, really,
Speaker 2: like what's 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 no, yeah, yeah I am. And again
Speaker 2: the whole room like no one moving, no one breathing,
Speaker 2: and I'm just like, this is my worst case scenario,
Speaker 2: Like I'm in Valanchine's house like with all these naked women,
Speaker 2: and I'm just like coming out in front of every
Speaker 2: against my will. And then one of my friends, Maya,
Speaker 2: she came to my aid, and she goes, actually, I'm
Speaker 2: 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 hah, 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 ne 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 Balancine's choreography, Miami City Ballet. She
Speaker 1: stayed there seven years. She also Korea when she could.
Speaker 1: While there, she made a piece called Cafe Music. She
Speaker 1: took that first pott of dough she'd 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 was coming out of me naturally.
Speaker 1: But it wasn't natural for these professional ballet dancers to
Speaker 1: dance 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 padata 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 choreographed many more ballet pieces, but
Speaker 1: she never used another over lift. She didn't put them
Speaker 1: 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 someone back in Lincoln Center, since I had not
Speaker 2: 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 balanchees 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 Apatida. The picture was classic, almost stereotypical, but
Speaker 1: it had been photoshopped clearly in order to appear absurd.
Speaker 1: Instead of the man lifting the woman, the two tuned
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 quarreographed.
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, Ala 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 hopples 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: to 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?
Speaker 2: You know? Is that an issue? When I first came
Speaker 2: to Mimas Ballet, there was a one of the principal
Speaker 2: dancers said, oh, is age on a lesbian because she
Speaker 2: looks like one? Yeah, And I from like the moment
Speaker 2: I started working there, I was like so terrified that
Speaker 2: I was like, yeah, that the way that I dance
Speaker 2: somehow is like giving me away, and that people in
Speaker 2: the audience would be like that one dyke, you know, Like.
Speaker 3: I don't know, but it was very scary. No, it
Speaker 3: is really scary, and like especially too. I mean, more
Speaker 3: of my fear was when I was closeted still in
Speaker 3: like people would point blank be like, oh, are you
Speaker 3: Leslian And then I'd be like, no, I'm not, and
Speaker 3: They're like, are you sure. I didn't even think it
Speaker 3: 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 2: I'm like sitting on the floor. You know.
Speaker 3: I was fresh in the company and in walks this blonde, tall,
Speaker 3: beautiful woman in a blue stripe button down, and I'm like,
Speaker 3: what is that?
Speaker 2: That is not a straight woman.
Speaker 1: It was Adriana walking in to help run the workshop.
Speaker 2: And I kept asking around, being like she gay? Is
Speaker 2: she gay? Like I was asking it all of my
Speaker 2: friends and stuff, and they're like.
Speaker 3: I don't know, Like I don't know her, you know whatever.
Speaker 3: And so, actually, Adriana was the voice female queer ballet
Speaker 3: dancer I ever met. You're one of the first people
Speaker 3: I like really came out to because you walked in
Speaker 3: and I was like, oh my god, I'm not alone.
Speaker 3: And so then I damned you because you made a
Speaker 3: huge impact on me. Clearly, even though I know knew
Speaker 3: it was okay to be gay, I just was like,
Speaker 3: not in my field, doesn't really exist because you know,
Speaker 3: there was no visibility for any 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 sexual partners.
Speaker 2: You know what I'm saying. It's like, no, that's so true.
Speaker 3: It felt impossible because I had just simply never seen it.
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 1: her instag was on Instagram.
Speaker 2: 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 Fulle Brgier 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 de Ville,
Speaker 2: first first black woman with the Bolshoy in nineteen hundred ish.
Speaker 2: Her dad was Creole push back on doing Coopelia in
Speaker 2: white face, and despite having two husbands, was queer Captain 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 in names, like around the world, people who
Speaker 2: were out, you know, and we're talking ballet specifically, like tights,
Speaker 2: point shoes, leotards. Yeah, there are a lot of people
Speaker 2: who were in ballet and were professional but then left
Speaker 2: because they were like, I'm you know, I can't be
Speaker 2: 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. Giselle
Speaker 1: is ballet cannon choreographed by two men in eighteen forty one,
Speaker 1: beloved by audiences coveted by dancers. Basically, the plot goes
Speaker 1: like this, A beautiful young peasant girl and a disguised
Speaker 1: 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 she's not allowed to dance. She can't dance,
Speaker 2: So when she finds out that he's been lying her
Speaker 2: this entire time, she has a full on mental breakdown,
Speaker 2: goes crazy. Legitimately, it's a mad scene. She's like ripping
Speaker 2: her hair out and around the stage flat footed and
Speaker 2: point shoes because that's the only time we can walk
Speaker 2: flat footed, and when you're going crazy, and then she
Speaker 2: 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 scorn. There's scorn women who jilted virgins who
Speaker 2: never made it, died before they got married.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and they've been hurt by their their men.
Speaker 2: And the queen of these jilted versions is Mirta. She's
Speaker 2: a 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 2: And she is a man hater.
Speaker 3: And so if you are a man and you enter
Speaker 3: the Land of the Willies during the nighttime, you are
Speaker 3: sentenced to dance to death. So Mirta dances all of
Speaker 3: 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 Giselle 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 patads. 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. They
Speaker 1: had two.
Speaker 2: Weeks and the goal for that residency was to work
Speaker 2: on partnering with two dancers in points choos.
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.
Speaker 1: But she found herself creating an actual piece instead, a
Speaker 1: new dance a potada. This patado, though, would be between
Speaker 1: two women, two queer women, something she'd never seen on
Speaker 1: a ballet 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 peer 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 1: Up a potative? She came up with these five pillars
Speaker 1: 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 pure witz so like spinning. And
Speaker 2: then the last pillar is what their connection is and
Speaker 2: what 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, a traditional blueprint of what
Speaker 2: we understand partner to be. It needs to be our own,
Speaker 2: it needs to be authentic. And here there we go. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and as wide a 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? Yeah,
Speaker 2: we do it one time. But the other thing that
Speaker 2: I had to super dive into was point shoes and
Speaker 2: how that affects the physicality of partnerships. The person who
Speaker 2: has the flat shoe inherently and definitely has more agency
Speaker 2: than the person in the points you. When you're in
Speaker 2: a points you, you are not as grounded as a
Speaker 2: person in a flat shoe. You do not have as
Speaker 2: much strength. So yeah, I'm in the room with the dancers.
Speaker 2: I'm trying to figure out, Okay, can you both be
Speaker 2: on point partner each other. No, you can't because you're
Speaker 2: not stable, you're on your tippy toes. 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 date, she put the dancers in different
Speaker 1: positions and said, close your eyes, feel each other's weight.
Speaker 1: Move What does it feel like when you take the
Speaker 1: other person's weight. Each day, Adriana and the dancers Remy
Speaker 1: and si Her showed up and together they discover what
Speaker 1: worked and problem solved along the way, adding new sections
Speaker 1: to the piece. The beginning of the ballet was what
Speaker 1: 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 potota, 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.
Speaker 2: To be close, carving space around each other.
Speaker 1: Making space for each other, then moving within.
Speaker 2: That space, tracing each other's bodies but not touching each other.
Speaker 2: There's a respect in that, and the first time they
Speaker 2: really like look at each other. I wanted there to
Speaker 2: be like an establishing moment of I don't know, acknowledgment.
Speaker 2: I didn't want it to look like choreography that we've
Speaker 2: seen before with men and women. So what are different
Speaker 2: ways that they can be connected? Well, grab our foot
Speaker 2: and put it over your body, like ways that they
Speaker 2: can be connected, that it's not just like hand and
Speaker 2: waste 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 divertse
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 point and it remy kind of pulls back on her.
Speaker 2: They're holding each other's weight. I wanted it to be
Speaker 2: slow and to kind of go into slow, suspended, partnered
Speaker 2: 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.
Speaker 1: The quote unquote real world. The Turning is a production
Speaker 1: of Rococo Punch and iHeart Podcasts. It's written and produced
Speaker 1: by Alan Lance Lesser and me. Our story editor is
Speaker 1: Emily Foreman. Mixing and sound designed by James Trout. Jessica
Speaker 1: Crisa is our assistant producer. Andrea Assuage is our digital producer.
Speaker 1: Fact checking by Andrea Lopez Crusado. You can learn about
Speaker 1: Adriana's continued work to showcase LGBTQ plus artists and stories
Speaker 1: in ballet at Queerdeballet dot com. Special thanks to Sierra
Speaker 1: Armstrong and Remy Young, who danced and adrianas potted to overlook.
Speaker 1: Music for Overlook provided by composer Julia Kent. It can
Speaker 1: be found at music dot Julia Kent dot com. Our
Speaker 1: executive producers are jog Parati and Jessica Alpert at Rococo
Speaker 1: Punch at Katrina Norvel and Niki Etour at iHeart Podcasts.
Speaker 1: For photos and more details on the series, follow us
Speaker 1: on Instagram at Rococo Punch and you can reach out
Speaker 1: via email The Turning at Rococo Punch dot com. I'm
Speaker 1: Erica Lance. Thanks for listening.