Gender Roles In Ballet

The ballet form is very strict and is meant to look very effortless. The same way society instructs social guidelines and regime, ballet has a lot of rules that are meant to be followed in every ballet performance. For the dance to be fully considered to be ballet it has to follow the rules of the trade. For example, when the class first danced ballet we stayed in the five basic positions. The first being, to stand with feet positioned apart from each other. This position was seen as a constant in many of the ballet moves we did. Even when we were walking, we had to walk with our feet positioned outward. Having all that in mind, it also had to look effortless. Ballet dancers are expected to go through a lot of pain and training to get up on stage and make it look like it is effortless. Society likes the idea of graceful, slender ballerinas but doesn’t mention the amount of time and effort it takes to become even a lower level ballerina. Of course, gender has its place in ballet as it does in many other dances, but the amount of effort and passion it takes to be a ballerina is non-gendered. The gender roles in ballet are still different because male ballerinas are never on point, while
For example, ballet is supposed to be light and graceful. It is meant to be accompanied by classical music. When we saw that controversial ballet called “The Rite of Spring.” It was obvious to me, why some of the audience walked out during the performance. This dance was not seen as a ballet dance because it didn’t follow the rules set forth by the ballet teachers of long ago. Instead of being graceful and elegant, it was redundant and big. The music also raised the tempo of the classical music that was once used for a ballet. People in the audience weren’t ready for a dance that was so different from what they saw everyday or for ballet as a social dance to