Queering Ballet

 #QueertheBallet
Adriana Pierce, choreographer
Bridge Street Theatre, Catskill, New York
February 25, 2021
Streaming on Youtube, February 25-March 11

-- By Tom Phillips 

The art form of ballet is overdue for a queering – i.e. expanding its repertoire of meaning beyond the traditional binary codes of gender and sex.  Adriana Pierce, an alumna of George Balanchine’s School of American Ballet and Miami City Ballet, went into a recent residency with a clear goal in mind: “to create a duet for two women which honors their movement styles, physique, emotionality, and connection in a way that is not harnessed by ballet’s traditional technical ideals.  I also feel it’s imperative that audiences get to see genuine and thoughtful queer stories and relationships.”  By the end of the residency she was well begun, maybe halfway done.  But next comes the hard part. 

 L. to R. Sierra Armstrong, Remy Young 

 

Sis-Gendered

  -- By Tom Phillips 

Portrait of Thoreau attributed to his sister

Most men, wrote Henry David Thoreau, "lead lives of quiet desperation."  I read these words as a teenager, and immediately resolved not to be one of those men.  I was desperate, haunted, frustrated, insecure, confused, irrational and contradictory.  But quiet?  Not while I could draw a breath.  The world soon began to hear my complaints against injustices large and small, personal and political, real and imagined.  

There was just one subject that cowed me: sex and gender.  I participated gingerly in what was called the sexual revolution, but couldn't bring myself to speak out for sexual freedom.  Quickly and prematurely, I slid into a lifestyle of a heterosexual, cis-gendered, homophobic husband and father.  I opposed same-sex marriage on linguistic grounds, telling my children that you couldn't just change the meaning of a word that goes back to biblical times.  But of course, you can.