They are now preparing to return to the office. Remote Work: Remote work during the pandemic offered some people an opportunity to move forward with a transition.She shared some thoughts on what she saw. Transgender Youth: A photographer documented the lives of transgender youth.Elite Sports : The case of the transgender swimmer Lia Thomas has stirred a debate about the nature of athleticism in women’s sports.Its often technically brilliant performers, however, appear as drag characters rather than themselves. Men occasionally dance female roles in classical ballet, but only for humorous effect, like the stepsisters in Frederick Ashton’s “Cinderella.” Since 1974, Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo - the all-male comedic troupe whose dancers do both male and female roles - has been a haven for artists assigned male at birth hoping to work on pointe. “In ballet, gender roles are distilled, pure, turned up to 11,” said the journalist and sociologist Chloe Angyal, author of “Turning Pointe: How a New Generation of Dancers Is Saving Ballet From Itself.” Many of ballet’s repertory staples date to the 19th century, featuring the dainty heroines and princely heroes of the Romantic era. Gender roles have been enshrined in its technique, particularly with pointe shoes (women dance on pointe, men don’t) and partnering (women are lifted, men do the lifting). Yet over the past 200 years, classical ballet has become synonymous with a fairy-tale ideal of femininity. “But when it comes to gender, it does feel like we’ve started writing a new sentence.”Įarly in ballet’s history, at the 17th-century court of Louis XIV, men predominated and sometimes performed female roles. “There is an entire book of ways that ballet still has to grow,” Haynes said. This month, Edwards joins the ensemble swans in the company’s production of “Swan Lake,” a pinnacle of balletic femininity. An extraordinarily gifted and versatile performer, they are setting an important precedent: an artist assigned male at birth working routinely on pointe in a classical ballet company. Last fall, they became an apprentice with Pacific Northwest Ballet in Seattle, where they have been dancing traditionally female roles. ![]() ![]() Now Edwards has resurrected that childhood dream. “I would search and search for footage of ‘Swan Lake’ with Baryshnikov as the swan. “I wanted to be one of those beautiful, ethereal people on pointe,” they said, referring to the reinforced shoes that allow dancers to stand on the tips of their toes.īut not long after starting classes, Edwards learned that only women danced on pointe. Raised as a boy in the Midwest, Edwards, who is nonbinary and now uses they/them pronouns, had hoped ballet would allow them to explore their truest self. Ashton Edwards’s ballet dreams were dashed at age 6.
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