parts of this article originated as a part of a presentation for a postgraduate dance education research class in 2022, or in an essay I handed in for something else in 2021. Thank you dance studies uoa for letting me submit 2 assignments about Angelina Ballerina.
Somewhere in semi-recent history, ballet became the assumed universal hobby for little girls, and the default theme for thousands of t-shirts, books, movies, and toys for this target audience. I teach three dance classes for four-year-olds every Saturday morning. They are all girls, all very cute. I stand by my job, I think it is more important than many corporate bullshit jobs— we’re developing motor and social skills, learning how to take turns, providing excellent home video content. The little girls dance for half an hour, and generally finish class with a smile, and a sticker. But the thought creeps up on me, as a student shows me their butterfly stretch and explains that she is a pink purple sparkle silver cupcake Elsa butterfly with glitter… in ten years, what is dance going to mean to these girls?
My least favourite question that I am asked all the time is ‘when did you start dancing’, which itself is innocuous and very inoffensive, the problem comes when people act impressed when I say I was three. Because it wasn’t like I was doing anything that any other three year old couldn’t do, and I’m not really sure that I had any particular affinity or talent in dance, my mum just put me in class because that was what was done. Lots of parents did the exact same thing with their kids, and now young women with horrifying stories from dance class are a dime a dozen. Some of them stick with dance long enough to process it via writing essays, and becoming teachers to hopefully do better, but most of the time they just stop dancing because its not fun anymore.
I worry all the time that of the thirty darling four year olds I see on a Saturday, some might grow up with dance as a negative part of their life (maybe all of them will, depending on how bad I am at my job). Suddenly, skips and claps hurtles towards self confidence issues, body dysmorphia, and substance abuse. The ‘dark side’ of dance studio and ballet culture is not really in the dark anymore, we know in the dance world, but also everybody knows. Everybody watched Black Swan, everybody saw little girls being verbally abused on Dance Moms. There is not a shortage of media featuring dance and dancers, and the way dance is portrayed on the big and small screen can have a powerful impact on how people understand dance. How many times have you seen the character of a snobby, envious dancer, bullying other girls at the back of class or a depressed ballerina starving herself to find success? What about a vicious ruthless girl desperate for the featured part? Even kids books about dance follow these familiar storylines and archetypes. It makes me wonder why sending little girls to ballet class is still the ‘thing to do’ when the common cultural image of a ballerina includes them being malnourished, abused, and miserable.
In examining the messaging in kids dance media, I turned to a beloved childhood book of mine, Angelina Ballerina. Angelina has an absolute beast of a franchise with 22 books, two tv shows, and a touring ballet, making her a key culprit in the current ‘branding success’ of ballet. ‘Angelina Ballerina’ (1983) is a pretty standard kids book about ballet, Angelina loved to dance, she went to ballet class, then eventually becomes a successful ballerina. Yawn. Mariko Turk (2014)1 however proposes a feminist read that highlights some interesting messaging going on. She identifies that initially Angelina loves dancing freely around her house, but she has a messy room! and she knocks over some milk in the kitchen! Tragic. Her mother then enrols her into a structured ballet class, and as she becomes a disciplined student, and works hard to become a ‘good’ dancer, she also learns to keep her room clean, and helps her mother in the kitchen. Only after she learns to be disciplined and obedient does she find success in her dancing. As Angelina learns to perform ballet, she also learns how to correctly perform femininity. Oh no girl, not the enforced homogeneity that the ballet industrial complex clings to! stripping dancers of their individuality and also their agency to maintain Eurocentric notions of beauty and purity!
Do the parents enrolling their four year olds into my classes think that this is what will happen to their daughters, that they will dance so much that they become sweet little girls baking pies and cleaning up… I truly think some of them do! Simone de Beauvoir2 claims that ‘one is not born, but rather becomes woman’ and perhaps some parents believe that dance class might make their little girls into a specific kind of woman. What about those four year olds reading these books and seeing Angelinas mother call her dancing around her bedroom and on the way to school ‘nothing but a nuisance’ and watching her stop dancing around her home and community once she has the chance to dance in a studio. Why can’t Angelina be both a successful ballet student, and a menace at home? I guess that doesn't fit with the narrative. Sorry girl, your dancing mouse book might be problematic!
The way ballet is portrayed in children’s media is just one way that girls from birth are told how their bodies should move, look, and be. As a dance practitioner, with a couple of dance studies degrees, with all my intentions of being a ‘good’ teacher, reading pedagogy articles and teaching according to my values, I struggle with reconciling my role in all this. Is it disheartening that no matter how hard I try to develop developmentally appropriate, engaging lesson plans, nothing can rival the excitement that musical statues to ‘Elsa music’ elicits? Maybe I could scoff at how problematic it is, bemoan the corporate greed and moral deficiencies of Disney, and instead do some unstructured somatic exploration, but I don’t think that would make me a ‘good’ teacher either. I can cite Simone de Beauvoir in reference to Angelina Ballerina, but even I don’t think I can spin dancing to ‘Let it go’ with fairy wands as some kind of feminist act, I can attest to the power of asking a little girl what music she wants to dance to, and then seeing the passion with which she moves. Ultimately Elsa’s story about struggling to control her emotions must resonate with kids on some level, just like how Angelina resonated with me.
I teach classes that I am proud of, and that are different to the classes of my childhood. In an ideal world, perhaps there would be no Disney, no miming picking flowers, no pointed toes, but I have to stop being idealistic and meet the students where they’re at. Capitalism has found it profitable to aggressively market the dream of the tutu to young girls, and this paints what children and parents expect from dance class, in turn informing the way I teach. Whether they were inspired to dance by Emma Wiggle, or Fancy Nancy, or Angelina, whether their favourite song is Into the Unknown, or How Far I’ll Go… who am I to judge, lets get moving.
The unwavering power of capitalism, Disney music, and pink glitter is an undeniable fact of teaching preschool dance, talking about dance, and being a girl. However, I don’t look at my students and see victims of advertising in different princess dresses, I see ten individual little girls figuring out their identity, their body, and their world. Sure, ballet media for children is problematic, it’s anti feminist, it centres whiteness, it romanticises power imbalances and problematic structures. My work in the dance studio can only interface with the human, the little girls who have been inspired to move and perform. At the end of the day, I’m going to play music they love to listen to, act out their favourite animals with them, and wait patiently while they add an unreasonable amount of adjectives as they describe the colour of their butterfly because I see the joy in their face. Four year olds are learning how to do so many things, and dance class might be where they learn how to skip and leap, it might also be where they learn to be themselves. I am here as a graduate of a dance studies degree, writing a blog post about dance, because as a child, I found joy in dance. I now find joy when I take a dance class, when I teach, when I go to the club, when I’m partying in my living room. Ultimately that is what I believe in, and what I hope to achieve in my job.
Turk, M. (2014). Girlhood, Ballet, and the Cult of the Tutu. Children's Literature Association Quarterly 39, 482-505.
Beauvoir, S. de. (1819). The second sex. Vintage Classics.