Telegraph: Top ballet schools ditching leotards to help transgender dancers

[LazyViper]

www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/08/21/uks-top-ballet-schools-ditching-leotards-tights-aid-transgender/

Some of Britain's top ballet schools are preparing to do away with leotards and tights to be more inclusive of transgender performers, The Telegraph can reveal.

A group of sister schools teaching ballet and contemporary dance have pledged to support the transition of transgender students who may be self-conscious about their bodies.

Loose-fitting clothing should be promoted in classes over traditional skin-tight leotards and tights commonplace in dance, according to inclusivity protocols touching on student anatomy.

The guidelines have been adopted to address dance subjects by London Contemporary Dance School, Northern School of Contemporary Dance, the Rambert School, and the Central School of Ballet.

Their protocols state: “Form fitting clothing may force trans people to use unhealthy methods to conceal their bodies such as binding or tucking.

“It is important for trans people to not feel self-conscious during training.”

Paywall, but you get the gist.

Would be interested to learn how many trans students these ballet schools expect to admit.

Isn’t it also quite important for students’ bodies to be visible so they can correct their form during classes? Hence the reason for tight clothing in the first place?

@TabbyStar

Thanks for the insight Dancer. The erosion of boundaries sounds awful. Are the female dancers talking about it amongst yourselves or does it feel too risky?

Thanks.

Far too risky - a lot of the industry is captured. (See quote from Rojo above as an example).

But, in the case of the middle aged, biological male using the women's changing room situation I mentioned above, when I saw it happen all the women in the changing room at the time (a range of ages and backgrounds, some pro some not) were talking in hushed voices about it when he left. All were extremely uncomfortable. All spoke of the efforts others had made to try and change it only to be silenced.

It is similar with sexual assault - very few have said anything publicly about the recent cases. The silence has been absolutely deafening except from those defending the alleged perpetrator. This was particularly toxic following Scarlett's death. There is also a Facebook page set up in support of Chang with prominent figures from the ballet world (mostly Cuban but by no means all) campaigning for his innocence and calling the victims liars. If you Google 'justicia' you will probably find it.

In this climate it is very difficult for anyone still hoping to have or maintain a career to put their heads above the parapet. Students are particularly vulnerable as they have the most to lose.

@DentonsFringeArnottsWaistcoat

Tucking? But I thought ‘some women have penises - get over it’. I can’t keep up.

Quite. I was under the impression male ballet dancers weren't generally given much chance to conceal that they had penises. Why treat some male dancers differently?

What's the aim here? To conceal that they are male? They'd have to perform behind a screen to achieve that, surely...

I am an ex professional ballet dancer. I trained at Laban and undertook my Masters at Central.

To be honest I’m not surprised by this at all. There will have been overwhelming pressure from the students and some of the very very ‘woke’ teachers. I wouldn’t call these schools ballet schools, they lean more towards contemporary apart from Central which for a long while was very much a classical ballet training ground.

I think this is all tied up in them trying to shed their elitist labelling. It won’t cause to many issue within the contemporary dance world but I have no idea how this will work in the classical world. It’s imperative to be in a leotard and tights as it’s how we learn the form and understand how are muscles are working/the mistakes we are making/the shapes and lines we are creating.

I retired in 2018 as it hadn’t gotten to the point where I couldn’t keep my mouth shut any longer on the all encompassing wokery that has taken over the arts. I was scared to say anything

Rambert used to be 50% classical, 50% contemporary, with the classical element taught very traditionally. A lot of their timetable was made up of pointe, men's class, solos, repertoire, pas de deux etc. I know of a few people that went on to classical careers afterwards (although not the majority). Their website still claims this 50/50 split, although I wouldn't be particularly surprised to hear that things may have changed under the current director.

I can't imagine how this change could not negatively impact training at Central unless that has become less classical as well? A massive shame in both cases, if true.

Sorry to hear that this sort of thing pushed you to retire. If it carries on much longer I'm sure you won't be the only one.

It affects only boys identifying as girls. Transgirls don't need to tuck.

Originally Rambert was very classical and quite a few people went into classical companies. Then it moved to a more contemporary school but with classical training still very much part of the timetable. It’s now swinging back to its more contemporary leanings with added woke.

Central was always very much a classical ballet school, but in the last 5-6 years things have changed dramatically with a lot of the teachers being pushed out and newer teachers being brought in who won’t challenge the new way of thinking. It’s becoming heavily linked to New Adventures, not necessarily a bad thing, but the classical element is not as valued as it was.

My concern is that the students will become to scared to speak up or discuss how they feel about what’s happening as they will be called bigots etc. It’s such a small industry and everyone knows everyone. People will agree with these new trans rules purely through fear.

I was in the industry for over 20 years both as a dancer and a choreographer and it’s a very different place to when I first started out.

@Starlitexpress

But I thought both sexes wore leotards, tights and close fitting clothes in general, and both tend to have body issues. And males dancers have taken on traditional females roles, such as Matthew Bournes Swan Lake. What am I not getting?

What are you not getting?

Everything.

In Matthew Bourne's Swan Lake, which was wonderful, it was made clear that some of the roles were taken by men. No one pretended that they were women.

I had a run in with someone from the Rambert, this fresh new layer of ghastliness is absolutely no surprise to me. The London dance world is batshit central.

Quite. There was a feature on the BBC website with a male dancer recently from New Adventures, who referred to the swans in Bourne's Swan Lake as being 'male identified dancers'....

Right. So if I as a female dancer decided that I identified as a man tomorrow would they let me dance, topless, in the corps of swans in the required costume?
I doubt it. They'd probably have to stop doing matinees 😅

@AlfonsoTheMango

It affects only boys identifying as girls. Transgirls don't need to tuck.

I suppose it would also affect a girl who wanted to dance as a boy because they would need to wear a binder, which I believe you are not supposed to wear while doing anything strenuous. I may be wrong in this though, but I’m sure I saw that they are unsafe to wear while exercising.

Is there anything at all that this ideology hasn't infected?

@christinarossetti19

Dress requirements for female ballet dancers have always been more demanding.

Must wear tights. Hair in a bun. No knickers under leotard for exams. Different colour leotards for different exams...

I thought students in class wore less formal attire, but maybe not.

The reason always given is that the teacher/examiner/auditioner/audience need to see the line of the body and how the girl holds herself.

So it's interesting to see that that doesn't now seem to be the sacrosanct principle that it has been for decades.

Yeah. And it's not total bunk either, the teacher does need to be able to see that the student's posture is correct, which is why boys and girls typically have fairly close fitting clothes.

I've thought for a while though it would be nice to have a little flexibility. Plenty of young girls quit ballet as young teens and pre-teens because they are not ready yet for tampons and they don't want to wear a leotard with a pad. And while it isn't common, my son eventually gave up ballet because he didn't like the feeling of the boys tight pants, something he likely would have grown out of eventually.

Dancing since he was 14!

Ballet is a discipline that is built around the physical differences between male and female performers. It is, visually, a study in the extremes of gender stereotypes, whilst pushing the bodies of both to the extreme limits of strength and grace.

The Male Swan Lake showed that really clearly. It was brilliant, but the swans teetered on the edge of parody specifically because of the wholly natural differences in physiology - that darned Q angle for a start.

Anyone fancy reworking centuries of training and choreography?

LobsterNapkin yes I agree. It's important that teachers can see and correct posture, position etc.

It's, as others have said, extraordinary how this key principle of ballet suddenly doesn't seem to be as important as it was.