by Alexandra Bischoff

Fluid, poised, and light as air itself: a ballerina is the archetype of femininity in her utmost perfection. She is weightless, effortless and silent; her body does the talking, and we are enraptured with her fleeting form. Not so true to this vision of feminine refinement are Rebecca Warren’s mottled ballerinas. In fact, they are aggressive, assertive, and highly precarious. Voluptuous bodies beckon the viewer to more pornographic narratives. Lexiconical relationships between a fluorescent pom-pom and a caricatured nipple entice.

The ballerina feeds an elegant fantasy. Some might imagine the skin-tight leotard peeling away after a well-deserved encore, her sculpted, disciplined body slipping into a bubble bath. But none other than the masochist would imagine her taking off those pink, silk pointe shoes. Here is her greatest reveal, for those who dare to imagine. Such an atrocity are her mangled toes — maimed by dedication and ravaged by flawless execution. An antithesis of her fanciful performance, these feet are the grotesque evidence of her being a working-class woman. As if to make a joke of this, Warren’s figures’ feet are clumsy. They trip over themselves like a drunk woman in high heels. An exaggerated big toe fumbles from the otherwise singular foot: the inverse of a delicately raised little finger at afternoon tea.

Though he produced no drawings of these disfigured feet, 19th century artist Edgar Degas made his career by more modestly revealing the ballerina’s working-class status. His soft, gestural renderings of the performers backstage suggest that these women are ordinary, hardworking individuals. The presence of loyal subscribers to the ballet — certain upper-class men, or abonnés — are also documented in Degas’s images. Visions of Degas’ discreetly expressed abonnés are described in the Encyclopedia of Prostitution and Sex Work Vol. 1 as men  “in top hats and black suits hungrily observing their human investments” (Ditmore 2006, 55-56*). I wonder if as courtesans, ballerinas never removed their stockings or shoes? Would their benefactors be perturbed by such disfigurement — proof of the ballerina’s great physical efforts?

Richard Jackson’s 1997 Ballerina in a Whirlpool positions the ballerina atop a washing machine, rotating in perpetual arabesque. This infinite spin-cycle maintains her tireless performance as innate. The connection  between ballerina and washing machine cheekily plays off the domestic utility of her body. In contrast, Jackson’s 2009 Ballerina purports that the prototype can fall. Still stiff in her proud position, the horizontal figure looks as though she will never dance again.

Delicate to their environment, these sculptures sweat in the sun. The malleability of the unfired-clay makes me fearful of these ballerinas for their inherent possibility of impermanence; they are so unlike those stage-lit performers, who are timeless in vision. I respond to this fear with empathetic adoration, because their surface physically parallels the reality that humans can crumble under pressure. Just like the ballerina’s feet, these forms remind us that grace is a veil and femininity is a projection of preference.

*Ditmore, Melissa Hope. ed. Encyclopedia of Prostitution and Sex Work, Volume 1. Greenwood Publishing Group, 2006.