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I love reading Black Swan Diaries; this is a blog written by Aesha Ash, one of the very few African American professional ballet dancers. If you have never seen her dance, do so. She is utterly gorgeous. Her blog is about some of her experiences as a dancer in the professional ballet world.
This week's posting is about race and ballet. She calls it: "shut up and dance." Dancers are not supposed to bring our personal issues, baggage, concerns, questions and experiences into rehearsal (unless the process requires this kind of exploration). This is true for some modern and contemporary dancers and even more so for ballet dancers, like Ms. Ash. In general, the ballet world is less accepting of anything that might indicate difference than the modern dance world (though it is tough going in either place).
Ms. Ash questions what happens when people cannot speak out, say, about race. The post features a picture where the dancer (Ms. Ash) appears to be silenced by her pointe shoes -- the ribbons of the shoes seem to make a large "x" across her mouth. (If you can look more closely, though, the tape doesn't actually visibly meet the ribbon.) Either way, though, it's a striking picture.
Ms. Ash writes:
For instance, were individuals in the dance world also fed up with constant reminders of diversity problems? Do discussions about race serve to perpetuate racial attitudes and hamper progress? Does the failure to address significant racial disparities in society make issues of race and inequality go away?
I never wanted to spotlight my race throughout my career, but the topic always seemed to arise.
Her comments are a typical and effective formulation of the problem people of colour face in the workplace and in the world at large. How do we, as a nation, talk about race? How do we talk about race while we are in the workplace (as opposed to at home)? Why is it people of colour keep having to talk about our race?
Race in my dance world is difficult to categorize. In general, most of the dance companies that I watch seem racially integrated. That said, the meaning of "integrated" is different for each company. I also am able to go to see companies whose work specifically explores race and ethnicity as a topic and/or whose work draws on/explores dance forms/movement vocabularies that come from a specific racial or ethnic heritage.
All that said, I don't know that it is a panacea. I don't know, for example, about funding. Are companies whose work is "unmarked" funded more often and in greater amounts than those whose work is not? I don't know, but I could bet the answer is probably. Do mainstream audiences turn out for work that is explicitly tied to a particular racial or ethnic group? I don't know, but I could bet the answer is probably not as much. What about things like presentation, booking, production? Unless you are staging your own show or submitting to a defined festival (Black Choreographers Festival, for example), how easy is it to get on the stage? Probably not as easy.
What about my life as a dancer in a physically integrated company? Well, you know, disability does odd things there. The disability circles I travel in personally (i.e., outside my dance life) specifically engage the invisibility and marginalization of people of colour in the movement. We talk about the ways the movement has and hasn't been able to include the experiences of people of colour. But for the past I don't know how many years, my company has been able to hire and keep several disabled dancers of colour. In fact, I'd guess that the percentage of people of colour among our disabled dancers is larger than the percentage of people of colour among our non-disabled dancers.
I don't know how to interpret that. I don't think it's necessarily about either my company or about disability culture as a whole. At a rough guess, I think it's about the modern dance world. But that's not my point today. On a day-to-day basis, I don't know what to do with my racial difference. I'm not even sure that it is consciously recognized in anyone's mind but mine.
After a show, audience questions focus solely on my experience as a wheelchair
