What the *%@# is community? Ballet binaries and the pseudo-liminoidal in a social media world
Abstract:
In this era of care-based/community-centered education, ballet has embraced the word community to imply inclusion. This creates a precarious binary construction as community is defined as much by who is excluded as who is included.
Binaries are easy – it’s either this or that. Life and education are rarely so simple.
One big dangerous binary in ballet education is the insidious notion of “Traditional” vs. “Non-Traditional” students. Setting up a binary between student groups is the antithesis of inclusion and is at the root of colonizing dance practices. The subtext of this is “allowing” entrance into ballet which sets up a gate-keeping dynamic and impacts/increases a negative stereotypical relationship with contemporary/modern/cultural dance forms. This gate-keeping cuts both ways.
Social media is a reductive platform that magnifies binary constructions. Ballet pedagogy is already filled with binary language that restricts its evolution: Safe vs. unsafe, ballet for modern majors, choreographers vs woman choreographers . . . just to name a few. Ballet on social media becomes a series of right and wrong moments, without context, bringing a colonization of correctness and creates a pseudo-liminoidal dynamic.
In this presentation we will define the pseudo-liminal/oidal from the works of Victor Turner and Richard Schechner as it relates to ballet pedagogy and social media engagement. We will discuss the value of developing broader philosophies for ballet as an art form and debunk the notion of “traditional”.