Of Women, Men and Ballet in the 21st Century

The second issue, more complex, has been discussed too little. Can a ballet made by a woman reflect a specifically female point of view? Ballets from “Giselle” to “Rodeo” give us men’s ideas of women’s points of view; but are there themes and viewpoints that a woman is more likely to show?

One answer is Nijinska, whose masterpieces “Les Biches” and “Les Noces” are still revived by the Royal Ballet and elsewhere. Another is Twyla Tharp, who, from “Short Stories” (1980) to “Waiting at the Station” (2013), has shown — among much else — the frustrations of marriage from the woman’s point of view. There is still controversy (chiefly in Balanchine-centric circles) about whether Tharpian movement can combine with pointwork. It certainly can, but the debate shows you that Ms. Tharp has — sometimes — taken femininity in ballet where it hasn’t been before.

Still, it can be no accident that so many female dance makers came from modern dance rather than ballet. No ballet maker has achieved the revisionist power with which Martha Graham showed women rewriting both history and myth. Could this yet happen? Can anyone, female or male, give new — feminist — meaning to pointwork?

My mind returns to one of the three heroines in Christopher Wheeldon’s “The Winter’s Tale” (Royal Ballet, 2014). Hermione, the maligned wife of the neurotically jealous ruler Leontes, is tried for adultery. Repeatedly, at her moment of greatest anguish, she rises onto point as she turns through huge, plaintive arabesques. The foot, doing what men’s feet are never seen to do in seriousness, helps to give a full-bodied, expansive voice to one woman — and thus to all women. More, please; much more.