Where is Ballet Headed?
In the 21st century, queerness in ballet continues to grow. The 20th century saw a vast rise in visibility for gay men in ballet, but most other queer identities did not share that spotlight. In the two decades since then, there have been some slow shifts toward queerness in ballet, again, if you know where to look. A prime example, and indeed, the inspiration for this research, is Ballez. The company was established in 2011 by Katy Pyle and stages project-based works which build a bridge between queer culture and ballet and cultivate a space for “all the queers that ballet has left out”. Through Ballez, Pyle re-tells classical ballet stories (Sleeping Beauty, Giselle, Coppelia) through feminist practices and the stories take on an entirely new character.
Founded by Adriana Pierce, Queer the Ballet seeks to bring a spotlight to queer women, as wells as trans and non-binary people, in ballet. As few examples as there are of ballets that include two men’s romance, even fewer exist that include two women’s, something Pierce seeks to change. Similarly, Ballet22 spends the summer season creating productions made up of men, trans, and non-binary dancers en pointe. The company re-imagines the image of men en pointe from Ashton’s comedy and the Trock’s camp to genuine artistic expression and amplification of queer voices.
Efforts toward inclusion of trans dancers outside of queer-specific initiatives in ballet remain limited. There have been a handful of trans and non-binary dancers with major companies in the past decade or so: Ashton Edwards and Zsailas Michael Hughes (Pacific Northwest Ballet), Chase Johnsey (English National Ballet), Leroy Mokgatle (Stattsballett Berlin). Few and far between, there is still a long way to go to ensure that training for trans ballet dancers is supportive of the trans experience, especially in the face of on-going and raging debates on trans people’s right to play sports and access gendered spaces.
Beyond individual dancers, some prominent companies are undertaking explicitly queer productions. In 2020, American Ballet Theater (ABT) premiered a new 10 minute work titled Touché. The ballet is described by ABT as “explor[ing] themes of male love” and described in Mother Jones as “the first homoerotic male pas de deux produced by [ABT]”. The Australian Ballet premiered Oscar in 2024, a ballet based on the infamous homosexual Oscar Wilde, which was met by media headlines such as “A Groundbreaking Performance Ventures into New Romantic Territory.” These headlines seem somewhat ironic in the face of the long, queer tradition of ballet. Nevertheless, they mark a hopeful step forward for the recognition of queer artists and queer stories within the art form.
Queer Ballet History 