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Feminist Dance Criticism and Ballet

Clare Croft
Published online: 18 Jun 2014.

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To cite this article: Clare Croft (2014) Feminist Dance Criticism and Ballet, Dance Chronicle, 37:2,
195-217, DOI: 10.1080/01472526.2014.915455
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Dance Chronicle, 37:195217, 2014

Copyright 2014 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC
ISSN: 0147-2526 print / 1532-4257 online
DOI: 10.1080/01472526.2014.915455

Feminist Dance Criticism and Ballet

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CLARE CROFT
This article focuses on popular-press assessments of New York City
Ballet principal dancer Wendy Whelan as a way to consider, first,
how gender norms affect dance criticism, specifically in ballet, and,
second, what might constitute a feminist approach to ballet criticism. In the reviews selected for analysis, critics return to three
themes, all of which circumscribe Whelans artistic agency: her
onstage relationship to male partners, her relationship to choreographers, and her relationship to the iconic figures of femininity in
ballet. Drawing upon the specifics of how each theme limits the
representation of Whelans agency, at least in print, I conclude by
offering practical guidelines for practicing feminist dance criticism
in mainstream publications.
In a 2005 review published online at danceviewtimes, I raved about New
York City Ballet (NYCB) principal dancer Wendy Whelans performance
in the soft, vulnerable pas de deux that closes choreographer Christopher
Wheeldons ballet After the Rain (2005).
Whelan has always been a technically brilliant dancer, sharp enough in
her angles to poke an eye out with her hipbone, but for After the Rain
she has accessed a pool of femininity and softness that I have never
seen before in her dancing. As she walks forward in the pas de deuxs
opening notes, her slightly bowed head and delicate neck exude beauty
and vulnerability. Throughout the duet, [Jock] Soto partners her with an
intimate understanding of that softness. The dance progresses, and she
grows stronger in her movements, more extended in her extremities,
but never loses the quiet tenderness communicated in those opening
moments.1

I thought I had done a good job. I wrote the review while working as a
regular freelance contributor to daily newspapers, primarily the Washington
Post, as well as the then just blossoming online outlets for dance criticism,
including the Washington, D.C.based website danceviewtimes, where my
review of After the Rain was published. Both publication venuesthe former
195

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among the most traditional publishers of American dance criticism, and the
latter dance criticisms imagined vanguardemphasized the value of performance criticism as intimately tied to the newsworthiness of performance.
My review, particularly this excerpt, located the news of that evenings performance as being Whelans softer and more feminine dancing. (I chose
to focus on Whelans dancing, rather than Wheeldons choreography, since
After the Rain had premiered months earlier.)
At the time, I also assessed this review as good because I had supported
my claim for Whelan as After the Rains most important figure by describing
her dancing (her slightly bowed head) and execution of the choreography
(extended in her extremities). My interest in detailed movement description stems from my early training in the descriptive vein of dance criticism,
exemplified by the writing of longtime Village Voice dance critic Deborah
Jowitt. Jowitt often embeds her opinion in her description, though discerning that opinion sometimes requires reading her reviews quite closely. My
description of After the Rain offers a more straightforward opinion, even as
it draws upon Jowitts descriptive style.
My review named Whelans shift from technical, unemotional brilliance,
to soft femininity, as not just news, but progress. Presenting herself as
a more traditionally feminine dancer than she had in the past, Whelan, in
my 2005 estimation, was a better dancer now. On one hand, I carefully
described Whelans dancing in as much detail as possible, which I see as a
feminist strategy because it acknowledges a female artists labor and physical

choices. But on the other hand, the larger progress narrative I created
applauded Whelan for adding attributes traditionally labeled feminine to
her repertory, a rhetorical device I now find decidedly un-feminist in its
implication that there is a better, more appropriate way to signify Woman
(a category that seems to grow smaller and smaller, as what gets to count
onstage as feminine constantly shrinks).
My discomfort with my choices in my 2005 review leads me to the
questions: What would constitute a practice of feminist ballet criticism and
why, after three decades of dance scholarship focused on gender codes in
ballet, has popular-press ballet criticism not made significant shifts in its

For more on description as a mode of feminist interpretation, see Susan Sontag, Dancer
and the Dance, in Reading Dance: A Gathering of Memoirs, Reportage, Criticism, Profiles,
and Interviews, and Some Uncategorizable Extras, ed. Robert Gottlieb (New York: Pantheon,
2008), 33438.

The 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s have been decades particularly rich in feminist ballet
criticism. For major interventions in this conversation, see Ann Daly, The Balanchine Woman:
Of Hummingbirds and Channel Swimmers, in Critical Gestures: Writings on Dance and
Culture (Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan University Press, 2002), 27988; Ann Daly, Classical
Ballet: A Discourse of Difference, in Critical Gestures, 28893; Angela McRobbie, Dance
Narratives and Fantasies of Achievement, in Feminism and Youth Culture (Boston, Mass.:
Unwin Hyman, 1991), 182219; Ann Daly, Dance History and Feminist Theory: Reconsidering

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assessment of gender? While it was graduate school that made me aware

of the gender biases in my writing for popular and academic venues, I
do not mean to suggest that all ballet critics need to engage with dance
scholarship. (Although I do not think it is such a bad idea, just as I think
many dance scholars would benefit from the careful attention critics bring

to live performance. ) My goal here is to identify the rhetorical barriers to

feminist ballet criticism as a way to create a feminist paradigm shift in critical
practices of seeing, interpreting, and writing about ballet.
Through close readings of reviews, including my own, of Whelans performances with the NYCB over more than two decades, this essay proposes
that feminist dance criticism has two central tenets. First, it must recognize
the larger normative codes that structure critical reception of dance, including, but not limited to, those related to gender and sexuality. Second, feminist
dance criticism must examine the potential action of women in these systems, who, through performance, demonstrate that gender is not an essential,
stable identity, but instead, in Judith Butlers now iconic terminology, is a
stylized repetition of acts.2 The feminist dance critic then must attend to
how dancersin the case of this essay, female ballet dancersin their occasional failure to repeat idealized female norms, call attention to these
norms constructed nature and, on some occasions, subvert those norms.
Such an approach to dance criticism requires a cultural studies approach to
writing about danceone that considers the relationships among codes of
Isadora Duncan and the Male Gaze, in Critical Gestures, 30219; Susan Leigh Foster, The
Ballerinas Phallic Pointe, in Corporealities: Dancing, Knowledge, Culture, and Power, ed.
Susan Leigh Foster (London: Routledge, 1996), 124; Sally Banes, Dancing Women: Female
Bodies on Stage (New York: Routledge, 1998); Alexandra Carter, Staring Back, Mindfully:
Reinstating the Dancerand the DanceIn Feminist Ballet Historiography, in Proceedings
of the Society of Dance History Scholars (Riverside, Cal.: Society of Dance History Scholars,
1999), 22732; Jennifer Fisher, Tulle as Tool: Embracing the Conflict of the Ballerina as
Powerhouse, Dance Research Journal, vol. 39, no. 1 (2007): 224; Karen Eliot, Dancing Lives:
Five Female Dancers from the Ballet dAction to Merce Cunningham (Champaign-Urbana, Ill.:
University
of Illinois Press, 2010).

The clearest call to bring historical context back into feminist ballet criticism was issued
by Alexandra Carter in her 1999 address to the Society of Dance History Scholars. See Carter,
Staring Back, 1999.

Judith Butler describes the potential for performance to be performativeto be an

actionin a larger social sphere in an application of Foucauldian analysis to drag performance. To read her full discussion of the entangled relationship between performance and
performativity, see Gender Trouble (London: Routledge, 1993), 17191. Butler focuses on drag
performance, as she sees the parody inherent in that form as ripe for critique of socially embedded gender norms. Thus, applying her theory to ballet, particularly the ballets described
in this essay, which are almost entirely absent of parodic critique, is not an exact fit. A more
illuminating application of Butlers theory of performativity and performance is Gay Morriss
discussion of Mark Morriss use of drag. See Gay Morris, Styles of the Flesh: Gender in
the Dances of Mark Morris, in Moving Words: Re-writing Dance (London: Routlege, 1996),
12438.

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representation, institutional practices, and individual artists material circumstances. Real people, not idealized bodies, dance onstage.
Specifically, this study documents themes in reviews of Whelans performances that position the ballerina as having very little, if any, artistic agency.
Drawing from reviews written in the early 1990s, when Whelan began to
regularly dance soloist roles, and moving through the decade to the early

2000s, when she was repeatedly featured in Wheeldons works, I offer a

discursive analysis of how critics exert their biases about femininity in reviews, marginalizing Whelan even as they focus on her. I argue that the
reviews generally give the most credit to artists other than Whelan, often
lauding the choreographer or Whelans male partner; or they refuse to allow
Whelan to evolveand when her dancing does change, other people get
credit for it.
I begin by offering an overview of feminist analysis of ballet drawn
from scholarship in dance studies and performance studies and proceed
to discuss why Whelans career supplies an ideal case study for feminist
analysis of dance criticism. Next, I chart three themes abstracted from reviews of Whelans performances with NYCB: her onstage relationships to
male partners; her relationships to choreographers; and critical assessments
of her interpretations of iconic NYCB repertory, particularly the role of
Sugar Plum Fairy in Balanchines The Nutcracker (1954). Whelan often
dances this role, and her interpretation of it has proved to be a contentious
issue for critics. I close by offering suggestions for what might constitute
a feminist approach to ballet criticism in the popular press, an imagining
that also leads me to rethink what constitutes the popular press in the
twenty-first century.

This article charts critical reaction to Whelan primarily in the early decades of her
career and in the years of Wheeldons closest association with the New York City Ballet.
In 2007, Alastair Macaulay became the chief dance critic of the New York Times, a post
that made himby farthe most powerful dance critic in the United States and the most
frequent commenter on the NYCB. Macaulay frequently makes negative comments about
NYCBs female dancers, making less than favorable writing about Whelan unremarkable.
As a case in point, see A Season on Point, High and Low, an overview of NYCBs 2009
winter season, in which he describes Whelan as a dynamic soprano who sings every note
sharp. Because this comment comes after negative comments about Darci Kistler, Megan
Fairchild, Abi Stafford, Yvonne Borree, and, with slightly less ferociousness, Sterling Hyltin,
Maria Kowroski, and Janie Taylor, it is difficult to see it as more than general antipathy for the
companys women. (Macaulay does, however, laud Teresa Reichlen, Sara Mearns, and Tiler
Peck.) Of the companys men, Macaulay writes, in the same article, I cannot here do justice
to the gifted male dancersfrom principals down to the apprentice Chase Finlaywhose zeal
illumined many works (New York Times, March 1, 2009, AR9 [Proquest, accessed February
20, 2013]).

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BENEFITS OF FEMINIST CRITIQUE

Wheeldons two-part ballet, After the Rain, begins with a tumultuous sextet
for three male-female couples in blue, including Whelan and her partner Jock
Soto. Near its end the two rush offstage, and when they returnWhelan now
in a pink leotard and Soto in white pants and bare-chestedthe other two
couples finish. The overlap in scenes produces a rushed sensibility.The lights
brighten, going from a murky grey to light pink and orange. The storm has
just passed, but its intensity lingers as the two dancers, now alone on the
massive stage of the State Theater (now David H. Koch Theater), stand side
by side, barely shifting their weight from one foot to the other. They look

tiny, like droplets in an expansive emptiness.

But that expanse is not truly empty. The history of the space, the genre,
and the company, among so many other historical factors, also surrounds the
pas de deux. And ideas from beyond ballethow contemporary audiences
have learned, from both everyday experience and theatrical experience, to
view, for instance, Whelans white female body or Jock Sotos Native American male bodyalso fill the theater. These learned, if often unstated, ways of
seeing and interpreting performance mediate audience response and critical
reviews. Putting scholarly writing about gender, sexuality, and ballet in direct conversation with the ballets gendered conventions can help to make
visible the codes of interpretation and centuries of history that swirl around
Whelan and Sotos dancing.
But first, it is necessary to identify some key terms and projects in feminist performance criticism. Feminist criticism aims to push critics writing for
the popular press and scholars analyzing the historical record to examine
the effects and implications of learned ways of viewing and to consider how
performance and performance discourse might imagine other ways of viewing performance and even of being in the world. As feminist performance
scholar and blogger Jill Dolan writes,
Feminism . . . provides a way of looking at the world, a lens through
which to consider how power circulates around the axis of not just
gender, but of sexuality, race, and class. Feminism is [also] an analytical
system that gives us tools for seeing ourselves in relation to one another.
It offers a transformative politics of hope that we can imagine, together,
a better, more equitable future for us all.3

Feminist criticism thus provides a mode of seeing and writing, as well as a

way to initiate change.

I viewed a live performance of After the Rain in New York on June 2, 2005.

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In the 1980s, feminist criticism and dance studies traveled convergent

paths, and many of the early feminist critiques in dance centered on bal
let. As compared to feminist approaches to reconsidering modern dance,
feminist critiques of ballet initially exhibited little hope that the genre held
any possibility for subverting, let alone toppling, patriarchy in either ballets systems of representation or its institutional practices. Feminist scholar
(and former popular press critic) Ann Dalys 1987 essay, The Balanchine
Woman: Of Hummingbirds and Channel Swimmers, argued that ballets
pervasive gender codes always depicted the female ballerina as dependent
on her male partner. To make her argument, Daly began with a synopsis of
a conference conversation about Russian-born American choreographer and
New York City Ballet founding artistic director George Balanchine and gender, and then analyzed a pas de deux from Balanchines Four Temperaments
(1946). A year later, Daly published another article on ballet and feminism,
arguing that only equilibriumnot male-female equalitywas possible in
ballet. According to the feminist scholar, patriarchy allowed for only an
asymmetrical equilibrium between male and female: while male and female
dancer intertwined their bodies onstage in a two-way exchange of energy, he
remained the figure of power, and she, the fragile accommodator. Dalys
two essays became lightning rods for debate in dance.
These early feminist assessments of ballet drew from so-called gaze
theory, a psychoanalytic approach that emerged from feminist film theory
and became popular in cultural studies. Gaze theory examines gender in
ways that many performance scholars, including Daly, would later come to
critique as limiting. Gaze theory, too, left little room for what feminist critic

For studies of the relationship between feminist analysis and modern dance, see Ann
Cooper Albright, Choreographing Difference: The Body and Identity in Contemporary Dance
(Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan University Press, 1997), and Susan Manning, The Female
Dancer and the Male Gaze: Feminist Critiques of Early Modern Dance, in Meaning in Motion,
ed. Jane C. Desmond (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1997), 15366.

Ann Daly, Classical Ballet: A Discourse of Difference, Women & Performance: A Journal
of Feminist Theory, vol. 3, no. 2 (1988): 5766. Susan Foster offered a similar description of the
pas de deux, also using equilibrium as her central theme (Foster, The Ballerinas Phallic
Pointe). Deborah Jowitt, too, took up the idea of equilibrium to analyze the relationship
between male and female dancer, although, in contrast to Daly, she argued that the pas de
deuxs equilibrium kept the male dancers in tow (Deborah Jowitt, Time and the Dancing
Image (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989), 251.

Daly reconsidered and softened her critique of ballet from a feminist stance in her
1992 essay, just as the originator of gaze theory in feminist film theory, Laura Mulvey, later
acknowledged that the theory limited feminist spectators agency. See Daly, Dance History
and Feminist Theory: Reconsidering Isadora Duncan and the Male Gaze, in Critical Gestures:
Writings on Dance and Culture (Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan University Press, 2002); Laura
Mulvey, Afterthoughts on Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema Inspired by King Vidors
Duel in the Sun (1946), in Feminist Film Theory: A Reader, ed. Sue Thornham (New York:
NYU Press, 1999), 12230.

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bell hooks has termed the oppositional gaze, a spectatorial position that
allows feminist spectators, and other marginalized people, to view cultural
phenomenon in transgressive ways.4 Specifically in dance, gaze theory did
little to account for spectators (or performers) kinesthetic or imaginative
responses to patriarchal narratives.5
What has too often been overlooked in criticism of Dalys early writing is
that she was not only criticizing ballet, but also, more importantly, calling for
the study of dance as both cultural practice and aesthetic phenomenon.6
She was championing new critical and historiographic approaches to dance.
Feminist critiques of ballet helped to catalyze the expansion of dance history into the broader, deeper, interdisciplinary, and politically charged field
of dance studies that we have today. Feminist questions about representation helped to make an argument that dance has cultural and social impact. My essay takes this broad feminist (cultural studies) approach as its
premise, but draws most specifically from the feminist scholarship of the
1990s, which called for multilayered critiques of gender and sexuality in
ballet.
My own analysis of the gender-constricted criticism of ballerinas continues the inquiries of early feminist dance criticism, while also taking up the
charge to consider how, not just audiences, but also performers circumvent
and contest the limitations of patriarchy and misogyny onstage. Dalys 1992
essay, Dance History and Feminist Theory: Reconsidering Isadora Duncan
and the Male Gaze, conceived of a multilayered approach to dance criticism, as Daly drew from psychoanalytic theory to imagine how womens
performances could both support and subvert dominant cultural codes. Referring to feminist psychoanalytic theorist Julia Kristevas theorization of the
semiotic and the symbolic, Daly sought to understand dance as an artistic practice in which individual women resist larger patriarchal structures,
even as they still act within those frames. Daly wrote, We need to understand culture as a full space that encompasses transgression without necessarily co-opting it, or else we are doomed to a history without change.7
Dalys thinking here invites recognition that ballerinas like Whelan can still
carve a place for their embodied voices within ballet. The feminist dance
critic, then, must find ways to mark the misogynistic discourses that circulate around Whelan, without stripping her of agency. This is key to
the kind of feminist ballet criticism I want, in this essay, to envision as
possible.
Dance historian Sally Banes made similar arguments for feminist criticism as a tool for more fully recognizing the role of women in performance.
In Dancing Women, Banes analyzed a series of choreographies, ranging in
genre from early modern dance to neoclassical ballet, to demonstrate how focusing on the way a woman dances, not just how the choreography presents
her, allows critics to see how a works plot and . . . performance can come

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into direct conflict. Acknowledging this collision of values makes room for
valuing female performers contributions. Even when a plot or partnering
style marks a female dancer as disempowered or manipulated, she can also,
simultaneously, display incredible virtuosity. Baness other important contribution in her book-length study is her point that critics and theorists need
to ground their analyses in specific ballets, rather than making claims about
ballet in general. My focus on one dancers career within one specific balletic
genealogy heeds Baness imperative.
Feminist performance critics like Banes, Daly, and Dolan take decidedly
feminist approaches to analysis of a range of cultural objects, but some cultural objects, like ballet, foreground gender roles more than others. Highly
gendered assumptions have bolstered ballet from its historical origins in court
settings to contemporary canonic repertory. Celebrations of royal marriages,
as Banes has noted, often occasioned the creation of early ballets, and these
circumstances helped infuse ballet with what Banes calls the marriage plot.
This familiar structure revolves around either a narrative that culminates in
the marriage of a man and a woman or, where no marriage literally takes
place, a kinesthetic compulsion toward the unification of a man and woman.8
Assertions of heteronormativity, gender difference, and chivalry thus became
essential premises for much mainstream ballet. The emphasis on gender difference perhaps reached its apex in the work of Balanchine who famously
said, In ballet . . . woman is first. Everywhere else man is first. But in ballet,
its the woman. All my life I have dedicated my art to her.9 Balanchines
stated intention to focus on women in his work makes NYCB, the company Balanchine built, an intriguing object of study for the feminist dance
critic. The critic must discern whether a particular Balanchine ballet focuses
on Woman as a subject or an objectempowered or disempowered or
something in-between.

WHY WHELAN?
While ballets cultural-historical backdrop affects how critics perceive all female dancers, Whelans shifting expressions of femininity (or lack thereof)
have been a lightning rod for New York dance critics. She is both an unconventional interpreter of Balanchines choreography and one of the dancers
who literally bridges NYCBs Balanchine and post-Balanchine eras. Whelan
often tells the story of hearing the news, in 1983, of Balanchines death
en route to the theater to perform in her final workshop at the School of

Banes, Dancing Women, 45. For a recent extension of Baness theories to womens
performances in musical theater, see Stacy Wolf, Changed for Good: A Feminist History of the
Broadway Musical (London: Oxford University Press, 2011).

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American Ballet, NYCBs feeder school.10 She would join NYCB as an apprentice the following year. Entering the company at this moment in its
history made Whelan an experiment of sorts. On one hand, because she
would never dance in a company that revolved almost entirely around
the famous founding choreographer, she potentially gained an opportunity to be recognized as an artist on her own merit, rather than as one
of Balanchines muses. On the other hand, if Whelan (and the women
who followed her) failed or faltered, this would offer evidence that women
could only achieve greatness in the NYCB with Balanchine present to guide
them.
Beyond these biographic details, Whelan has been a singular presence
among NYCBs women. One of the companys most interviewed dancers,
she has spoken on several occasions about how she does not fit (or perhaps exceeds) the stereotype of the Balanchine ballerina: the iconic skinny,
glamorous, forever lipsticked woman with a small head, long neck, short
torso, and long legs. In a 2002 interview published in danceviewtimes
(the same website that published my review of Whelan in After the Rain),
Whelan described herself: People say I am kind of strange looking. I am
very flat. Im not the typical female body. Im not a particularly beautiful,
young nymph. I dont know, Im more animal-like, I think.11 While the
typical female body is a status no professional dancer could likely achieve,
here Whelan suggests that neither is she the typical female dancer by NYCB
standards.
Whelans quick rise through NYCBs ranks suggests that the company
found her work to be above par, but critics generally considered her dancing
and her body, though skinny and long-limbed, oddoutliers to the already
extreme Balanchine ballerina formula. Describing her to Robin Pogrebin of
the New York Times, critic Eric Taub said, Whelan is an acquired taste:
extremely thin and muscular with astonishingly long limbs, Whelan often
strikes first-time viewers, especially those accustomed to more conventional
dancers, as odd to the point of freakishness.12 Whelan is radically slender,
even for a ballerina. In a controversial Wall Street Journal review, dance critic
Joan Acocella described Whelans appearance, quite cruelly, as reminiscent
of a famine victim.13 In the review, Acocella waxes generally positive about
Whelans dancing. However, not only does the critic take an unnecessarily
personal tone in assessing the dancers body, she also infantilizes her. Immediately after her comments on Whelans physique, Acocella asks, Where
is her mother?
Whelans physical proportions are not the only characteristics critics
have lambasted. In 1996, New Yorker critic Arlene Croce delivered an infamous dismissal of Whelan, describing her as representing the alternative
to becoming a Balanchine ballerina . . . becoming a ballerina in a business
company, carrying on star roles without really dancing them.14 Suggesting
that Whelans virtuosity lacked heart, Croces dismissal could be read as a

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gesture toward what some have called Whelans masculine approach to

dancing.15
Critical response to Whelan shifted when she began to appear in Wheeldons works. (Wheeldons Polyphonia [2001], in which Whelan danced, is
usually marked as a critical turning point for both Whelan and Wheeldon.)
Writing about Whelans performances in Wheeldons choreography, critics
were first haltingly positive, then rabidly enthusiastic. They crowned her a
true artist, often praising her in terms that suggested she had finally repudiated her cold and animal-like qualities for womanly dancing, particularly in
After the Rain. Writing in the Financial Times, Hillary Ostlere described the
piece as a love duet with Whelan swooning . . . while [Jock] Soto sturdily
support[ed] her.16 Jean Battey Lewis of the Washington Times proposed that
Whelan looked like an oversized doll but mostly like a soaring, postmodern
angel.17 Writing in the New York Observer, Robert Gottlieb said that After the
Rain amplified his understanding of Wendy Whelan, giving her a romantic
glow and glorying in her endless, sinewy legs.18 No longer was Whelans
body deemed freakish; critics could now see her as feminine. In pink and in
love, letting a man support her, Whelan became beautiful and barely human.
Fortunately, other critical conversations about Whelans dancing after
she began working with Wheeldon did not attribute her success in After
the Rain to an ascent to femininity. Dance Magazine editor-in-chief, Wendy
Perron, a longtime admirer of Whelans artistry, described her in 2006
(a year after After the Rains premiere) as the epitome of the contemporary ballerina, and remarked on her versatilityher ability to be strong and
icy, as well as soft and vulnerable. Speaking to Chip Brown in a New York
Times profile of Whelan, Perron said: [Whelan] throws herself into extraordinary positions, but she can also be incredibly subtle, and it will still read at
the back of the theater.19 Whelan can choose the kind of dancer she wants
to be. Not only does Perron celebrate Whelans versatility, she categorizes
her performances that register vulnerability as subtle, a word choice that
denotes artistic agency, not conformity. Writer Sarah Medford went further,
discussing Whelans performance of agency in specifically gendered terms.
Writing about Whelan in 2010, Medford said she was a fully autonomous
woman in charge of the art she is creating before our eyes.20

FEMININITY AS BARRIER TO EQUALITY

In reviews of After the Rain, critics often isolated and detailed one moment
from the ballet: Whelan stands on Sotos thighs, her arms and torso reaching
up and forward as he sits into his heels, his hands wrapped around her
lower legs to provide support. Critics descriptions of the arresting moment
frequently asserted a male/female binary in which the male dancer exuded

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strength and the female dancer dependency. Writing for ArtsJournal.com,

Tobi Tobias captured the moment, saying, The two body typesWhelans
attenuated as a Giacommetti figure, Sotos cousin to the squared-off solidity
of the Aztec sculpture . . . intensify the contrast suggested earlier [in the
piece], the mans rootedness allowing the woman to extend herself perilously
into uncharted space.21 Tobiass narrative makes the man, even though he
cannot move, the active agent: Sotos rootedness makes Whelans flight
possible. This description demonstrates a perfect example of the paradox of
Balanchines Woman (even in a Wheeldon ballet): the woman is the focus
of the ballet, but she has no agentic power. The stillness of this pose and
Whelans moment of petrification atop Sotos legs stand in contradistinction,
however, with the rest of the pas de deux, in which Whelan enjoys greater
mobility and independence. Nonetheless, most critics, like Tobias, fixated on
the one striking pose. The reviews, taken as a whole, built a static rather than
fluid narrative of the relationship between a man and a woman: a physical
story of a woman needing a man. Whelan cannot escape the mans grip, nor
does she want to do so. Moreover, were she to try to leave him, she would
fall (see Figure 1).
Sotos support for Whelan in Wheeldons notoriously tricky partnering
so engrossed critics that many feared the pas de deux could not withstand
Sotos retirement in late 2006. They could not imagine Whelan as a suitable
steward of the work. Writing in the New York Times, John Rockwell noted
his surprise that the duet, now without Soto, remained sensuous and even
deepened its sensuality; he had worried that the absence of Sotos much
touted partnering skills doomed the pas de deux to failure.22 The fact that
Whelan would continue to perform the work, and might be capable of
leading a new male partner had been a nonfactor in Rockwells thinking. Her
decades-long track record with the company, including many performances
in many pas de deux, could not overwhelm the impression of fragility she
had made onstage in After the Rain, and she was deemed less responsible
for the pas de deuxs success than Soto.
Both Tobias and Rockwell focused on Whelan and Soto as individual dancers, rather than deconstructing the ballets chivalric codes that bind
them together. Instead, reviews naturalized the male-female relationships
presented. Only Deborah Jowitt of the Village Voice both gave the piece a
favorable review, noting the works arresting qualities, and discussed how
it drew from the sometimes-misogynistic archive of pas de deux choreographic structures. Jowitt wrote about the male-female pairings in the sextet
and the pas de deux, In these duets, we see what we expect to see: men
spinning women around, holding them up while they cast their legs into
the air, tenderly assisting them into beautifuland sometimes undreamedofpositions, twining them like valuable necklaces around their manly bodies. Pas de deux are often metaphors for rapture, yearning, or rape.23

Dance Chronicle

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FIGURE 1 Wendy Whelan and Jock Soto in Christopher Wheeldons After the Rain (2005).
C Paul Kolnik. Reproduced by permission of Paul Kolnik. Permission to reuse
Photograph 
must be obtained from Paul Kolnik (color figure available online).

Jowitt recognized that a pas de deux can present aesthetic shapes and
flow of movement without erasing the forms historical baggage of objectification, manipulation, and even rape of the female bodyif not a literal
representation of rape, then a symbolic act of a man taking power from a
woman by physical force. Jowitt honored the performers without dismissing
the choreographys less open, even sinister, possibilities.

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By attending to multiple levels of After the Rain, Jowitt avoided what

choreographer Tere OConnor (ironically enough, in a critique of Jowitt) has
criticized as drive-by criticism.24 OConnor accused the descriptive-school
critics of focusing so intensely on capturing one or two significant choreographic moments that they missed the pieces larger structure. Reviews of
After the Rain, including my own, fell prey to this problem. I spent so many
words describing the fragility of Whelans body and her feminine accoutrement (her long hair and pink leotard), particularly in the pose so many
critics noticed, that my review missed the complicated, shifting relationship
between Soto and Whelan.
Many other instances in After the Rain function quite differently from
the moment Whelan stands on Sotos thighs, and they hint at an egalitarian
relationship between the two dancers. Soto and Whelan frequently alternate
in the role of movement initiator. At one point, Soto stands with his back to
Whelan as she leans against his buttocks and lower back and seems to sit
on his calves while he walks. Though he appears to at least partially support
her weight, she pushes him forward one foot at a time, pressing the soles
of her slippers against his feet and driving his steps. While the juxtaposition
of Whelans slight frame with Sotos bear-like stature draws attention to the
imbalance of strength between the two, Whelan here appears to exert force,
if not greater than, at least equal to Sotos. She is a mover, not just something
to be moved or held.
Another example, with slightly different implications, comes earlier in
the piece. Whelan and Soto both bend at the waist, curving their torsos.
Each extends one arm to the side in a shape similar to their torsos curves.
They pass in front of one another in succession, each dancers trailing hand
slipping across the others back, acting as catalyst for the other to begin
walking. Whelan is not merely the object of Sotos desire, incapable of
expressing her own desire and willa dramaturgical structure in pas de deux
that dance theorist Susan Leigh Foster has described as its great limitation.
Rather, their relationship is reciprocal; both Soto and Whelan change one

another.
Reviews of After the Rain missed the pas de deuxs shifting, sometimes
egalitarian power dynamic, in spite of the fact that in the past reviewers
had often described Whelan as a woman capable of matching her male
partners. The femininity embedded in the choreography of After the Rain
obscured Whelans power. Earlier in Whelans career, longtime New York
Times critic Anna Kisselgoff, among others, credited Whelan with surpassing stereotypes. A series of Kisselgoff reviews from the mid 1990s illustrate
this theme. Reviewing Ulysses Doves virtuosic and intense Twilight (1996),
the critic wrote, Mr. Boal and Ms. Whelan yank each other around.25 In

For more information on how ballet disallows female desire, see Foster, The Ballerinas
Phallic Pointe.

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1997, Kisselgoff described Whelan and Nilas Martins in Sleeping Beauty as a

modern pair, abstracting the essence of their roles, suggesting that the two
moved beyond the conventional chivalric framing of the fairy tale couple26
A month later, Kisselgoff said Whelan matched partner Benjamin
Millepied with fiery temperament and flash in Balanchines Midsummer
Nights Dream (1962).27 As sassy Titania, Whelan could overpower Millpieds
Oberon. But reviews of After the Rain do not allow Whelan to claim such
equality with her partner. Critics astonishment at her surprisingly feminine
movement prevented her assertive moments in After the Rain from entering
the historical record.

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VALUING MALE CHOREOGRAPHERS OVER FEMALE DANCERS

EVERY TIME
The music for Arvo Parts yearning Spiegel im Spiegel exemplifies Parts concept of tintinnabuli, a system the composer created to explore musical
triads.28 Reviews of the ballet illustrated that the works exploration of the
triad was not only a musical question: the ballets choreographer, Wheeldon, acted as a third, invisible, yet greatly praised presence alongside the
two dancers featured in the pas de deux. Although male partners might
be Whelans most obvious onstage competition for critical attention, it is
the choreographerin ballet usually a manwho most often garners the
lions share of critical responseagain relegating the female dancer center
stage to the critical periphery. Reviews of Whelans early work as a soloist
with NYCB designated her as Balanchines canvas, and, despite the shift in
choreographer and aestheticfrom Balanchines modernist neoclassicism to
Wheeldons contemporary balletreviewers of After the Rain still refused to
grant Whelan artistic agency.
The insistence on denying Whelan agency seems particularly remarkable, given the fact that both Whelan and Wheeldon have publicly contested
a lopsided conception of their relationship. In interviews, both say their work
together has been truly collaborativea partnership to which both dancer
and choreographer contribute. In a 2006 interview (not long after the premiere of After the Rain), Wheeldon marveled over Whelans ability to make
meaning out of the simplest unfolding of her leg or the curve of her back or
the extension of her arm.29 Here, not only did Wheeldon give Whelan credit
for her interpretive abilities, he dismantled the idea of the Balanchine-trained
dancer as one who merely presents the geometric patterns the choreographer wants. The dancer is no longer canvas, but the wielder of a second
paintbrush, creating the choreographic picture alongside the choreographer.
The mainstream conception of the choreographer as the artist who
makes choices about movement composition and style has deep roots in
criticism and can be partially attributed to journalistic conventions. Press

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coverage often centers on the premieres of works, and reviews of the first
few performances of a work often revolve around the choreographer rather
than the dancers. NYCB, a company recognized so long for its frequent presentation of new ballets, is particularly choreographer focused. Moreover,
premieres at NYCB tend to be especially attuned to the choreographers role
because, since Balanchines death in 1983, critics have focused oneven
obsessed overwho, if anyone, could fill the void. As the creator of over
400 ballets, most of them for NYCB, Balanchine looms over every NYCB
performance and, one might argue, every ballet production in the United
States.
Often this single-minded focus on choreographers does not admit the
possibility of a mutual exchange between choreographer and dancer or an
active two-way flow of information between choreographic choices and performance choices. Recognizing the back-and-forth between choreographer
and performer in the creative process can help a critic consider dancers artistic agency, even when representational conventions or institutional contexts
obscure dancers contributions. As Daly asserted in her controversial 1987
essay: It is not enough to observe that the ballerina is of primary interest; it
must be asked how the choreography positions her within the interaction.30
To this question, I would add a mandate to attend to how the ballerina copes
with, or even resists, how the choreography positions her. When and why
is a dancer seen as working primarily to fulfill a choreographers vision, and
under what circumstances might she be seen as an artist capable of adding

to or commenting upon that vision?

Most reviews of Whelan dancing Balanchine ballets depict her not as
creative interpreter but as able executor of the masters designs. Even in
the post-Balanchine era, critics often wrote of Whelan as subservient to the
choreographer. In an extended essay on Whelan in Ballet Review, Daniel Jacobson wrote, She has the ideal body for Balanchines bold designs, those
orthogonal projections of classical technique . . . [she is] unfazed by the most
exposed gestural language.31 Here, Whelan is a screen to be projected upon.
Writing of Whelans debut in Balanchines Tchaikovsky Suite No. 3 (1970),
Kisselgoff remarked, the striking clarity of her performance as a whole
was refreshing, very suitable to Balanchines straightforward style.32 Citing
claritya word often appearing in connection with Whelanas her great
strength works paradoxically against the ballerina; it hails her for serving as a
direct conduit of Balanchines vision, even as it defers to his artistry. In 2004,

Susan Foster has argued that Balanchine valued individual difference in the rehearsal
process in as much as individual dancers inspired him. However, she has also noted that the
choreography emphasized the display of form rather than individuality. The feminist dance
critic will have to surmount such challenges. See Susan Foster, Reading Dancing: Bodies and
Subjects in Contemporary American Dance (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986),
14, 423.

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Robin Pogrebin seemed to imply that Balanchines ghost inhabited Whelans

body: Wendy Whelan has the spirit and pacing of George Balanchines ballets in her bodythe languid intensity of Episodes, the exuberant rapidity
of the Brahms-Schoenberg Quartet, the elegance of Liebeslieder Walzer.33
The word choicelikely intended as a complimentpositioned Whelan as
heir to Balanchines stylebut still, as in Kisselgoffs review, Whelan had
minimal agency.
To be fair, all artists associated with NYCBincluding artistic director Peter Martins, choreographers commissioned by the company, and
dancersreckon with the enormity of Balanchines legacy. Daly described
the problem from the critics perspective: During his life, Balanchine was
enveloped by a mythology that ascribed him to near-mystical inspiration,
and now, . . . after his death, Balanchines legacy is generally considered
sacrosanct.34 Wheeldon confronted the legacy head-on; his Polyphonia,
which featured Whelan and Soto, clearly cited Balanchines choreographic
signatures, including his musicality. Reviewing Polyphonia, Kisselgoff wrote,
Balanchines formula is extended into Mr. Wheeldons own dancing ideas,
making the piece an astonishingly fresh example of choreography.35 The
recycling of thematic motifs associated with Balanchine acknowledged the
great choreographers influence. But, rather than diminishing Wheeldons
contribution, as was the case when the specter of Balanchine inhabited
Whelan, the connection between Balanchine and Wheeldon only enhanced
the formers star power. Channeling Balanchine-esque choices carved a spot
in NYCB for Wheeldon and became evidence of his choreographic prowess.
Wheeldon was Balanchines new prodigy; Whelan his vehicleproof only
of Balanchines continued power, not her own promise.
Wheeldons temporary ascendance into the role of NYCBs choreographic chosen one did not, however, shift how critics perceived Whelans
relationship to choreographic innovation. Even though she had a longer,
deeper track record with NYCB than did Wheeldon, critics reverted to the
same old template of choreographer as prime mover, rather than seeing the
dancer as an artist in her own right. In a review of Wheeldons Morphoses

(2002), Lynn Garafola extended the rhetoric of Whelan as choreographers

muse so familiar from the Balanchine era into Wheeldons domain: [Wheeldon] remains fascinated by Whelans strength, flexibility, edginess and speed,
the pretzel of steel we know from so many NYCB works.36 Acocella, a famously harsh critic of NYCB since Balanchines death, raved over Whelans
performance in Wheeldons work, but gave responsibility for the ballerinas
development to the choreographer:

Morphoses is also the name of the dance company Wheeldon created and in which
Whelan danced.

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About seven years ago, Whelan, turning thirty, changed before our eyes.
She had been a dry, hypercorrect performer. I work hard, her dancing
seemed to say. Then suddenly, she relaxed, became witty, wise. In interviews, she gave various reasons for this development, but it was surely
abetted by Wheeldon, with whom she began working soon afterward.37

At the age of thirty, Whelan had been dancing for NYCB for over a decade,
had trained at some of the best ballet schools in the United States, and
had performed hundreds of times in works by a variety of choreographers. Despite this, Acocella ascribed the bulk of Whelans transformation to
Wheeldon, rather than to her own artistic maturity.
Most reviews of Whelan in Wheeldons work follow Acocellas line of
thinking, giving Wheeldon credit for Whelans artistic transformation. Writing
about Polyphonia, George Jackson said, Wheeldon made me appreciate
the dancing of these two [Whelan and Soto] as no other choreographer
had before. Is it because of the intimate rather than demonstrative way in
which he has his dancers bodies meet?38 Even at the level of grammar,
the choreographer commands agency. He is the subject-protagonist, and
the dancers, including Whelan, are objects. Similarly, writing about After the
Rain Robert Gottlieb stated: The Arvo Part score suits Wheeldon perfectly,
and he uses it to amplify his (and our) understanding of Wendy Whelan,
giving her a romantic glow and glorifying in her endless, sinewy legs.39
Gottlieb applauded the unseen male choreographer and reduced Whelan to

a set of attractive legs. Despite Wheeldon and Whelans common assertion of

collaboration, critical responses cannot conceptualize Whelan as Wheeldons
artistic partner.

ICONIC FORCE VERSUS INDIVIDUAL AGENCY

In addition to the gender-constricting choreographic structures derived from
centuries of ballet history and the rhetoric surrounding those structures,
the idealization of Woman in Balanchine ballets has also greatly limited
critics ability to imagine Whelan as an imaginative artist throughout her
career. Daly has lamented the lasting effect of the Balanchine ballerina
icon, which holds such power that the Balanchine ideal of a very specific body typea slender bone structure, small head, long neck, short
torso, and long legsis framed as natural, even common. Daly asserted
that this naturalization of a socially constructed ideal damages women in
ballet because the ideal representations . . . [of] Woman have replaced

For a discussion of how writing about womens body parts is a critical tradition dating
back to the nineteenth-century French Romantic ballet, see Foster, The Ballerinas Phallic
Pointe, 6.

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the realities of women... in everyday life.40 This distortion hampers critics

ability to imagine multiple interpretations and embodiments of the female
roles in the Balanchine repertory. In Balanchine ballets, particularly those
with a central female role, Whelan dances in a tightly constricted range of
possibilities.
Early writing about Whelan pigeonholed her as femininitys Otherall
hard edges and estrangement. Excelling in roles like the Novice, the
seductive devourer of men in Jerome Robbinss The Cage (1951), and in
the sensual angularity of Balanchines Agon (1957), Whelan was typed
as unemotional and hard. Reviewing her performance in The Cage, Jack
Anderson wrote, Some dancers emphasize the fleeting moments in which
the Novice feels affection for the second of the intruders. But Ms. Whelan
disdained sentiment.41 Kisselgoff pronounced the ballerinas characterization of the Novice as tinged with alienation,42 and her performance in
Diamonds (1967), from Balanchines triptych Jewels, as hard impassive
glitter.43 Of Whelans performance in Symphony in C (1947), Mary Cargill
rued the lack of emotion: This is not a variation of Odettes sorrow, but
something felt rather than seen, a shimmer of light from a different moon.44
Whelan triumphs, according to critics, when she is either the most despised
idea of a Woman (The Cage) or the most remote (Odette in Swan Lake,
act IV).
Yet critics protest when Whelan brings these same qualities to a conventionally feminine role, especially in her annual appearances as Sugar
Plum Fairy in Balanchines Nutcracker (see Figure 2). Cargill offered
Whelans past roles as a caveat to a disappointing 2005 appearance as the
Sugar Plum Fairy: Her best classical roles evoke an iridescent and mysterious control, and the petite charm of Sugar Plums choreography doesnt
show her at her best. . . . But she was warm and gracious and it is always fascinating to see what she can do with music and shape.45 Whelan
herself has referred to critics descriptions of her performances of Sugar
Plum Fairy to reflect on her unconventional look and affect onstage. In
the 2002 danceviewtimes interview quoted earlier, she said, People say
I am kind of strange looking. I am very flat. Im not the typical female
body. Im not a particularly beautiful, young nymph. I dont know, Im
more animal-like, I think. And it took a long time for me to understand
that about myself too. I knew I wasnt the Sugar Plum Fairy, because I
dont look like the Sugar Plum Fairy.46 As a tall, regal woman, Whelan
does not fit the traditional view of the Sugar Plum Fairyin her view or the
critics.
But there is more than one way to dance a role, and, as Banes has
argued, the Sugar Plum Fairy can be delicatea physical manifestation
of the iconic celesta music with its ethereal tinkling soundsand she
can also be magisterial . . . [the] supreme commander of her realm, head
of an empire . . . metaphorically coded as feminine.47 While Banes wrote

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FIGURE 2 Wendy Whelan as the Sugar Plum Fairy in George Balanchines The Nutcracker
C Paul Kolnik. Reproduced by permission of Paul Kolnik. Permission to
(1954). Photograph 
C The George
reuse must be obtained from Paul Kolnik. Choreography George Balanchine 
Balanchine Trust (color figure available online).

about the Sugar Plum Fairy in a general way, Balanchines Nutcracker gives
even more credence to the magisterial take on the role, because his Sugar
Plum, without a male escort or partner, welcomes Clara and the Prince at

the beginning of act 2 and then dances her famous solo. She is the single

Most versions of The Nutcracker place the Sugar Plum Fairy solo in the Grand Pas de
Deux near the end of act 2, thus following the usual sonata-form structure of ballet pas de
deux: an adagio for the male-female couple, a solo for the woman, a solo for the man, and a
coda for the couple.

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head of her kingdom. Her male cavalier appears only in the pas de deux
near the end of act 2.
In recent years, critics have appreciatedsomewhat begrudgingly
Whelans approach to the Sugar Plum. Writing in 2006, John Rockwell wrote
that Whelan may not be quite the fairytale royalty to the scepter born, but
she danced the Sugar Plum Fairy with cool grace.48 In a 2006 Nutcracker
preview piece, Roslyn Sulcas penned: And for those who like the certainty
of regal glory in their Sugar Plum Fairy and Cavalier, Wendy Whelan and
Damian Woetzel . . . perform at the Saturday matinee.49 Both writers found
Whelans interpretation appealing, but with certain caveats. While they allowed for an alternative interpretation of the iconic female role, they favored,
at least implicitly, a softer, more feminine version of it. Despite the critics
backhanded praise, Whelans career serves as a reminder that part of a great
dancers gift is her versatility and her individuality. Feminist criticism requires
opening ones mind to the idea that multiple kinds of bodies and people with
a range of approaches to performing gender are suitable for female leads,
and that they deserve to be viewed as subjects capable of desire, action, and
agency within a ballet.

CONCLUSION
Analyzing how critics positioned Whelan demonstrates how reviews
records of dance performances in the present and the futurecan misrepresent the performances of female artists and the representational structures
they inhabit. When writing about Whelan, critics inevitably turned to male
soloists and choreographers as the generators of creative ideas. In these reviews, even an artist the caliber of Whelan appeared to need a partners
support and a choreographers direction to achieve her success.
Based on my analysis, two strategies could help critics who desire to approach ballet criticism from a feminist perspective. First, consider who is the
subject of each sentence and who is the object. In review after review, critics
made a man the active subject of every sentence of performance description,
syntactically marking Whelan as always acted upon by a man, never the catalyst of her own physical action. Short of a choreographic work that positions
a woman as a mannequin, this is an inaccurate and unfair way to represent
movement. Second, critics should attend to relationshipshow performers
relate to one another onstage, how choreographers and dancers mutually
shape what audiences see, and how audiences respond to performance in
the contemporary moment. Writing about relationships, rather than looking
for the next star turn, could move criticism toward an understanding of performance as multivalent and part of larger cultural systems of social meaning
making. This strategy resonates with Dalys call, at the end of her essay, for
feminist analysis to offer new insights into the process of representation and
the ways that dance produces meaning.50

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It is worth considering, too, how feminist criticism broadens thinking

about dance in a variety of venues, including the popular press, especially
because journalism in general, and arts criticism in particular, continue to undergo massive change. With the demise of full-time arts critics positions with
newspapers and magazines, dance criticism has migrated to the blogosphere,
where editorial guidance is sparse, but strident cultural and political opinions are not. Might the blogosphere become the new home to feminist ballet
criticism, as has been the case for the feminist manifesto, according to New
York Magazines feminist critic Emily Nussbaum?51 What if feminist bloggers
took up dance as a highly gendered art form, as bloggers have done with
celebrity culture and fashion? Ballet could then be viewedto borrow Nussbaums depiction of bloggers approach to celebrity cultureas a shared
language, a complex code to be solved together, and . . . something fun to
analyze. 52 Such an investment might lead to new ways of talking, even new
language; feminist and queer blogs, with their conversational tone and sallies
back-and-forth among commenters, have been credited with popularizing,
for instance, the term cisgender (ascribed to people whose gender selfidentification corresponds with the sex they were assigned at birth). A new
mode of writing helped to create a new word noting the social construction
of a previously naturalized concept.
As Dolan has argued in her description of feminist criticism, feminism is
a way of looking at the world and also a way to imagine, together, a better,
more equitable future for us all.53 But when limiting, dominant discourse
about female artists has a stranglehold on ballet criticism, despite changing
aesthetics in ballet today, how can the critic fairly assess what she sees? This
is a particularly difficult task for the reviewer pushed to write faster, often
with little editorial support, as is the case with most dance critics working
within the changing dynamics of journalism.
Perhaps the future of feminist ballet criticism is not about reforming old
models, but about creating new spaces for debate. Impassioned criticism is
good for the arts, and impassioned feminist discussion can only deepen the
ways audiences might think about ballet.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I am grateful to Charlotte Canning for her feedback on early versions of this
article.

NOTES
1. Clare Croft, Tensions and Curves, danceviewtimes.com, June 6, 2005. http://archives.
danceviewtimes.com/2005/Spring/09/nycb11.htm (accessed April 15, 2006).
2. Judith Butler, Gender Trouble (London: Routledge, 1993), 179.
3. Jill Dolan, Feminist Spectator in Action (New York: Palgrave, 2013), 1.

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4. bell hooks, The Oppositional Gaze: Black Female Spectators, in Feminist Film Theory: A
Reader, ed. Sue Thornham (New York: New York University Press, 1999), 307320.
5. Alexandra Carter, Staring Back, Mindfully: Reinstating the Dancerand the Dancein Feminist
Ballet Historiography, in Proceedings of the Society of Dance History Scholars (Riverside, Cal.: Society of
Dance History Scholars, 1999), 232; Angela McRobbie, Dance Narratives and Fantasies of Achievement,
in Feminism and Youth Culture (Boston, Mass.: Unwin Hyman, 1991), 189.
6. Ann Daly, Dance History and Feminist Theory: Reconsidering Isadora Duncan and the Male
Gaze, in Critical Gestures: Writings on Dance and Culture (Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan University
Press, 2002), 302.
7. Ibid., 307.
8. Sally Banes, Dancing Women: Female Bodies on Stage (New York: Routledge, 1998), 5.
9. Ann Daly, The Balanchine Woman: Of Hummingbirds and Channel Swimmers, Critical
Gestures, 279.
10. Chip Brown, In the Balance, New York Times, January 22, 2006, 43 (Proquest, accessed 15
April 2006).
11. Marc Haegman, A Conversation with Wendy Whelan, danceviewtimes.com, September 28,
2002, http://www.danceview.org/interviews/whelan.html (accessed April 15, 2006).
12. Robin Pogrebin, Exuding Balanchines Vision, New York Times, April 23, 2004, 1 (Proquest,
accessed April 15, 2006).
13. Joan Acocella, Footfalls: New York City Ballet, Wall Street Journal, March 18 1997, A20
(Proquest, accessed March 1, 2013).
14. Arlene Croce, Our Dancers in the Nineties, in Writing in the Dark, Dancing in the New Yorker
(New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2000), 724.
15. Brown, In the Balance, 42.
16. Hilary Ostlere, After the Rain: New York Ballet, Financial Times, 28 January 2005, 10 (Proquest,
accessed February 25, 2013).
17. Jean Battey Lewis, NYCB Shines amid Plethora of Dance, Washington Times, June 21, 2005:
B05 (Proquest, accessed February 15, 2013).
18. Robert Gottlieb, Royal High Jinks at City Center; Peter Martins Minor Morsels, New York
Observer, March 3, 2006, 22 (Proquest, accessed April 15, 2006).
19. Brown, In the Balance, 44.
20. Sara Medford, The Originals: How Do they Do it? Five Artists Whove Delighted the Crowds
while Reshaping the Culture. First Up: Ballerina Wendy Whelan, 164.5356 Town & Country (January
2010): 15 (Academic One File, accessed February 25, 2013).
21. Tobi Tobias, Rain Date, Seeing Things, January 30, 2005, http://www.artsjournal.com/tobias/
2005/01/rain_date.html (accessed April 15, 2006).
22. John Rockwell, With a Casting Change, a Duet Acquires a New Sensuousness, New York Times,
February 20, 2006, 5 (Proquest, accessed April 15, 2006).
23. Deborah Jowitt, Duet to Me One More Time, Village Voice, May 5, 2005, http://www.
villagevoice.com/2005-05-03/dance/duet-to-me-one-more-time/ (accessed April 15, 2006).
24. Tere OConnor, Untitled Essay, Movement Research Performance Journal: #25: Dance Writing,
Fall 2002, http://www.movementresearch.org/performancejournal/ (accessed January 5, 2012).
25. Anna Kisselgoff, Portraying Tender Love as Four Saxes Call the Tune, New York Times, May
25, 1996, 1 (Proquest, accessed April 15, 2006).
26. Anna Kisselgoff, Sleeping Beauty as a Spectacle of Individuality, New York Times, May 5,
1997, 1 (Proquest, accessed April 15, 2006).
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28. Benjamin Skipp, Out of Place in the 20th Century: Thoughts on Arvo Parts Tintinnabuli Style,
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29. Brown, In the Balance, 43.
30. Daly, The Balanchine Woman, 282.
31. Daniel Jacobson, Out There: Wendy Whelan, Ballet Review, vol. 28, no. 2 (2000), 38.
32. Anna Kisselgoff, A Debut and a Challenge in a Balanchine Work, New York Times, January
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33. Pogrebin, Exuding Balanchines Influence, 1.
34. Daly, The Balanchine Woman, 279.

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35. Anna Kisselgoff, The Breath of Balanchine Wafts Over a New Work, New York Times, January
6, 2001, B9 (Proquest, accessed April 15, 2006).
36. Lynn Garafola, Steps to the Music Village Voice, January 2, 2002, http://www.villagevoice.
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37. Joan Acocella, Personal Matters, New Yorker, May 30, 2005, 56 (Proquest, accessed April 15,
2006).
38. George Jackson, Almost as It Ought to Be, danceviewtimes.com, March 4, 2005, http://www.
danceviewtimes.com/2005/Winter/10/N.Y.cb3.htm (accessed April 15, 2006).
39. Gottlieb, Royal High Jinks, 22.
40. Daly, The Balanchine Woman, 279.
41. Jack Anderson, Portraying the Female as Mate and Predator, New York Times, May 23, 1991,
15 (Proquest, accessed April 15, 2006).
42. Anna Kisselgoff, Serving Phillip Glass, in Classical Style, New York Times, June 20, 2003, 3
(Proquest, accessed April 15, 2006).
43. Anna Kisselgoff, A Martins and Others Take Roles in Jewels, New York Times, January 28,
1991, 21 (Proquest, accessed 15 April 2006).
44. Mary Cargill, Etoiles, Imported and Homegrown, danceviewtimes.com, April 26, 2004, http:
//archives.danceviewtimes.com/dvny/reviews/2004/spring/nycb1.htm (accessed April 15, 2006).
45. Mary Cargill, Peter Boals Drosselmeyer Debut, danceviewtimes.com, December 21, 2005,
http://danceviewtimes.com/2005/Winter/01/nuts1.htm (accessed 15 April 2006).
46. Haegman, A Conversation.
47. Banes, Dancing Women, 69.
48. John Rockwell, Its Late November? Cue the Snowflakes, New York Times, November 27, 2006,
E1 (Proquest, accessed February 16, 2013).
49. Roslyn Sulcas, Dance, New York Times, November 24, 2006 (Proquest, accessed February 26,
2013).
50. Daly, Feminist Theory, 302.
51. Emily Nussbaum, The Rebirth of the Feminist Manifesto: Come for the Lady Gaga, Stay for the
Empowerment, New York Magazine, November 7, 2011 (Lexis Nexis Academic, accessed March 1, 2013).
52. Ibid.
53. Dolan, Feminist Spectator in Action, 1.