The Balanchine Woman: Of Hummingbirds and Channel Swimmers

Author(s): Ann Daly

Reviewed work(s):
Source: The Drama Review: TDR, Vol. 31, No. 1 (Spring, 1987), pp. 8-21
Published by: The MIT Press
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 The Balanchine Woman

Of Hummingbirds and Channel

Swimmers

Ann Daly

"Man is a bettercook, a betterpainter, a bettermusician,composer.

Everythingis man-sports-everything. Man is stronger,faster.
Why?Becausewe have muscles,and we're madethat way. And wom-
an acceptsthis. It is her businessto accept.She knowswhat's beautifil.
Men aregreatpoets, becausethey have to write beautifulpoetryfor
women-odes to a beautifulwoman. Womanacceptsthe beautifilpoet-
ry. You see, man is the servant-a good servant. In ballet, however,
woman is first. Everywhereelse man isfirst. But in ballet, it's the
woman. All my life I have dedicatedmy art to her."

-George Balanchine(Gruen 1976:284)

When people say that "Balanchine glorified Woman," it is generally

considered a laudable accomplishment. But in an age of backlash against
feminism, when women's efforts toward progressive social change are
losing ground to blithe conservatism, "glorification" smacks of regressive
sexual politics. Though artists and scholars in art, film, and theatre have
been deconstructing representations of "Woman" for 15 years, such work
is rarely found in Western theatrical dance. The issues surrounding the
ballerina as a cultural icon of femininity have been left virtually unex-
plored in print and met with impatient, if polite, disinterest in most pub-
lic discussions.'
If the ballerina has been only a passing subject of critical feminist think-
ing, the Balanchine ballerina has been strictly off-limits. During his life,
Balanchine was enveloped by a mythology that ascribed to him near-
mystical inspiration, and now, four years after his death, Balanchine's
legacy is generally considered sacrosanct. Yet Balanchine's statements
about his idealized "Woman" openly declared their patriarchal founda-
tions. Familiar themes emerge: Woman is naturally inferior in matters
requiring action and imagination. Woman obligingly accepts her lowly
place. Woman is an object of beauty and desire. Woman is first in ballet
by default, because she is more beautiful than the opposite gender.
The Balanchine ballerina is not simply an innocuous, isolated theatrical
image. As much as Twiggy or Marilyn Monroe, she is an American icon.
 The BalanchineWoman 9

When, as in these cases, an artificial construction takes on a "natural"

appearance, ideal representations (Woman) instead of realities (women)
set standards for everyday life (Ortner and Whitehead I98I:IO). An
iconographic hangover from the Igth century, the Balanchine ballerina
now serves as a powerful but regressive model in a social milieu where
women are struggling to claim their own voices.
Balanchine's choreographic framing of Woman came up briefly at the
Dance Critics' Association (DCA) seminar on The Four Temperaments
(I946) on 25 January I985. During one session, former New York City
Ballet dancer Suki Schorer narrated a movement analysis of her role in
the third theme pas de deux while two students from the School of
American Ballet demonstrated.
She told the audience early on that the man "is manipulating [the balle-
rina]-controlling her." At one point, he lifts her straight up and sets her
on the floor on one pointe, her free leg crossed over the bent, supporting
leg. She looks as if she is perched in an invisible chair. With one hand he
grasps his ballerina's upstretched arm like the throat of a cello; then he
pulls on her free arm, spinning her repeatedly. "You see the boy totally
controlling the girl," Schorer commented. "He opens her arm [to the]
side and then puts her arm in front. He's doing her port de bras. [. . .]
The boy should appear then to be strumming-playing-some sort of
harp or cello. The girl is like an instrument."
During the later critics' panel, a member of the audience commented
that she found the ballet somewhat misogynistic. Of the five panel mem-
bers, only the two men responded. "I don't think there's any misogyny
in Balanchine whatsoever," said David Daniel, a New York Review of
Books staff member. "Whenever he has a man manipulate a woman it is
pure metaphor."
Critic Robert Greskovic added that:

What happens in those three themes, for me, is that man's sup-
port is allowing this woman to be more powerful, more open,
and in my sense of looking at it more beautiful than she could
be by herself because she has this [. . .] human ballet barre-I
don't care what you call it. That man shows her in four ara-
besques that she couldn't do by herself, and each one is more
powerful than the next because of his assistance or whatever
you want to call it-manipulation.

"Nor is there any indication in a Balanchine ballet that a man is making

a woman do anything that she doesn't want to do," Daniel concluded.
The gap between the choreography and the male rhetoric deserves in-
vestigation. The third theme of The Four Temperaments is but a few min-
utes in the many hours of Balanchine's repertory, but it is an emblematic
starting point for a feminist discourse on ballet. If Balanchine did "glorify
Woman," the question remains: whose idea of Woman is she?
Like the Madison Avenue model, Playboy centerfold, or Hollywood
bombshell, Balanchine's ballerina is part of a "culture [that] is deeply
committed to myths of demarcated sex differences, called 'masculine' and
'feminine,' which in turn revolve first on a complex [male] gaze apparatus
and second on dominance-submission patterns. This positioning of two
sex genders in representation clearly privileges the male" (Kaplan
1983:29).2 The same questions E. Ann Kaplan asks about the cinema can
be used to probe the Balanchine ballerina. In the third theme of The Four
Temperaments,how is Woman represented? In a dance form that Balan-
Io Ann Daly

chine called an instant love story, whose desire is being played out? Who
occupies the position of privilege?
Balanchine choreographed The Four Temperamentsto Paul Hindemith's
1940 Theme with Four Variations(Accordingto the Four Temperaments).The
ballet is not so much about the four humors as it is about the sometimes
sweet, sometimes plaintive music, featuring the comings and goings of
piano and strings. The score begins with three themes, each represented
by a pas de deux; the subsequent variations are "Melancholic," "San-
guinic," "Phlegmatic," and "Choleric." This was the first of Balanchine's
strain of so-called "modern ballets," which, though rooted in the classical
vocabulary, inverted it, stretching it beyond the boundaries of conven-
tional "good taste."
The third theme is adagio-a man and woman dancing together in a
slow tempo. Its gender system is the traditional one "in which girls per-
form, supported by male partners" (Kirstein I983:296). The couple enters
together, and, after a brief foray by the ballerina, the danseur puts her
through an extraordinary sequence of precarious moves and off-kilter po-
sitions that render her totally vulnerable to his control. It is as if the man
were experimenting with how far he could pull the ballerina off her own
balance and still be performing classical ballet. The extreme to which the
third theme exemplifies what a ballerina can look like with the support of
her partner makes it an archetypal pas de deux.
A recurring motif is the arabesque, created and used in quite unconven-
tional ways. The danseur lays the ballerina in arabesque against his
leaned-back body (plate I) or swings her around on the pivot of her sup-
porting foot. As soon as an arabesque is formed or even before it is fully
formed, the man pulls, lifts, or thrusts the ballerina into another phrase.
However innovative the arabesques are, they still serve the traditional
purpose of focusing on the ballerina's leg. The emphasis on the manipu-
lated weight of the ballerina-passive weight, counterweight, displaced
weight, the compression of balanced weight, no weight-forces a focus
onto the woman's support system: her legs. They are constantly drawn in
and then extended outward, further intensifying the visual impact of her
dynamic line. And as the couple exits, the man carrying the woman, she
reverently unfolds her legs forward, as if she's rolling out a red carpet for
her exquisitely arched feet. Displaying the line of her body, artificially
elongated by her toe shoes, is the goal of their joint venture.
It is usually assumed that because Balanchine created so many more
starring roles for women than men that the ballerina is therefore the
dominant figure. But 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. In Temperaments'third theme, the ballerina is the
center of attention because she is the one being displayed. The "feminine"
passivity which marks this display is a low status activity in American
culture; action is valued as "masculine" for its strength and self-assertive-
ness. In paintings, in films, in beauty pageants, in advertisements, wom-
en are constructed as to-be-looked-at; the men are the lookers, the voy-
eurs . . . the possessors. Men, on the other hand, are constructed as the
doers in films, in television commercials, in sports, in politics, in busi-
ness. That's why men who model are often seen as being "effeminate."
As John Berger wrote, "men act and women appear" (I973:47).
The Romantic ballerina-an important forerunner of the Balanchine
ballerina-is similarly seen as dominant because of her legendary celebri-
ty. Both Erik Aschengreen and John Chapman have debunked this myth.
 1. Lisa Hess and Kipling
Houston: emphasizingthe
in France
Only superficially, Aschengreen argues, did the Romantic ballet lines of the ballerina'slegs.
belong to the ballerinas; rather, Romantic ballet was the expression of a (Photo by Paul Kolnik;
masculine society's desires. "Both La Sylphide and Giselle are named for
courtesyof the New York
the leading female characters, but the heroes, James and Albert [Al-
bear the prob- City Ballet)
brecht], bear the problems of the ballets" (I974:30). They
lems, and they make the choices: they act, while the heroines are acted
is
upon. In La Sylphide, for example, James loves, and the Sylphide loved;
James rejects, and Effie is rejected.
2. Balanchine'sWomanis
Chapman writes about the paradox in which the Romantic ballerina
fast, precise, impassive.Pic- was adored at the same time both she and her stage persona occupied a
turedare StephanieSaland
low status within the social order:
and Kipling Houston.
(Photo by Paul Kolnik; The owned woman, the slave girl, and the harem girl occurred
courtesyof the New York with great frequency in ballet and painting, reflecting the fe-
City Ballet) male's position in Parisian society. [. . .] Perhapsjust as erotic
as the harem girl was the supernaturalspirit [. . .] and she was as
free for the taking. [. . .] Yet the taking was not always so easy,
at least on the Opera stage, where wills lured men to their dooms
and sylphs eluded the most eager grasp. The challenge and dan-
ger of the seductive femme fatale only heightened the erotic stim-
ulation. Ballet was well suited to support this image of the fe-
male. On the stage real women, as slave girls, spirits or
adventuresses, revealed themselves to the hungry eyes of the
viewer. Off stage in the foyer de la danse, the wealthiest and
most influential could mingle with the dancers in highly elegant
surroundings. From this sophisticated market-place the rich buy-
ers selected their mistresses. [. . .] Thus the female who was
elevated to the position of a goddess was demeaned to the status
of a possession, a sexual object (I978:35).

is a blend of
The ballerina in the third theme of The Four Temperaments
the Romantic ballerina's enticing elusiveness and the contemporary
 The BalanchineWoman 13

American woman. Arlene Croce writes that "in Balanchine the ballerina
is unattainable simply because she is woman, not because she's a super-
natural or enchanted being" (I979:I27).3 She is specifically a white, het-
erosexual American Woman: fast, precise, impassive. These qualities, ex-
emplified in her modern technical prowess, seduce the male gaze, but the
titillating danger-the threat-of her self-sufficient virtuosity is tamed by
her submissive role within the interaction. Much as the Romantic balleri-
na was a "beautiful danger" (Aschengren 1974) because of her narrative
association with the erotic and the demonic, the third theme ballerina is a
dualistic construction whose "danger" lies in the unattainable Otherness
of her "daredevil" technique. And if she is feisty, her surrender is all the
more delicious.
In the third theme, the ballerina does momentarily assert herself. After
the danseur whirls her posed body seven times on the balance of one
pointe, she bursts upward and turns triumphantly, in a split second. So
when she does surrender, it is all the more oppressive. For instance, after
a bit of typical Balanchine play with the presentation of hands and the
intertwining of arms, the ballerina's arms are crossed over her chest, and
her partner holds her hands from behind, like reins. Figuratively and liter-
ally, the man has the controlling hand. According to Schorer:
3. The thirdthemeballerina
The boy is lowering her arms so that she has to go to the floor, revealsherfeminine charms.
and she goes into a fetal position. It's like he's wrapped her up, Picturedare Lisa Hess and
and now by pulling her arms down she has to go into this teeny Kipling Houston. (Photo by
ball or form. [. . .About] the next step [in which she extricates
Steven Caras; courtesyof
the New York City Ballet)
14 Ann Daly

herself from this bind], Mr. B. always said, "It should look like
a struggle." From here she has to get her leg out, followed by
hips, arms, and the last thing is her head: to "get born," so to
speak. She should be a little bit lower and sort of almost awk-
ward, struggling-but in a graceful way.

Struggling is not "feminine," but Balanchine's ballerina makes it so be-

cause Balanchine has choreographed it to emphasize the extension of her
leg as she steps out of her cocoon. This episode, like the entire pas de
deux, has violent undertones. They have to do not only with the physical
extreme to which Balanchine stretches the classical vocabulary and the
ballerina's body, but also with its sadomasochistic pattern: man manipu-
lates powerless woman.
The erotic undercurrent in the theme surfaces when the ballerina's
arabesques shoot between her partner's legs. In another sequence, the bal-
lerina ends up in an elegant sitting position, with bent knees properly
together and on her toes. Before repeating the phrase, she briefly looks at
him, then coyly lowers her gaze and cocks her head as she frames the
sinuous curve of her face with an open palm. Like the Romantic image of
the female and the image of geisha girl in Japanese prints, she is revealing
her feminine charms in a demure yet provocative way.
The Balanchine ballerina does have control over her body in the sense
that she is a technical dynamo, but a distinction must be made between
the athleticism and virtuosity of the steps and the worldview that the
choreography expresses. Kirstein says:

Balanchine has been responsible for a philosophy that has treat-

ed girls as if they were as athletic as their brothers. He has proved
that they can be fiery hummingbirds rather than dying swans,
with the capacity of channel swimmers (1983:114).

But why is a channel swimmer required for the part of a hummingbird,

fiery or otherwise?
In the third theme, the manipulated ballerina looks less like a dominant
dynamo than a submissive instrument, both literally and figuratively. Her
partner is always the one who leads, initiates, maps out the territory,
subsumes her space into his, and handles her waist, armpits, and thighs.
She never touches him in the same way: she does not initiate the moves.
Metaphorically, she makes no movement of her own; her position is con-
tingent on the manipulations of her partner.
By arranging and rearranging the ballerina's body, the man (first the
choreographer, then the partner, and voyeuristically the male-constructed
spectator) creates the beauty he longs for. Croce says that "like Petipa's,
his [Balanchine's] ballets are more likely to be expressed from the man's
point of view, and he has used the unemotional style of American balleri-
nas as an object, a created effect" (I982:277).4 In the third theme, that
objectified, impassive style renders the woman a prop in perversely ex-
quisity imagery. She is a bell to be swung to and fro, a figurine to be
shown left and right (plate 4), or an instrument to be strummed. In what
Schorer called the "drag step," the man literally carries the ballerina on
his back. Her legs are lifeless, following after her like limp paws.
As "abstract" as the third theme may be, it is rooted in the very con-
crete, very familiar code of chivalry. The chivalric tradition gives rise to
the rhetoric that a woman is "more powerful, more open and [. . .] more
 4. LisaJacksonand Afshin
beautiful than she could [be] by herself because she has this [. . .] man,"
Mofid: woman as prop in
as Greskovic put it at the DCA seminar. Edward Villella, one of Balan-
perverselyexquisiteimag-
chine's greatest male dancers, makes implicit reference to the chivalric
ery. (Photo by Paul Kolnik;
code when he explains why he does not feel subordinate to his women
courtesyof the New York
partners: City Ballet)

My presenting the ballerina gives me great pleasure and I find it

a very masculine thing to do. It's very masculine to hold a door
for a woman or to take her elbow to help her across the street.
The male dancer does the same kind of thing. We take the wom-
an's arm and we take her waist, we lift her and present her. It's
a social as well as a balletic tradition (Birdwhistell et al. 1969:47).

Rather than glorifying women, chivalry has been linked to openly sub-
ordinating attitudes toward women (Nadler and Morrow I959). Mascu-
line deference such as Villella describes is false, Nadler and Morrow point
out, "because it is accorded to women only insofar as they subordinate
themselves to a narrow stereotype, and remain 'properly' submissive"
(I959:II9). Women are accorded superficial amenities and ritual etiquettes
provided that in important matters they "keep their place" (1959:114).
Positioning women as needy and "deserving" of male assistance, chivalry
casts her as "feminine" against the privileged patriarchal "masculine."
16 Ann Daly

Preventing women from venturing out on their own in the name of chiv-
alry precludes women from acquiring knowledge and capability and,
therefore, power (Fox I977). Power and prestige accrue to the men.
In the third theme, immediately following the couple's entrance, the
woman ventures out on her own by carving out a big chunk of the stage
space as she makes a semicircular path toward a back corner. The balleri-
na reaches toward a place in the distance, only to be pulled back in by her
cavalier, who then restricts her to much smaller portions of floor space.
According to Schorer: "It really looks like the boy takes her to make her
stop." From then on, he succeeds in keeping her within arm's reach.
Pointe work often frames the ballerina as needy of her partner's help.
In the third theme, the danseur is the upright, steadying force for the
ballerina as he pulls her off-balance or positions her precariously on one
pointe. This movement motif starts with their very entrance. Self-assured
and impenetrable, the danseur moves sideways toward center stage with
his arms broadly extended in a "T," stepping quickly up on half pointe
and then descending squarely on his heels. When the ballerina follows
suit, she steps laterally on both pointes in front of him, but then she
gently lunges sideways off pointe, with her arms lilting. He is linear and
stable; she is curvaceous and inconstant.
The male door-opening ceremony to which Villella compares partner-
ing a ballerina is a notorious reinforcement of gender asymmetry. Laurel
Richardson Walum underlines the importance of this social ritual as a
means of perpetuating patriarchalorder:

The door ceremony, then, reaffirms for both sexes their sense
of gender-identity, of being a "masculine" or "feminine" person.
It is not accidentally structured. In a very profound way the
simple ceremony daily makes a reality of the moral perspectives
of their culture: the ideology of patriarchy. These virtues of
"masculinity" are precisely those which are the dominant values
of the culture: aggression, efficacy, authority, prowess, and in-
dependence. And these virtues are assigned to the dominant
group, the males (cf. Millet, 1970:23-58). Opening a door for a
woman, presumably only a simple, common courtesy, is also a
political act, an act which affirms a patriarchalideology (Wa-
lum 1974:510).
Ballet is one of our culture's most powerful models of patriarchalcere-
mony. In the third theme, Balanchine sharply demarcates "feminine" and
"masculine" behavior. Though the ballerina displays her beauty, power is
associated with the masculine values of authority, Strength, and indepen-
dence which her partner, the manipulator, demonstrates. And by her
compliance, she ratifies her subordination. The cultural model that Daniel
passed off at the DCA seminar as harmless, "pure metaphor" in fact per-
petuates male dominance, and the hegemenous result is women co-consti-
tuting their own oppression. As Daniel pointed out, Balanchine's balleri-
nas don't do anything they don't want to: they've bought into the
system. Suzanne Farrell, Balanchine's most perfect "creation," once said
that:

I'd kill myself for a man, but I ain't going to kill myself for a
woman. I think it works well that way also. It's not that a wom-
an couldn't . . . not that a woman couldn't be president, but I
think it works better if it's a man with a very powerful woman
behind him (Garske 1983:22).
 The BalanchineWoman 17

Balanchine glorified Woman because her Beauty pleased him, pleased

the cavalier, and pleased the spectators' male gaze. The choreographer
made no secret that his ballets were created for the male point of view:

"The principle of classical ballet is woman," he said in his tiny

backstage office during the second act ofJewels. "The woman is
queen. Maybe women come to watch men dance, but I'm a
man. [. . .] The woman's function is to fascinate men" (Lewis
1976:45).

Balanchine was a man who liked to watch women. He choreographed

representations of Woman which conformed to his male idea of what she
should be. In the third theme of The Four Temperaments,the ballerina is
not represented as a subject; rather, she is Woman as object of male de-
sire. This pas de deux may be an archetypal courtship, but the desire
expressed by their relationship belongs only to the man. About her own
desire, the compliant third theme ballerina is silent.
All this is not to single out Balanchine; rather, it is to show that, de-
spite the "ballet is woman" rhetoric, the representational form in which
Balanchine worked is rooted in an ideology which denies women their
own agency. No matter what the specific steps, no matter what the cho-
reographic style, the interaction structure, pointe work, and movement
style of classical ballet portrays women as objects of male desire rather
than as agents of their own desire (like the woman in "The Unanswered
Question" portion of Balanchine's Ivesiana, 1954). The only way a wom-
an can be truly assertive and independent, from that male point of view,
is as a venomous femme fatale (like the Siren in Balanchine's The Prodigal
Son, 1929).
The question arises: can women ever represent themselves in classical
ballet? During the New York City Ballet's Spring 1986 season, Merrill
Ashley danced the adagio in Balanchine's Symphony in C (1947) so as-
suredly and so bravely that she literally and figuratively left her partner
behind. Even when a spitfire ballerina like Ashley does manage to tran-
scend her choreographic frame, she is still seen against the model of the
chivalric pas de deux. Her autonomy in the Symphony in C adagio
emerged in spite of the choreography rather than because of it-Woman
as the to-be-looked-at Other remains the norm. As long as classical ballet
prescribes Woman as a lightweight creature on pointe and men as her
supporters/lifters, women will never represent themselves on the ballet
stage.
Some argue that, because ballerinas are smaller and lighter than dan-
seurs, they are biologically determined to be the supported rather than the
supporter. The argument's premise is faulty, for, as Suzanne Gordon
graphically described in Off Balance (I983), the ethereal look is not an
anatomical given. Many aspiring ballerinas practically starve themselves
to achieve the ballerina image, turning into anorexics and bulimics in the
process. Besides, Senta Driver and the contact improvisation dancers
(Novack I986) have demonstrated that actual weight has relatively little
to do with the ability to lift someone. Lifting and supporting are much
more a matter of how a dancer uses her/his weight, of placement, and of
timing (Daly I987b; Laws 1984). And, of course, there is no biological
reason for the exclusion of men from pointe work.
But if pointe work, support systems, and weight deployment were
shared among individuals rather than divided between genders, the form
would no longer be classical ballet. Ballet, as it has been molded since the
I8 Ann Daly
 The BalanchineWoman I9

arrival of the professional female dancer and even before, is based on 5. LisaJacksonand Afshin
dichotomized gender difference and, hence, dominance (Daly i987a). Mofid: an archetypalcourt-
Martha Graham's very early works created a radical vision of strength for ship. (Photo by Steven
women, but today's modern dance is just as gender-dichotomized as bal- Caras; courtesyof the New
let. A totally new way of dancing and choreographic form-if that is York City Ballet)
possible to imagine within the framework of patriarchy-is needed in
order to encode a gender-multiple dance. In his effort to verbalize this
dream of a future without gender asymmetry, Jacques Derrida talks about
"the desire [. . .] to invent incalculable choreographies":

[. . . W]hat if we were to approach here [. . .] the area of a rela-

tionship to the other where the code of sexual marks would no
longer be discriminating? [. ..] As I dream of saving the chance
that this question offers I would like to believe in the multiplicity
of sexually marked voices. I would like to believe in the masses,
this indeterminable number of blended voices, this mobile of
non-identified sexual marks whose choreography can carry, di-
vide, multiply the body of each "individual," whether he be clas-
sified as "man" or as "woman" according to the criteria of us-
age. [. . .] Then too, I ask you, what kind of a dance would there
be, or would there be one at all, if the sexes were not exchanged
according to rhythms that vary considerably? (Derrida and Mc-
Donald 1982:76)

Until that dance is created-if it ever is-the solution is not to abolish

classical ballet; rather, the only chance of seeing "incalculable choreogra-
phies" hinges on a concomitant change in the audience. We must learn to
look critically: past the chivalric rhetoric to the underlying ideology.
Twenty-three years ago Ray Birdwhistell argued that, as a weakly dimor-
phic species, human beings express a constructed gender dichotomy at
the level of movement, body position, and expressive behavior "which
can be variably exploited for the division of labor" (I970:46). The subtle-
ties of movement as a regulator of social order have been explored in the
social sciences (Scheflen 1972, 1974), and the same can and should be
done in dance. To begin with, critics, practitioners, and scholars have got
to recognize ballet as a cultural institution that represents and thus in-
scribes gender behavior in everyday life. Gender imaging must become as
important a subject of discourse as the ubiquitous cataloging of style and
technique. Otherwise, our channel swimmers will forever remain
hummingbirds.

Notes

I. My thanks to Kate Davy and Debra Sowell for helping me formulate my argu-
ment and to the Dance Critics Association for the loan of video and audio tapes
from its I985 seminar on The Four Temperaments.
2. The pivotal concept of the "male gaze" arises from an examination of the struc-
ture of representation, in which the position of the spectator (the gazer) is en-
coded. Kaplanwrote: "The gaze is not necessarilymale (literally),but to own
and activate the gaze, given our language and the structure of the unconscious,
is to be in the 'masculine' position" (I983:30). Thus, women, too, under patri-
archy partake in the acculturated male gaze.
3. and 4. Though I make use of Croce's observations for a feminist critique of
Balanchine's ballerina, Croce concludes that "for Balanchine it is the man who
sees and follows and it is the woman who acts and guides" (1979:126).
20 Ann Daly

References
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spectives(no. 58, Summer).
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Ann Daly is TDR's managingeditor. She writes dance criticismfor Ballett

International, High Performance, and Prospect Press and is workingtoward
a doctoratein PerformanceStudiesat New York University.