0:11

The patta da is a fundamental part of ballet.

0:14

It's a duet, almost always between

0:16

a man and a woman. It's something

0:18

every professional ballet dancer confronts, usually

0:20

in their adolescence. Like

0:23

most things in ballet, partnering is harder

0:25

than it looks. Dancing a potta da

0:27

tests the lessons you've learned in the ballet classroom.

0:33

When she was eighteen, Adriana Pears

0:36

got the opportunity to choreograph of patta

0:38

da for the first time. It

0:40

was two thousand and eight and it was for a student choreography

0:43

workshop at the school Balanchine founded,

0:45

the School of American Ballet. And

0:49

I was kind of going through my

0:53

discovery of my own sexuality

0:55

at the time. I just had my heartbroken for the first

0:57

time, and so

0:59

I did this like very sensual,

1:03

romantic potada.

1:09

And the guy really is

1:11

very passionate about this woman that he's

1:13

dancing with and very

1:15

excited and wanting to kind

1:18

of dive in with her. And she's

1:20

like there, but not fully, and

1:22

I think there's something holding her back. And

1:25

she lets him take

1:27

the lead emotionally, and

1:30

then they go their separate ways and

1:32

end apart. Doesn't

1:39

necessarily have to do with my

1:41

life totally at the time, But I

1:43

think I was discovering what love

1:46

was and what sexuality was,

1:48

and I knew that I

1:51

wanted to elicit

1:53

some sort of like deep emotional response

1:56

from the audience. At

2:09

the School of American Ballet, Adriana

2:12

had learned the mechanics of partnering, what

2:14

it felt like to put trust in the boys in her classes

2:17

to hoist her over their heads in

2:19

a suspended overhead lift. Now,

2:22

in making her own pada da, she began

2:25

to understand what that movement conveyed.

2:28

So I was using these lifts where

2:30

she is really not doing

2:32

anything with a very specific intention,

2:35

and the way I used it was to show

2:37

that the woman has no agency, or

2:40

has less agency, or is making less like

2:43

dynamic choices about the

2:45

relationship. For

2:51

My Heart podcasts in Rococo Punch, This

2:54

is the Turning Room of Mirrors America

2:56

Lance Heart

3:04

nine pot A dum Adriana

3:14

remembers when she was a new student at the School

3:16

of American Ballet and she first

3:18

learned how to shape her fingers in the balancing

3:21

style, a more open, rounded

3:23

hand with splayed fingers and

3:25

it feels like you're holding air and

3:28

when you move through space, it breathes

3:30

with you and it feels like very

3:33

expansive and empowered.

3:36

And I remember just thinking to myself,

3:38

oh yeah, this is good, Like

3:40

this makes sense to me in my body. Adriana

3:44

says her point shoes had always felt like a throne

3:46

to her. She loved the feeling

3:48

of lifting up onto the tips of her toes, of

3:51

lengthening, of growing tall, but

3:54

she had yet to confront the role her gender dictated

3:56

in this art form. So

3:59

I can think back to my first

4:02

partnering classes at SAB

4:05

was with Jock Soto, and

4:07

he's a fabulous teacher. But

4:10

what I can remember from those early days,

4:12

first of all, I loved it. I had a great time. But

4:16

it's very gendered, first of all,

4:18

very binary boys and girls.

4:21

Boys and girls who have already diverged in their

4:23

training and how they dance. The

4:30

girls have learned to dance on point, to

4:33

be graceful, flexible, impossibly

4:36

elegant. The boys have

4:38

learned big jumps and tricks, and teachers

4:40

have warned some of the boys not to be too graceful,

4:43

too feminine. In

4:46

partnering class, Adriana says her teacher

4:48

would turn to the boys and say, lay

4:50

pick a girl, and the boys would pick their partners

4:53

grab a girl. That's like the terminology.

4:56

So I just would okay, grab

4:58

me, and then we would

5:00

learn a combination. And most of it

5:03

is just the guys having to figure out how to

5:05

do it and build the strength, because you were

5:07

talking like teenage boys who are

5:09

not developed fully either. But it's

5:11

like they get the opportunity

5:14

to learn and to

5:16

try and to fail and to grow and to build.

5:19

And my job as a woman was

5:21

to be grabbed and held

5:24

and let them figure it out. And I and

5:26

you put your trust in that. I

5:30

never thought differently. You

5:33

lift me, It's

5:36

my job to look pretty and have good technique

5:39

and like have my leg high and the guy

5:41

just has to figure out how to keep you on

5:43

your balance. At that

5:45

time in my life, I just I really was just

5:47

absorbing. She

5:53

also absorbed how they ended each partner in class.

5:55

Boys had to do pushups, girls drilled.

5:57

Asia pays these steps where you at

6:00

least lde your feet in and out and roll up on to a point.

6:03

That stuck with her. The emphasis

6:05

for the women was their technique and their lines

6:07

and their esthetic, and for the men it was their

6:09

strength and their core, and I definitely started

6:12

thinking about that a lot. A few years

6:14

later, she got the chance to choreograph her first

6:16

Potada, part of a student choreographic

6:19

workshop at SAB. It

6:21

was about two people in a relationship. The

6:23

guy is all in, but the woman is less

6:25

sure. She lets him pursue her, then

6:28

she seems to pull away. She slides

6:30

along when he lifts her high above his head. I

6:33

think I was discovering what love

6:36

was and what sexuality was

6:38

in my own life, and I knew

6:40

that I wanted to elicit

6:44

some sort of like deep emotional

6:46

response from the audience.

6:50

In partnering class, Adriana had

6:52

learned how to do these suspended overhead

6:54

lifts where the man lifts the woman

6:57

up high into the air. She used

6:59

lifts like that her Peace in a purposeful

7:01

way to show the woman is passive,

7:03

uncommitted to the relationship, complacent

7:06

enough to let the man lead. What

7:08

audience members responded to was a sensuality

7:10

of the piece. Women, especially

7:12

older women, approached her after your

7:15

piece. I loved your Peace. I really

7:17

responded to that, and I thought to

7:19

myself, WHOA Okay, Well then I wow,

7:21

Yeah, I think I want to be a professional choreographer,

7:24

and choreographing, Adriana found a new

7:26

kind of freedom, an answer to the

7:28

lack of control she sometimes felt in the ballet

7:31

classroom. In the classroom, she'd

7:33

been conditioned to stay silent, to

7:35

obey the teacher. She made sure to fit

7:37

the mold of the ballerina, pretty

7:40

thin, feminine, But

7:43

Adriana still needed to figure out how she fit.

7:50

For one thing, the majority of professional choreographers

7:52

are men. And then there was the fact

7:54

that she still hid a big part of herself.

7:58

I remember walking

8:00

in the halls of sab and

8:03

thinking, like, am I the only

8:05

one like me who's ever walked

8:08

these halls. I

8:11

had never heard of anyone any queer

8:13

women before. Never at

8:16

that time, no. Never. She

8:18

was out to her high school friends and

8:21

a few ballet friends, but mostly

8:23

in ballet. She says she felt like she stuck out,

8:26

as if she were carrying around a backpack all

8:28

the time, an awkward accessory

8:30

that everyone could see, but the

8:32

secret of who she really was was tucked

8:35

inside. I

8:37

didn't have fully have language for myself,

8:39

even about who I was, but I knew that people were already

8:42

kind of like is she, but like not really

8:44

knowing. So when

8:46

I got into the company at

8:48

City Ballet, I was deathly afraid

8:51

of making the other women uncomfortable.

8:53

That was like my overwhelming experience.

8:56

I was terrified, constant

8:59

anxiety. By

9:03

the time she was an apprentice, she was an a tenuous

9:05

position. She had not yet secured

9:07

an official spot in the company. In

9:09

ballet companies, there's a lot of couples At

9:12

the time. I remember thinking

9:14

to myself, I should get

9:16

a boyfriend in the company to secure my job.

9:19

And I remember

9:22

having conversations with my a friend of mine who

9:24

was also an apprentice gay man,

9:27

and we were saying, like that might

9:29

help us, because it's

9:31

so messed up that I thought

9:33

that that would actually give me some job security.

9:36

And not to say that that is actually the case,

9:38

but there was some insurance there if I could

9:40

like really show that I was

9:43

a straight woman, that

9:45

somehow that would secure my spot. It

9:48

was before one performance that it all came to a

9:50

head. The women's dressing rooms in

9:52

the theater are upstairs, but they had to take

9:54

the elevator down to the stage level to get into

9:56

their costumes, and so all the court

9:58

of vallet women, all of them the whole company are

10:00

all just like putting their costumas on this like

10:03

one room and the

10:05

dressers and some of the women were talking about how

10:07

hot Hugh Jackman is and

10:10

so somehow I was in the middle of this conversation

10:12

that was happening all around me, and the dresser asked me

10:14

which was putting my costume on? She asked me like,

10:16

oh, what do you think about Hugh? And I was like, it's not for

10:18

me, like I don't know, and she goes,

10:21

oh really, but like what who is for you? Like

10:23

what kind of guys do you like? And

10:26

the whole room stopped talking

10:28

and like looked to see what I was gonna

10:30

say. She was like, no, no, really,

10:33

like what's your like man flavor? And I was like,

10:35

I, well, I'm

10:39

gay, and and she

10:41

goes, no, you're not, and

10:43

I was like, oh

10:46

no, yeah, yeah I am. And

10:48

again the whole room like no one

10:50

moving, no one breathing, and I'm

10:52

just like, this is my worst case scenario,

10:55

Like I'm in Balanchine's house like with

10:57

all these naked women, and I'm just like coming out

10:59

in front of every buddy against my will. And

11:05

then one of my friends, Maya she came to

11:07

my aid and she goes, actually, I'm her flavor,

11:10

and I was like, thank you, Maya, okay, cut

11:12

the tension, and then it was like,

11:14

okay, no

11:19

one knew how to talk about it, and no one knew how to approach

11:21

me about it, and everyone knew, but no one knew and ha,

11:24

and I wasn't talking about it, and so it kind of like

11:26

almost burst this bubble of like panic.

11:29

So I'm kind of glad that happened, but wow,

11:31

was it traumatic. So

11:36

that's how I came out, so that all of the women in

11:38

the court of Vallet and New York City Valley in

11:41

two thousand and nine, Like

11:45

so many dancers, she didn't get a job

11:48

after her apprenticeship, so she went

11:50

to another prestigious ballet company, another

11:52

company centered on Balanchine's choreography,

11:55

Miami City Ballet. She stayed

11:57

there seven years. She also Chorea

12:00

graft when she could. While there,

12:02

she made a piece called Cafe Music. She

12:04

took that first pot of does she made at SAB

12:07

and added two more movements, and

12:09

this time she approached it differently.

12:12

I took special care

12:15

to pass who's leading

12:17

and who's following back and forth

12:19

and That's just what it was, just what it was coming out of me naturally.

12:23

But it wasn't natural for these professional ballet

12:25

dancers to dance this way. My

12:30

friend Andre, who was the dancer, was

12:32

having a hard time, like letting his

12:34

partner, you know, hold

12:36

him and pull him. And I remember the dancers

12:38

asking me what is this about? And I said,

12:41

it's about finding yourself.

12:44

It's about finding who you are within

12:47

your friendships, within your partnerships.

12:50

When you're out at a club, when you're out at a bar,

12:52

who are you? And how do you relate to the people

12:54

around you. As

12:58

Adriana played with the push and all of these

13:00

new ways of partnering and who was taking

13:02

the lead, she also rehearsed

13:04

her original patita with that overhead

13:06

lift, she began to realize

13:09

how little choreographers considered the meaning

13:11

of this movement. For

13:14

her, in men a surrender of agency,

13:17

but in practically all other examples she'd previously

13:20

seen or danced, it felt like a showpiece,

13:22

a feat of strength that hammered home an idea

13:25

about the roles of men and women and dance.

13:31

What I realized about suspend it overhead lifts is

13:33

that they are very gendered because traditionally,

13:36

what we're used to seeing is a

13:38

man lifting a woman, and you,

13:42

whether it's conscious or not, understand that

13:44

it can't be the other way around, because

13:47

that's just not what we're used to seeing and it's also not the

13:49

way that women are trained or socialized.

13:53

After that realization, Adriana

13:55

choreographed many more ballet pieces, but

13:58

she never used another over had lift.

14:01

She didn't put them in any of her dances, not

14:03

a single one. And

14:06

when I do use a lift, we moved through

14:08

it. I kind of fold it into the

14:10

fabric of the movement, so

14:13

there's never like a point where we're sitting there and being like

14:15

that man is lifting that woman. Wow.

14:38

At Miami City Ballet, Adriana continued

14:40

to choreograph pieces. As

14:42

she watched the partnering works being created

14:45

and performed around her, she was struck

14:47

with a familiar feeling. We are

14:49

just fully accepting the fact that we are

14:51

always seeing partnerships where

14:53

the women have less agency, over and

14:55

over and over and over again. In

14:58

twenty fourteen, Adriana was he'd

15:00

an invitation to choreograph a piece for New York

15:02

City Ballet Dancers, her old workplace

15:05

where the director. Peter Martin's had not offered

15:07

her a contract to join the company after her apprenticeship.

15:10

Now the company was going to perform her work.

15:13

Was the first time I'm back in those studios for someone

15:16

back in Lincoln Center, since

15:18

I had not gotten my job and Martin's

15:21

didn't hire me. When she returned to

15:23

New York, Peter Martin's was still the director of the

15:25

company, decades after he'd been chosen

15:27

to be Balancinge's successor. And

15:31

we went out to dinner, right. They took us out to dinner, and they

15:33

made sure to tell me that I was going to be sitting next to Peter

15:35

because he knew me, so that would make him feel comfortable,

15:39

and that I was responsible somehow

15:41

for that. Adriana says

15:43

throughout the dinner, Peter was chummy with her, periodically

15:46

touching her leg or her arm. Again.

15:49

She felt like she was playing a role that did

15:51

not fit. But like, is that

15:53

just Peter's behavior. I don't think so.

15:55

I think there's this like system, it's

15:58

passed down. It has to be. I wasn't there. I

16:00

didn't know, mister b I know the stories, I don't know

16:02

what's true. I don't know what's not. Adriana

16:04

grew up hearing stories and anecdotes passed

16:06

down through generations of women who had danced for Balancine.

16:10

At the time, they felt useful, like

16:12

don't think, just do it,

16:14

offered a way to get out of her head when she danced,

16:17

but there was one quote that always felt off. Ballet

16:20

is woman, okay, but woman is what woman

16:24

is straight, woman is thin,

16:27

woman has makeup on, Woman

16:30

makes her male director feel confident.

16:33

If we're using like partnering as kind

16:36

of a metaphor, I think it's

16:38

like what the woman's role is, Like

16:41

the men are in charge, the men make

16:44

the choices, and we are we

16:46

are going to hold ourselves and put our foot

16:48

out and point it and be the

16:50

person who's following, not the

16:52

person who's leading. I think

16:55

it's like the same on stage and off. That's

16:57

the legacy. It's like I

17:00

don't even know if it's distinctly balanchies or

17:02

just ballet's legacy, but it's like those

17:04

are the roles that we play ballet as

17:06

women. But women don't have a say

17:08

anything that happens to them or their bodies.

17:11

Like that's what's passed down,

17:14

the choices made about the choreography or

17:16

staging in ballet's can perpetuate that.

17:22

There's a moment in Peter Martin's rendition of Romeo

17:25

and Juliet at one point

17:27

the audience hears allowed slap the

17:30

sound of Juliette's father hitting Juliet

17:32

and knocking her down, a

17:35

detail that was an ever part of Shakespeare's play.

17:40

The company also performed a work called Odessa.

17:43

It was by a Russian choreographer, Alexei

17:45

Radmonski, and in the piece

17:48

he staged a controversial gang rape

17:50

scene. In

17:54

twenty seventeen, the same choreographer,

17:56

Radmonsky posted on Facebook about

17:58

gender equality and ballet, and

18:00

it got a lot of attention. He

18:03

wrote, quote, sorry, there

18:05

is no such thing as equality in ballet. Women

18:08

dance on point, men lift in support women,

18:11

women received flowers, men escort women

18:13

off stage, not the other way around.

18:15

I know there are a couple of exceptions, and

18:18

I am very comfortable with that. Due

18:23

above this caption, he posted an image two

18:26

dancers in a patada. The picture

18:28

was classic, almost stereotypical, but

18:31

it had been photoshopped clearly in

18:33

order to appear absurd. Instead

18:36

of the man lifting the woman, the two

18:38

Tue point two ballerina lifts the man above

18:41

her head in a suspended overhead

18:43

lift. Adriana

18:48

says when she saw it, the post made her

18:50

physically ill. The idea

18:52

that this extremely influential, world famous

18:54

choreographer would say there was no

18:56

equality in ballet and he was okay

18:59

with that. Adriana thought,

19:01

this cannot be the only way we understand

19:04

gender in ballet. That

19:06

was really hard. I can't accept that. I'm

19:08

like not okay with that, and I'm absolutely not okay

19:10

with moving forward with his art form

19:13

just not having to be a consideration,

19:16

especially with new works being choreographed. Adriana

19:29

lives in an upper Manhattan studio apartment.

19:32

She wears a backwards baseball cap. When she opened

19:34

the door, her big smile almost

19:37

gleams through miss Small boxes

19:40

still wait to be unpacked after a recent

19:42

move. She rolls her neck,

19:44

rubbing an injury that had her paralyzed in bed

19:46

for a day. The shower

19:48

stops running and Adriana's girlfriend

19:50

emerges from the bathroom. Ala

19:53

O'Day AILA's long brown

19:55

hair is wavy and damp. She limps

19:57

over her broken foot, still healing. Both

20:00

of them are professional dancers, Adriana

20:04

perches on her knees on the bed. Ala

20:06

hobbles over and hops on. She

20:09

snuggles into what seems like an Ala shaped

20:11

nook in Adriana's arms. Adriana

20:14

kisses her forehead and beams

20:16

if they share the experience of making art

20:18

that they love. It

20:21

is probably one

20:23

of the most like freeing

20:25

feelings to dance on stage. But

20:27

obviously, just like ballet

20:30

as an art form, there's

20:32

a heavy influence of

20:35

sexism racism.

20:39

This is Ala O'Day, Adriana's

20:41

girlfriend. ALA's currently

20:43

a soloist at Carolina Ballet. The

20:46

two of them see a lot of overlap in their experiences.

20:49

Just like the world we live in, there are a lot of systemic

20:52

issues that put people into

20:54

a lot of boxes. Yeah, did you

20:56

ever worry that, like you would look

20:58

too butch on stage? I mean constantly

21:01

all the time, because I'm very like physically,

21:03

I'm athletic. I'm not like you're a little

21:05

wafy ballerina. And so then it's

21:07

like that's perceived to be more masculine

21:10

and athletic because athleticism

21:12

is stereotyped with masculinity,

21:15

and therefore any movement I do

21:18

is going to be perceived to be more masculine.

21:20

So I always am thinking about, like if

21:23

I'm in like something that seems like

21:25

a role that's more feminine or

21:27

like the the male

21:29

view of femininity, I'm like, oh

21:31

my god, do I look like

21:34

like a lesbian out here? You know? Is

21:36

that an issue? When I first came to my Missy

21:39

Ballet, there was one of the principal danswers said,

21:42

oh, is Agana lesbian because she looks like one?

21:45

Yeah? And I from like the

21:48

moment I started working

21:50

there, I was like so terrified that I was like,

21:52

yeah, that the way that I dance somehow

21:54

is like giving me away, and that people in the eyes would

21:57

be like that one dike, you know,

21:59

Like I don't know, but it was very scary. No,

22:01

it is really scary, and like especially

22:03

too. I mean, more of

22:05

my fear was when I was closeted still in

22:07

like people would point blank be like,

22:10

oh, are you Leslian And then I'd be

22:12

like, no, I'm not, and They're like,

22:14

are you sure. I didn't even

22:16

think it was possible to be a

22:19

queer female identifying ballet

22:21

dancer. That

22:25

was until three years ago, in twenty twenty

22:30

Alas at Carolina Ballet. She's sitting

22:32

in a choreography workshop. I'm

22:35

like sitting on the floor. You

22:37

know, I was fresh in the company

22:40

and in walks this

22:42

blonde, tall, beautiful

22:44

woman in a blue stripe

22:46

button down, and I'm like, what

22:49

is that? That is

22:52

not a straight woman. It

22:54

was Adriana walking in to help round

22:56

the workshop, and I kept asking

22:58

around, being like she gay? She gay?

23:00

Like I was asking all of my friends and stuff,

23:02

and they're like, I don't know, Like I don't know her, you

23:05

know whatever. And so, actually, Adriana

23:07

was the first um female

23:10

queer ballet dancer I ever met. You're

23:21

one of the first people I like really came out

23:23

too, because you walked in and I was like, oh

23:25

my god, I'm not alone. And

23:29

so then I DMG, because you made a huge

23:31

impact on me. Clearly, even

23:35

though I, you know, knew it was okay

23:38

to be gay, I just was like, not in my

23:40

field, doesn't really exist because

23:43

you know, there was no visibility for

23:45

any queer women in ballet. It's

23:48

not part of our world. It's not part of the conversations

23:51

that like we're allowed to have through ballet. Right,

23:53

So even if even though there have been queer

23:55

women throughout history. We don't know who they are in the same way

23:58

that I know like every single one of balancings sexual

24:00

partners. You know what I'm saying. It's like, no, that's so true.

24:08

It felt impossible because I had just simply

24:10

never seen that. Periodically,

24:14

Adriana gets a text from another queer dancer

24:17

to check out an Instagram post, almost

24:19

like a treasure hunt for the stories of queer ballet

24:22

dancers who came before her. It

24:24

was on Instagram, Yeah, I did. Adriana

24:26

scrolls through her Instagram feed looking for something.

24:29

This is how this is like, I don't even know. I have to look

24:32

it up. This is what I'm saying. So

24:35

I actually don't know how to pronounce that l

24:37

O I E. I see. I don't even know how to pronounce

24:39

it. But miss Fuller became an overnight sensation when

24:41

she danced her patented Serpentine dance at

24:44

Fully Vijaire in

24:46

Paris in eighteen ninety two. Fuller even

24:49

managed to be openly lesbian while evoking virtually

24:51

no tittilation or disapproval in her public Interesting.

24:54

Interesting So nineteen fourteen

24:57

photos from nineteen fourteen, there was also

24:59

another one, um oh,

25:01

here it is Catherine de ville first

25:05

first black woman with the Bullshoy in nineteen hundred.

25:07

Is her dad was creole, pushed

25:09

back on doing Copelia in white face, and despite

25:12

having two husbands, was queer. Catherine

25:15

de Villier. I think it is when

25:18

I was younger, like early twenties, I

25:20

could think of like maybe five or

25:22

six, including myself,

25:24

women around the world who were in professional ballet

25:27

companies. Did not just not just in the US, like around

25:29

the world of people who were out you

25:31

know, we're talking ballet specifically,

25:33

like tights, point shoes, leotard.

25:36

Yeah, there are a lot of people who were in ballet

25:39

and were professional but then left because they

25:41

were like, I'm you

25:43

know, I can't be myself in this space. It's

25:46

also hard to find any bit of queerness

25:48

inside any of the big story ballets. The

25:51

classics ballet is known for the

25:54

gayest role in the ballet cannon is Myrta.

25:57

Myrta is a ghost queen in the classical

25:59

ballet. Gizelle

26:06

is ballet cannon choreographed by

26:08

two men in eighteen forty one, beloved

26:10

by audiences, coveted by dancers.

26:13

Basically, the plot goes like this, A

26:15

beautiful young peasant girl and a disguised

26:17

nobleman fall in love. She

26:20

falls in love with this guy who comes into town

26:22

who is lying to her about who he is because

26:24

really he's royalty, but puts on peasant's

26:27

clothes to get this girl because she's pretty, falls

26:30

in love. Turns out

26:32

he's actually a prince and it's already betrothed

26:34

to someone else, so he can't be with

26:36

her anyway. She's

26:39

very upset about that. Also, she has a weak art

26:41

so weak, and she's not allowed to dance.

26:43

She can't dance, So

26:49

when she finds out that he's been lying her this entire

26:51

time, she has a full on mental breakdown,

26:54

goes crazy. Legitimately,

26:57

it's a mad scene. She's like ripping her

26:59

hair out and ding around the stage flat

27:02

footed and point shoes because that's the only time we can

27:04

walk flat foot when

27:06

you're going crazy. And then

27:09

she loses it, and then she dies.

27:16

She collapses to the ground and she

27:18

dies in some combination of over exertion

27:21

and a broken heart, and

27:25

then her spirit goes to the land of the

27:27

Willies. The Willies

27:29

are like a sisterhood of ghosts in the woods,

27:31

ghosts of unmarried women who died after

27:34

being betrayed by men. They're all

27:37

all scored, their scorned women who jilted

27:39

brides, yes, virgins who never made it.

27:41

They died before they got

27:43

married, and they've been hurt by their their men.

27:46

And the queen of these jilted versions

27:49

is Mirta. She's the jiltedest

27:52

of them all. Mirta is

27:54

a force in this ballet, a

27:56

terrifying figure, bitter and cruel

27:59

role conceived by the men who created the ballet

28:01

almost two hundred years ago, and one of

28:03

the most heteronormative ballets in existence.

28:06

And she's a man hater. And so

28:09

if you are a man and you

28:11

into the Land of the Willies during

28:13

the nighttime, you are sentenced

28:15

to dance to death. So Myrta dances

28:18

all of them to death. After

28:26

Giselle dies, the man who betrayed

28:28

her, Albrecht, goes to her grave

28:30

to mourn. He asks forgiveness

28:32

of her ghost, and he follows that

28:35

ghost to the Land of the Willies. He

28:38

meets Mirta, who sentences Albrecht to

28:40

dance to death, but then Giselle

28:42

steps in. She helps Albrecht

28:44

by dancing with him until morning, when

28:46

the willies no longer have power. The

28:49

strength of her love saves Albrecht. Giselle

28:52

returns to her grave, and Albrecht lives.

29:00

I always feel conflicted in the beauty of Giselle's

29:02

passivity. At the start of the ballet,

29:05

She's rumbunctious and just loves to dance

29:07

and death. She's floating like a

29:09

wisp, a ghost, almost

29:12

a corpse, and some of the

29:14

act too patadas. She's so passive,

29:17

but that liquidity that comes from floating

29:19

along as Albrecht pulls her is

29:22

stunning to watch. I want

29:24

to dance it.

29:32

My feelings about Giselle side. The

29:35

ballet presents a choice for its women. You

29:37

can be a Giselle or Amrita,

29:40

one forgiving one vengeful,

29:43

both defined by their relationships to men.

29:46

Myrta is powerful, but still

29:48

she is one thing, a representation

29:51

of failed heteronormativity.

29:53

In the ballet, she's defined by the fact

29:56

that she never married. Both

30:00

roles feel like a box. In

30:12

the winter of twenty twenty one, Adriana

30:14

got the chance to tackle her unresolved feelings

30:16

about the PoTA da. What the PoTA

30:18

da means for gender and for what roles we all

30:21

play. She got an artist's residency

30:23

and drove up to the Catskills and upstate New York.

30:25

With two dancers from American Ballet

30:28

Theater. In a studio in the

30:30

woods away from the city, they

30:32

began to work. They had two

30:34

weeks and the

30:36

goal for that residency was to work on

30:39

partnering with two dancers in potchu's. She

30:41

wondered what a PoTA da would look like, entirely

30:44

on point, How would it even

30:46

work? What is possible and what

30:48

isn't. I thought I would just kind of

30:50

play around and see what came, but

30:53

she found herself creating an actual piece

30:55

instead, a new dance, a

30:58

potada.

31:04

This potado, though, would be between two women,

31:07

two queer women, something

31:09

she'd never seen on a ballet stage before.

31:12

I think a lot of queer stories

31:15

are centered around pain and trauma.

31:18

Pain and trauma are definitely thinks that queer

31:20

people experience every day all over the

31:22

world. But it's been important to me

31:24

to create queer stories that come from a place

31:27

of joy and love and respect.

31:29

Specifically, this

31:31

was one that I wanted to feel respectful,

31:34

overwhelmingly respectful, and it's

31:36

not one person manipulating the other. It's

31:39

two people with equal agency working together

31:41

to create something beautiful. And

31:43

I think it's not necessarily

31:46

romantic, although it is, but

31:49

it's explicitly queer and that

31:52

there is love fair and there is a tenderness.

31:58

So I started to think about, like what partnering

32:01

is, what is it actually what

32:03

makes up a potita.

32:06

She came up with these five pillars of partnering.

32:09

First thing lifts, All types

32:11

of lifts will go in that category. Then

32:14

there's counterbalance, like counterweight,

32:16

so you're pulling off each other. There's

32:19

an amount of tension between

32:21

the two dancers. There's promenades,

32:24

things that where one person is on balance

32:27

and rotating, like one person is

32:29

posed on point. Historically, the woman

32:32

she puts her hand on the man's arm and he

32:34

moves her around in a circle so that she twirls

32:36

slowly in place, like the tiny

32:39

ballerina you see inside music boxes.

32:41

And then there's turns pure wits,

32:44

so like spinning. And

32:46

then the last pillar is what their

32:48

connection is and what story they're telling and how they tell

32:50

it. You think

32:53

you'd take that, you keep the hand. She

32:55

wanted to work through these pillars in the studio

32:57

one by one, and find her own. That's

33:01

it. There you go, promenade,

33:03

love it and one,

33:06

two three. I

33:09

don't want to just stick two dancers on point together

33:12

and fit them inside the like traditional

33:15

rubric, a traditional blueprint of what we

33:17

understand partnering to be. It needs to be our

33:19

own, it needs to be authentic. And here

33:22

there we go. Yeah,

33:24

and as wide a lunge as possible.

33:27

Here the piece became her answers

33:30

to those five pillars in this

33:32

space, with these two dancers telling this

33:34

story, a story of respectful

33:37

queer affection. What's

33:39

my answer to the idea

33:42

of a traditional lift, what's my answer

33:44

to these like to a partnered turn?

33:47

So you're stirring, stay

33:49

connected? Yeah,

33:53

well do it more time. But

33:56

the other thing that I had to super dive into

33:59

was point shoes and

34:01

how that affects physicality

34:04

of partnerships. The person

34:06

who has the flat shoe

34:09

inherently and definitely has more

34:11

agency than the person in the point shoe. When

34:14

you're in a point show, you are not as grounded

34:16

as a person in a flat shoe. You

34:18

do not have as much strength. So

34:21

yeah, I'm in the room with the dancers. I'm trying to figure

34:23

out Okay, can you both

34:25

be on point partnering each other. No, you

34:28

can't because you're not stable, you're

34:30

on your tippy toes. You can't do it. You

34:32

cannot lift you physically, like physically

34:35

cannot lift another human being when you are

34:37

on a point shoe. You cannot do it.

34:39

So what it ended up having to be is

34:41

like they would kind of pass

34:44

the leading and following back and forth, which is what I do

34:46

anyway in my choreography, but I would like try to have

34:48

them on point, like as close

34:50

as possible before and after to

34:52

that passing of the leading and following.

34:56

Oh so let I think, let Sierra

34:58

be in charge of those arms coming down, so she's

35:00

leading at that moment. Another

35:04

thing they had to confront was trust. They

35:06

had to learn a new kind of trust Sierra,

35:09

let her really carry you, she's

35:12

got you and

35:15

reach you. Go into an attitude when

35:17

I was talking about my partnering classes, where

35:19

it was this trust that like the guy's gonna

35:22

grab me and he has to figure out and you know what if he drops me,

35:24

he has to figure it out. But when it's a woman like

35:26

there's we had to really deal with the

35:28

fact that we didn't have that trust

35:30

in each other. I do not trust that

35:32

a woman's gonna get me. I think I'm too heavy. I think

35:34

she's gonna drop me. I'm gonna hurt her. Those

35:37

are things that like we really

35:39

have to like work through in order to do this

35:41

work, because I

35:45

am trained to have

35:48

trust in a certain type of person doing a certain

35:50

type of thing to my body, and

35:53

that person usually is

35:55

a man or identifies as a man. She

35:59

remembers, on day one, you put the dancers

36:01

in different positions and said, close

36:03

your eyes, feel each other's weight.

36:05

Move. What does it feel like when

36:07

you take the other person's weight. Each

36:15

day, Adriana and the dancers remy and

36:18

see her as showed up and together

36:20

they discover what worked and problem solved

36:22

along the way, adding new sections to the piece.

36:27

The beginning of the ballet was what they created

36:29

last. I

36:32

had them come out onto

36:34

the stage and just

36:38

stand there. I

36:41

wanted it to kind of be like, yeah,

36:43

you're going to see a gay potita, now you're ready,

36:47

and then they start moving. I

36:50

kept thinking about this idea of carving space for

36:52

each other. The two

36:54

of them don't touch, they don't even make eye

36:56

contact. Neither

36:59

of them grabs the other, but

37:01

they start to move around each other. Their

37:09

arms flow and softly slice around the

37:11

other's silhouette, like they're feeling

37:14

what it is to be close, carving

37:16

space around each other, making

37:19

space for each other, then moving

37:21

within that space, tracing

37:24

each other's bodies but not

37:26

touching each other. There's a respect

37:28

in that, and the first

37:30

time they really like look at each other. I wanted there to be like

37:32

an establishing moment of I

37:35

don't know, acknowledgment. I

37:37

didn't want it to look like choreography

37:40

that we've seen before with men and women. So

37:42

what are different ways that they can be connected. We'll

37:44

grab her foot and put it over your body,

37:47

like ways that they can be connected, that it's not just

37:49

like hand and waste and back and

37:51

forth. Watching

38:02

it, I got shivers and

38:05

then I started to well up. Just

38:08

seeing two women on stage being

38:10

centered in a way that has nothing to do with how

38:12

men see them felt new.

38:16

I realized I hadn't seen it before, not

38:18

quite like this, not while they're in point

38:21

shoes. We

38:25

don't see women being tender with

38:27

each other in vallet. We don't

38:30

we don't get to see intimate

38:34

relationships between two women tender

38:37

and affectionate and loving. They

38:42

dance separately from each other, trying to figure

38:44

out what it is they're each saying. One

38:51

of them dips the other back, like that

38:54

classic tango move, what you've

38:56

seen a man do to a woman a hundred

38:58

times. After she dips

39:00

her, she immediately comes up onto

39:02

point on point together,

39:05

but you can see how they're just constantly passing

39:07

back and forth, who's leading, who's

39:09

following, who's on point, who's not, who's

39:11

in charge? And then I

39:14

wanted them to end in

39:16

some sort of partnered image.

39:22

There's this balancing piece. Actually it's

39:24

in Midsummer Night's Dream. There's

39:26

this beautiful potada, beautiful

39:29

pot of the second act of the divert small patada,

39:31

and it ends so slowly and suspended,

39:34

and it kind of moves

39:37

into this like beautiful lifts that

39:39

kind of leaves you just completely

39:41

breathless, and I wanted that

39:43

for them.

39:48

They walked to the back and

39:52

she does a fete on point and

39:55

Remy kind of pulls back on her. They're

39:57

holding each other's weight. I

40:00

wanted it to be slow and

40:02

to kind of go into

40:06

slow, suspended, partnered

40:09

moment where they're working together the

40:22

music fades until it's gone, they

40:24

still move in the silence, slowing,

40:30

and then it kind of fizzles

40:33

into this like last

40:36

moment of carving space

40:38

together. When

40:45

I watch the piece, it's like, I feel

40:47

Ballet is a woman in a new way,

40:50

in a way that empowers in

40:52

a way I don't think I've ever seen before. And

40:57

now there's like a whole

40:59

new of young people who are just like out

41:02

chill, feeling great, and I love

41:05

that. But Ballet

41:07

hasn't changed. So like that's why it's like, we

41:10

need to be making more diverse

41:12

works. We need to be hiring, we need to be

41:14

commissioning from more diverse people and telling

41:17

more stories so that these people, these young people

41:19

who are feeling great about themselves and feeling great

41:21

about being queer, have a space to actually exist

41:23

as themselves, so they don't have to do the thing

41:25

that we always had to do, which was turned that part of us

41:27

off. You know, next

41:58

time on the turning, when

42:00

you finally do move on,

42:03

there's a recovery

42:05

period, and

42:08

I think the recovery period

42:11

takes about ten years on

42:14

average to function

42:17

in the quote unquote

42:20

real world. The

42:27

turning is a production of Rococo Punch

42:29

and iHeart Podcasts. It's written

42:31

and produced by Alan Lance, Lesser and

42:34

Me. Our story editor is

42:36

Emily Foreman. Mixing and sound

42:38

designed by James Trout. Jessica

42:41

Carissa is our assistant producer. Andrea

42:43

Swahe is our digital producer. Fact

42:46

checking by Andrea Lopez Crusado. You

42:52

can learn about Adriana's continue to work

42:54

to showcase LGBTQ plus artists

42:56

and stories in ballet at Queer

42:58

thee Ballet dot com

43:00

special thanks to Sierra Armstrong and Remy

43:03

Young, who danced in Adriana's potted to

43:05

Overlook. Music for Overlook

43:07

provided by composer Julia Kent. It

43:10

can be found at music dot Julia

43:12

Kent dot com.

43:19

Our executive producers are John Parati

43:21

and Jessica Alpert at Rococo Punch, I

43:24

Get, Trina Norville and Nikki Etour at iHeart

43:26

Podcasts. For

43:30

photos and more details on the series, follow

43:32

us on Instagram at Rococo Punch,

43:35

and you can reach out via email The

43:37

Turning at Rococo Punch dot

43:39

com.

43:41

I'm Erica Lance. Thanks for listening.