Footwork: Le Foyer de la Danse

As an ex-dancer, my work is influenced by the backstage of the Paris Opera house. In the 1800’s, the backstage was known as ​le foyer de la danse. It served as a meeting point between dancers and wealthy male subscribers known as the ​abonnés. Many changes were made in order to appease the abonnés, such as shortening the dancers' skirts. The dancers were exploited by these men, and it was often expected for the dancers to perform sexual favors for money. Much of this was brought to light through the work of Edgar Degas.

I transform objects that have not yet been influenced by the male gaze into sexual objects to serve as relics, displaying the idea of exploiting the dancer. Traditionally, only females dance en pointe ​in order to appear weightless and more feminine. However, the shoe causes the dancer many wounds and requires much control and strength to perform in them. By transforming the pointe shoe into a vagina I not only sexualize the shoe, but embrace and empower the femininity and the strength needed to dance en pointe.

In the piece ​Check Your Buns, t​he hair bun has been transformed into an anus. It is viewed through a mirror that references the shape of a butt. The piece invites the viewer to sit down and look at the bun as if it were on their head. This plays into the idea of vanity and the stereotype of women spending much time in front of the mirror. However, this is done in order to appease men and look the way they want women to look.

Through juxtaposition by projecting a dancer on a mattress, basic dance positions allude to sexual positions. In the video, the dancer is seen moving through the dance positions of: parallel, first, second, fourth, and fifth position, but not third position as that is predominantly a masculine position. The final image in the video is the dancer standing in fourth position with her arms behind her back. The stance and costume she is in pays homage to Degas’s statue, Little Dancer of Fourteen Years. ​The statue was controversial in its time as it did not show a beautiful, graceful dancer, but instead she displayed the ugliness that is an adolescent being forced to do something she does not want to do.

I transform the iconography of ballet into sexual objects. Through these transformations, I am able to show the influence the male gaze has had on the dance form.