Don’t Think, Dear

Ballet is woman, said George Balanchine, the founder of New York City Ballet.

For centuries, being a ballerina has been synonymous with being beautiful, obedient, and feminine. The sexism seems built-in — and the #MeToo movement rocked the ballet world with shocking revelations about harassment, physical abuse, and eating disorders at top schools. But is there a different way of being a ballerina — a feminist one?

Weaving together her own time at America’s most elite ballet school and the lives of the most famous ballerinas in history, Alice Robb interrogates what it means to perform ballet today. Robb confronts the all-consuming nature of ballet: the obsessive — and dangerous — practices to perfect the body; the embrace of submission; the idealisation of suffering.

But ballet also gifts its practitioners "brains in their toes," a way to fully inhabit their bodies and a sanctuary of control and routine away from the pressures of the outside world. Don’t Think, Dear looks to figures like Misty Copeland and Alexandra Waterbury to carve out new paths for ballerinas.

The art of ballet can be reimagined. But should it be?