Betwixt The Sheets: The History of Sex, Scandal & Society - The Dark History of Ballet

Episode Date: March 26, 2024

Whilst ballet is undoubtedly one of the most graceful and elegant art forms, it also has a long and dark history of sexual exploitation.How did King Louis XIV's love of the ballet fundamentally change it? What was the patronage system and how did dancers use it to their advantage? And who were some of the female pioneers who embraced sexuality within the ballet?Joining Kate today is Deirdre Kelly, author of Ballerina: Sex, Scandal and Suffering Behind the Symbol of Perfection, to find out more.This podcast was edited by Tom Delargy and produced by Stuart Beckwith. The senior producer was Charlotte Long.Enjoy unlimited access to award-winning original documentaries that are released weekly and AD-FREE podcasts. Get a subscription for £1 per month for 3 months with code BETWIXT sign up at https://historyhit/subscription/You can take part in our listener survey here. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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I know you're partial to some high culture, lovely betwixters, which is exactly why you're listening to this air podcast. And you're joining me here at an extremely opulent Paris Opera House in the 1870. I've brought us backstage to watch the Impressionist painter Dagar sketch, one of his most famous paintings of the ballet dancers here, while they prepare themselves and make their way to and from the stage. And it's quite the scene.

These young girls and young women put themselves through some seriously torturous moves with the utmost elegance and grace. But as you see in Daegar's paintings, in the backgrounds, lurking beyond the dancers is something more sinister. Wealthy men are loitering, Supposedly patrons of the art, they offer financial support for the ballerinas, who are mostly from very poor working class backgrounds. But as we will find out, this patronage and support came with an expectation of quite a lot in return.

What do you look for a man? Oh, money, of course. You're supposed to rise when an adult speaks to you. I make perfect copies of whatever my boss needs by just turning it up and pushing the funny. Yes, social courtesy does make a difference. Goodness, my beautiful dance. Goodness has nothing to do with it, dearie. Hello, and welcome back to Petricks O'Shea,

the History of Sex Scandal and Society with me, Kate Lister. Ballet seems like such a timeless art form, but its evolution has taken many twists and turns from the Royal Courts of 15th century Italy to the influence upon the Cancann in 19th century Paris. As with most artistic art forms, this dance has had its... fair share of struggle and exploitation.

Who were the women that revolutionised this art form? How did it change over the centuries? And what exactly was involved in this patronage system? Joining me today is Deirdre Kelly, author of Ballerina, Sex Scandal and Suffering Behind the Symbol of Perfection who's going to take us deep into this world. We have our listener, Maddie, to thank for suggesting this topic to us. Hello, Betwixte Sheets.

I'm Maddie, and I'm from Maryland in the United States. I love Betwixte Sheets because Kate Lister is such a hilarious and knowledgeable host, and I love all the fascinating topics that she digs up for each episode. I'd like the podcast to do an episode on the Dark History of Ballet because I've always been interested in the ballerina art by DeGas, which shows the life of those young dancers behind the innocence of their performances. I look forward to this episode. Oh, thank you so much, Maddie.

I absolutely adore the Dagar paintings too, and I am as keen to find out more about them as you are. Tutu's at the ready betwixters. Let's do this. Oh, welcome to Betwixta Sheets is only, dear Derry Kelly. How are you doing? I'm doing very well and even better now that I'm speaking with you. Thank you, Kate, for having me on your show. I'm thrilled that you're here because this is a research subject that I'd never really considered before the history of Ballet. And when I think about it, I probably think what other people do of the pretty tutus and that it's very sophisticated and elegant and it's the pinnacle of a sophisticated society.

And I love that people like you have researched it and kind of shattered that a little bit. My first question is, what brought you to want to write the history of ballet? I have been besotted with dance in general, but ballet, I'd say, in particular from a very young age. I've said this before. It was kind of a pre-literary fascination in the sense that I couldn't write about dance, but I used to draw it.

I know that it was just a fleeting image. I saw once of a ballerina on an album cover. I think it was maybe tunes by Charkovsky or something in one of my parents' friends' repertoire. And if you can remember the days when kids weren't entertained, you were just to find your own entertainment. So I was probably just rooting through. And that image of the ballerina stuck with me, and I used to draw it over and over again.

In fact, I didn't get to see my first ballet until I was almost 12 years of age, and it was with my mom saying, all right, already, we're going to go. And I saw the Nutcracker. And I vividly remember sitting in that seat. I see myself as like an epiphany moment saying, I should be up there. So there was something there, as mentioned, it wasn't an artsy family. I wasn't raised that way, but it was a beguiling image for me. And I think also I should quickly add, I think to me too, it was an empowering image because when I thought about women in dance and women in ballet in particular, I saw them as not just equal to the men. And I'm growing up in a society where women weren't yet having parity. And they weren't just equal. They were actually the star of the show.

That's what I believed. I believe that they were the center of attention and they were stronger than anyone on that stage. And that fascinated me. And I think it was, in a way, a goal. You know, was it going to be a dancer? But maybe I could channel that discipline and rigor in my own life. Fast forward, I am writing about dance obsessively now by the age of 15. I'm journaling.

I'm going to pay what you can shows. I become the dance critic at my student newspaper at the University of Toronto. And then I am recruited immediately upon convocation to Canada's biggest then newspaper of the Globe and Mail as its dance critic. And it was when I was in this role that I had the great privilege now of meeting face-to-face these ballerinas that I had long admired on the stage. And that's when you realize everything you just mentioned, Kate, about the elegance, the sophistication, and even my own maybe illusion that it was all about female empowerment. And then you find out quite crushingly that it's the opposite, that the woman at the center of this beautiful art form is, in fact, oppressed and made to work harder than anybody else in order to a lot.

attain this ideal of grace and poise. And they have, I guess, an edict upon them, too, at the time. I just paused there just because things are changing. Maybe we'll get into that. But, you know, they weren't to talk. They weren't to complain. They were only to follow orders. And I wanted to know a little bit more about that. So it was always writing stories. But the climax came when a prominent ballerina at the National Valley of Canada was fired. And it was because at the time, the company said it was at the age of 38, she was too old. And she wasn't at all. And this is what I was a critic.

And I had just reviewed her in Byadere, where she's wearing a very exposing classical tutu. It's very high up on the hips, it exposes the legs and exposes all the intricate legwork. And I rarely gush, as a critic, I'll tell you, I have had a reputation as the dragon lady. But in this case, I remember vividly writing about her as the 24-carat ballerina. That's kind of a, it was going a little bit out of my objectivity zone. And so I had just reviewed her three weeks prior. So when the artistic director of the company was telling me and literally calling her deadwood and saying all these pejorative things, I knew that it was incorrect because I was a seasoned critic. I've been watching it for, you know, the dance for decades. And I knew that that was wrong. So I knew something was up.

And indeed, interviewing her, I found out that there was other reasons. Anyway, I'll spare you all the details, but it became front page news here in Toronto. So I covered it extensively. But what really shocked me at the time is that the Canadian public took umbrage with this ballerina, wanting to push back, wanting to fight for her rights, wanting to speak out against oppression and injustices and labor transactions that were so futile, you know, in the 21st century. And there were headlines on articles like Upidy Ballerina. and she's passed her best before date. And the sexism was rampant.

And this made me so curious, first of all, and also coming from people who likely never even saw her dance. She was an exquisite dancer. So, frankly, that was the seeds for the book. Because I wanted to find out why do people think a ballerina needs to conform to a whole other stand? of human existence, but as particular the female identity. And this became a quest.

I wanted to know why. And it led me to go into the history. So my book, for instance, does start in the 16th century, does come right to the present day, and the ballerina in question does get her own chapter because I speak about labor issues in the ballet, which actually persist today. I just noted in anticipation of our conversation,

I wanted to maybe see what our current themes in dance. And I know that it wasn't widely reported on, which is surprising, but the dancers at American Valley Theater only just recently narrowly averted widespread strike because they are still paid subsistent wages and their working conditions are very poor. So I think I just kind of hinted that there's been change since the publication of this book, which was one of my purposes in doing it as well. I want to really emphasize if that wasn't clear.

I love dance. I think it's an extraordinary art form. And I do think that dancers, there are a whole species unto themselves. Think of what they do, what one can do, because we all have bodies. and it's mind-boggling when you watch what they can do in the discipline. And then you realize, again, from the history and reading about them, especially the ballerina, that they are all building on legacies provided by other round-breaking, trailblazing ballerinas in the past, very few of whom have been the subject of a book before

because people haven't wanted to celebrate them. And that's one of my proudest achievements, I'd say, in writing the story. book is that I hope I've brought to the four many great women artists in dance who were in threat of languishing and obscurity. Wow. The passion that you talk about that way, that is just, that's a lecture fire. You've got me wild up. I want to, I'm going to go and join the ballerina union. I just, it's fascinating. We should start with the earliest history and you mentioned there, 16th century, that caught my attention. I'd always thought that ballet had been ageless, that it's just something, but that doesn't make any sense. Of course,

somebody would have to have come up with it. So what are its earliest origins? Yeah, I'd say that they are in the courts of Europe. It was a noble pursuit and it was up until the mid-1600s. It was almost exclusively a male pursuit. Oh. You had courtly ballets in Italy, for instance. In fact, I give a little bit of the etymology, ballare, part of my poor Italian, but it means to dance, and the Italian is coming from the Latin, which has the same route. So this is where we get our word ballet.

It's to dance. So the word courtly dances, they took place not on theaters, but in large assembly halls. At the very beginning, you would have partnering. But when ballet became more of a pageant, and it was a glorious page, it wasn't intimate the way we might think of it today, where you'd have a performer performing for you,

and that you'd be, that's a whole other thing about the history of the stage and stagecraft and everything that we look up at them. Prior to this time when ballet became a pageant, if it were in a maybe staged at all, audiences set upwards in tears looking down at the floor. And I say this because floor patterning and procession movement became very important. And when the woman becomes involved in these procession like parades, let's say, of elegance and virtue and cosmic ideals as espoused by the ancients. This is all the whole neoclassical rediscovery, the Renaissance,

rediscovery of ancient learning and texts, and the dance became a manifestation of it at that time. The male domain is very interesting. And I say, I don't think very many people know about that if you're not interested or know much about your dance history. But it's fascinating in that dance ballet was used as a, tool of discipline, regimentation, creating political messages. And it was used in military maneuvers. There were many grandiose spectacles of dancers, let's say, on horseback, and that the horses were trained to dance. And again, you were moving in meandering, but very choreographed patterns. The Lipinzano horses of today from Usra are a

let's say a relic of this ballet's origins is a military exercise. And as well, because it was so grand and opulent and was often performed outdoors in fields, it became a political tool, a propaganda tool, to espouse the might and glory and sophistication of a particular court. In this case, the apogee in a way of the Renaissance. dance is France. It migrates from Italy with an Italian, Katerina de Medici, Catherine of Medici, who becomes the wife of the king and the mother of the future, King Louis, 14, who becomes the greatest

ballet dancer of his time. And in fact, inspires ballet to great part in the pond heights, but it truly was like he was rising through it. He becomes immortalized in a dance called Ballet de la Nui, the ballet of the night, where it took place overnight, as I said, these were grand spectacles that could be maybe 12, 15 hours. So there was one production where these demonic forces of the night were acted out at night.

And at dawn, King Louis 14 rises. They had some kind of mechanical pedestal that raised him literally upwards, and he was decked out in a golden costume, bejewed the rays of the new sun, you know, sparkling off, dazzling everybody. And this is how he becomes known as the sun king because he represented Apollo,

who was the god of dance and music, by the way, and refinement and discipline and order. So here was the king suppressing chaos, and people do know of Louis as the Sun King, but they probably don't know. It's because of a ballet. I didn't know that Louis was a ballerina. Ballerino.

You're going to have to tell you to ballerino. Sorry, ballerino, you're quite right, ballerino. And because he was the king, he made, just by dint of the sovereign in an absolute estate, he made ballet du rigourne. And if you wanted to have any advancement in French society at that time, man, you really had to master the ballet. He is a really interesting individual for the history of the ballerina because he is the first to invite women to partner him in some of these dances. And he had another really interesting collaborator at the time who also was all for bringing the female into some.

center stage, and that was the composer, Luli, who was his concert matter. He performed with Louis, by the way, in the Ballet de Lénui. And until this time, when women would participate in ballet, they were noble women. It was all amateur, non-professional, they were noble women, and they had to represent some of these things I mentioned earlier, these cosmic ideals of harmony, of grace, of virtue. and they had to do decorous movement, not a lot of jumping. You also have to remember the attire of women at this time, big, heavy skirts. You weren't showing your legs, so you weren't showing off legwork. Who had the prettiest legs in town were the men because they were the ones in tights.

And they were wearing dance shoes, high-heeled dance shoes, and that they are the ones who started to codify all those positions that we know in ballet today from first, second, third, fourth, fifth, position that was from the men crossing their legs, having a frontal position, looking elegant. The women, you couldn't see their legs. And there was a development of a style called tear-a-terre, again from the French, meaning to the ground, low to the ground. So it was deference gliding, elegant movement. So the women would have been dancing in those big, huge 17th century gowns? You can see this today in ballet. There are certain ballets from the past that are still performed,

you can get a feel for that gliding motion, the chasse, very elegant, very just sweeping across the floor with a lot of movement on the upper body, and even the bores where in these days women aren't on point, they're on flat shoe, but today's boress where the rapid on point movements kind of scudding across a stage, and it's to create an illusion of gliding, almost that there's no muscle, no skeleton there at all. You're just like the wind moving along. So this was the ideal by Luli as a core composer. He wanted to make music that would enhance faster, quicker, more up-tempo dancing styles. And he felt that nobility was wanting, as did Louis.

And so they started to create the beginning of a meritocracy. So if you now were in the lower classes and you had talent, let's face it, you had up discipline, you had to apply yourself to this. form. This is not for cissies or suckers. You can't just wake up, decide you're going to go do ballet. You have to really, really apply yourself. So those who were up to the task, they found themselves suddenly dancing alongside the king and other aristocrats who maybe were able to make their mark in the ballet. So this is the first time we get a professional ballerina coming. And it's around the time, if I've got my days right, 1663, with the found.

of the Academy Royal de la Dance, and this was Louis 14, again, doing something remarkable with the art of ballet, which is relatively new by this time. And he's giving it the stature afforded all the other arts. There is an academy French still in existence in Paris today, and it typically was overseeing science, literature, music, of course, but it didn't have ballet as part of its jurisdiction. And Louis made that happen. And once that becomes codified, in fact, there are now schools, professional schools developed.

And then the women from, as they say, non-aristocratic families and households, they had an ability to assert themselves as female artists of the stage. We're interested in what you said about that it wasn't. first performed in theatres, because I think that's really interesting because women were being allowed on the stage in theatres around Europe, around this time, but they were considered very scandalous. In fact, the whole theatre industry was considered quite a raunchy place to go, and actresses on the stage was certainly considered a bit free, easy and loose with their morals. How were female ballerinas perceived at this time? Were they also part of this art, that they

Must be women of questionable character. Of course. In fact, I want to, I giggled there because in a way, they personify this whole sense of moral degradation, the female performer as harlot. It becomes, in fact, quite institutionalized and embedded in the identity of the ballerina from the get-go. And though I just mentioned that women of talent and maybe good looks and charms and things could make their way through the ballet, so a kind of meritocracy. However, it was tied very much to a kind of sexual patronage at this time. Women needed, quote-unquote, protectors, and those protectors, by and large, were also asking sexual favors. So the role of the ballerina slash concubine becomes immediately entrenched, I'd say, in the art of ballet. I researched a number of these women,

And I actually just reviewed in advance of speaking, and I was glad to see because my memory serves that I was actually in awe of a lot of them. I didn't want to be overly judgmental at all of them because many of them used the system to their great advantage. And, you know, it's a different time. And when I mentioned about the patronage, it actually was codified in the art about how ballet was run. There were books,

you know, almost like check-in books, attendance records at the Paris Opera, for instance, and the ballerina's name is seen on the page alongside her patron.

There could have been definitely exploitation. You know, some young ballerians died of venereal days of diseases. It was no picnic clearly, but there were

opportunities there as well. So, yes, they were labeled prostitutes, harlots. Many were actually so. But the ballerina cortisans was not a social pariah. No. She was able to make great entrees into society and become quite respectable in society, probably not from a conventional

point of view. So there might have been a still dichotomy, you know, you'd have the proper wife, but you'd have the ballerina mistress on the side kind of thing. But she had her place. System of patronage is a really interesting one. And it's very, very ancient that is that if you were an aspiring artist of any type, painter, decorator, ballerina, then there's not a lot of money in it to just go and do that. So what you would need is an extremely wealthy person to basically fund you to do that. And that would be your patron. So in the case of a ballerina, I'm really interesting than you saying it was a meritocracy because that's fascinating to me. If you were a young girl and someone had said, oh, she's quite, quite nifty on her pins.

I think she could be a dancer. How would you even go about getting a patron? How would that even, would the patron pay the school fees to the ballet place? Like, how would you even go about this? That's a great question. And I know that we were just talking about Louis 14, Lully, this whole time of the origins of a codified art form. there was a state school. The state at the time at the very beginning was paying those fees.

The patron, and by the way, they were sometimes patrons. It wasn't unusual and it was in some cases widely accepted by the various parties in the same relationship that a ballerina could have different patrons for different needs at the same time and everyone tolerated each other. It was a business transaction. So the school fees, typically, as I mentioned, if it was a state school and it was at that time, were taken care of. But the patronage was more important, I think, not just for buying essentials that needed for the stage, you know, your shoes, your ribbons. You had out beautiful ribbons and undersc skirts, although I do know of a dancer who didn't wear underwear at all, which is why she was quite, and she had her like to put her legs really high up.

Casanova even was a great fan, no doubt. So these patrons also helped them have their own accommodations and their own carriages and to live in a certain way that might have been befitting their status as artists. So precarious, isn't it? The wages for a ballerina, as you were alluding to earlier, are still not good. They're still lousy. Still lousy. And you were never going to make it as a professional ballerina unless you get a patron.

It exists today. I mean, I don't know to what extent the sexual is there, but up until now, you know, we're in the Me Too era. That's maybe not going to be something that people are, and I'm going to say they're not encouraging it, but that's not going to be maybe as tolerated as it has been. But there was an understanding that that was part of it. And I just use the word tolerated. And I actually should pull that back. I don't mean to say that this should be tolerated, that, you know, if there's sexual exploitation, what I want more to say is that. We can't judge some of these people if they make choices that then work for them.

You know, can't take away the female autonomy. If she wants to be making choices about her sexuality and how she uses her body, that's what I want to just give the liberty to that. Of course, you don't want to have, you know, vultures praying on the young and the innocent and the green. And that certainly occurs. So even though I'm now celebrating these early 17th century, ballerinas, for sure in the 19th century, I write about that, the de Gaia era that, you know, those portraits of many of those young dancers were sexually exploited. And by this time,

the Paris Opera has institutionalized, again, not just the patronage, but that has allowed for a kind of green room where the men in the top hats and frock coats would come basically to have their pick of the young women. And I believe my book does have a kind of poignant illustration of the day and artists looking at some of these girls who were deeply victimized. And it wasn't fair. The men were called Lizzie Bonnet, by the way, because they were ticket holders. You paid a certain fee in order to have this access behind the scenes.

If you now look closely at a daigot painting, you know, the eye goes to the iridivor. Dissant tutus and colors of the ballerina at center stage. But look in the corners of those paintings. You're going to see the vultures in their evening dress, sitting, watching, waiting. And Deghan knew what he was doing there. He was, you know, suddenly making a social critique, I think. I'll be back with Dirdre and the ballet after this short break. Well, me a little bit about when we start to get the recognizable costume and

clothing for the ballerina because we're so used to seeing that we've got this idea we know exactly what a ballerina looks like so we're not shocked to see a ballerina but what's very easy to forget is that these are incredibly revealing clothes because you need to see all the limbs moving and all the muscle tripling right and it must have been considered very shocking when that started to become part of the performance i'm really glad you asked about that because that allows me to speak about miss no underwear and that is the ballerina known as camargo she was a celebrated ballerina in her day and i'm really excited to talk about her i've often said this too i should say a ballet even though it's an art of the body it's in a way like an oral art form you know

like the oral tradition in the sense that it's passed on just like oral poetry so it's what one ballerina did she passes it on to the next and onto the next and you can actually trace dancers today right back to the dancers from the 17th century. And Comargo is one. And she's really interesting. And she was a courtesan ballerina proudly, very sexual, happy with her sexual appetites. But she was a trailblazer in more ways than one. She had a stunning technique. She was among ballet's first female virtuosos. And she, as I said, really liked men. And she learned from them as well.

So she sought out the great male dancers of the day, asked them to teach her, their tricks of the trade type of thing. And then she emulates what the men were doing, which were very high jumps. Remember, I said the ballerina was supposed to be low to the ground, just gliding, you know, like a ripple on the sea. and now she's leaping high and she's the first, we believe, to be among the first ballerinas to do a tricky step called the Entrascha Capra, which is you're jumping up and you're beating your legs

four times in the air. You will see that's a regular feature of ballet today. So in order for her to show off the fancy footwork, she lobbed the hems off her skirt, She's the first dancer to go into the direction of what will become the tutu, in that she takes the skirt up above the ankle. So you can see those beating feet. And this became quite sensational, quite scandalous, but it became the fashion.

And there are illustrations and great paintings of this ballerina in her higher than the ankle skirts. And she created the ankles, the new erogenous stone. No doubt that's why Casanova goes and travels to see her perform. And as I said, she quite cheekily, you know, refused to wear this underwear. I think it was called Calcant-Precation, like a precautionary underwear so that you wouldn't flash, but she was like, forget that. So she's lifting her legs and showing and doing it. And without persecution, without penalties.

and quite enjoying herself there. So this is where costume reform comes in. And as it said, it becomes part of the fashion in society. It's emulated by the noble women, perhaps, you know, who might have been not so happy that their husbands are cavorting with the cortis and ballerinas, but it was part of the society at this time. And then eventually as the ballerina gains in mastery of her technique,

the costume becomes shorter. It becomes, let's say, more body revealing, as you've mentioned. The fabrics, also you have to have evolution in fabric too, right? So once you can use muslins, diaphanous fabrics that cling to the body a little bit, this is a particular, again, that wasn't a later invention. A Camargo's rival was a dancer named Salé, the great Salé. beloved of Voltaire, for instance, and she was the diametric opposite. She was known as a Vestal Virgin because she wouldn't engage in orgies. And in fact, I write about she even got punished

because there was a by invitation only orgy at the Paris Opera inviting the patrons and the ballerinas Camargo was lustily in there, but Salé refused. And this was seen as insubordination. And she was penalized. And that made her high. I tail it to England, by the way, you'd be interested in this, where she collaborated with the Great Handel. And she was known as a ballerina, again, diametrically opposed to Camargo, where she wasn't overly animated, overly spirited in her dance, but she did show spirit in the sense that she was creating soulful dancing, poetic dancing. And ballet today can be traced like this idea of in dance that there are spitfires and there are poets is a kind of dichotomy that persists. And we have it beginning with these ballerinas. I bring her up in the conversation about costume because she made her own radical reforms in costume where she wanted to have very similitude in theater.

and she at one point was emulating a statue in a dance, a statue come to life. And so she wore almost like Grecian type of fabrics. Think of Isadora Duncan, very clean, showing every aspect of her body, even though she wasn't trying to be sexual with that. She was trying to be as true to form. She was very interesting. So you get the shorter skirt, then you get more the body revealing. again, right there in the 1700s.

In the 18th century, you have trailblazers in 19th century of other trailblazers like Marie Talioni, who's the first dancer known to go on point. Because remember, the women until this point are still on their slippers, but she had this uncanny ability to be able to dance upon her toes. And so the shoe wear starts to evolve from there.

And then maybe bring it right up to the 19th, later into the 19th century, with the ballets that you might know today, Those ones with the very starch tutus that I mentioned, La Bayadere at the beginning from Marius Petitpah, a Frenchman who goes to the Tsarist court in Russia and does a neoclassical ballet, where, again, the technique, you wanted to show the evolution of the technique in the ballerina. So the tutus became super revealing. You know, they're right there at the hip.

It's showing all legs. And yes, your point, these were scandalizing because look at what women were. wearing on the streets. And even, again, if we go back in the centuries, and they wore this corsetry that sometimes made them look like walking ships, you know, that they were so expanded, they could hardly get through the doors. So no wonder, by the way, they had decorous dancing. You had to make costume changes in order for the dancing to evolve with the technique. I'm fascinated by what you were saying there about you've got these 18th-19th century dancers

some of them aren't wearing any knickers and their skirts are getting shorter and it's all a bit there's a frisson about it and I'm wondering how does the art form of ballet relate to something like the cancane in the Moulin Rouge because ballet is sounding from what you're saying like a posh person's can-can

it's like where they go because they don't quite want to go to the Moulin Rouge and see the dancers there but they can get the same kind of giddy little thrill at the ballet. Yeah, thrill. Exactly, the sexual thrill. Actually, I think you bring up a good point. I haven't contemplated this, but I think I might have a way of answering it. Because in the 19th century, so we're talking to say Toulouse-Lot-Moulin-Rouge time, the society has become very bourgeois, and it's no longer an aristocratic society. You've got a new mercantile class with all kinds of new conventions. You know, the institution of marriage, for instance, becomes much more,

accepted tradition. Think of even artwork. You know, the woman now, the ballerina, let's say, is not as liberated as she was. That's what I found so interesting. At the time of Louis 14, where you would have thought, oh, there was way more oppression. But it is as, I'd say, society evolved. They wanted the woman to now be more idealized in the home. She was to be the lovely wife, the virtuous wife. She's on a pedestal, the female on the pedestal. And that's where I think the prostitution becomes even more vicious and darker. And I think that the Moulin-Rouge type of dancer might have even been some fallen ballerinas or dancers who couldn't make the mark or maybe didn't get the all-important patronage at the time. There are all kinds of factors playing

into the role of the dancer at this time. I do, like, by the way, Zagas' little dancer, you know, at 14 years, you know, that pouty, almost defiant statuette, that was a real-life ballerina courtesan, a 14-year-old girl who was put into this dark side of things. And she used to go to those clubs, I call them clubs or taverns. And because the ballerina, by the way, in the 19th century, she was like today's celebrities. There was a kind of yellow journalism, you know, there were magazines that you could read about your favorite ballerina. What does she wear? What does she eat? Where does she go? And that was how I found that some of these dancers actually did go into those clubs. They might also have been supplementing their incomes as well. You mentioned Degar there.

So let's talk about the women in the images because they're breathtaking. They're so beautiful. They're so graceful. But could you try and paint me a picture of what the day-to-day life of the woman in that gorgeous, sumptuous, very glamorous image actually is. Because what I'm getting from you all the time is that this image that we've got is it's an illusion. It's not like that at all. So what would have been life like for the women in these paintings? Again, excellent question. And I did try to detail that in the chapter where I discussed Daegha, because, you know, De Gaat, by the way, I'm not sure if you're aware. he at times has faced criticism in our day and age.

You know, he's actually been accused of misogyny. I don't buy that at all. I think that he was quite the proto-feminist. I think he was quite, versus maybe enamored of them in a sexual way, not at all. He was fascinated by them, ballerinas. He was very aware of the harsh conditions of their workplaces. And that's what he's documenting. because if you look at them, I'm glad you see them as beautiful and glamorous,

and there is a certain hint of that for sure. But if you look closely, you can see the twisting muscle. You can see the fatigue in some of his portraits of them. You see them slant, you know, when they're not having to suddenly create the illusion of effortless, virtuosity, you know, they're exhausted. And there are records from the Paris Opera about these young recruits. because that day God was allowed to go into the schools and go into the practice rooms and document, you know, almost like journalistic commentary. And he also, by the way, because he wasn't of, he was kind of born of a certain class, but he ultimately didn't have that prestige.

But he had friends in high places and they brought him into the theater. That's why you get some portraits of the backs of heads of some of the audience members as they're watching the dance. So as I said, there's a kind of immediacy to what he's doing. And I think he's bringing very sharp social critique. It's subtle. You have to really look at it. As I mentioned, the vultures in the corner, the praying sexual monsters in the corner of the beautiful ballet.

He's also, as I said, in the practice rooms where there are another presence is, you'll, again, now you're going to see them when I put them out. Needing in the corner are their mothers often because the mothers were wanting to be protective. Some of the ballerinas, by the way, were orphans, so they didn't have this patronage or their mothers would sell them into the ballet as sexual property in order to enhance the family.

Not fortunes, but at least to bring maybe a level of subsistence to the family through the dance. So taking a little way to say what it was like. So I'm just saying that we have records of these, not just pictorial, but the Paris Opera has described them, the artistic director of the Paris Opera School at that time, I quote him. And it is a very mean, meager, hard existence. They're very red bear.

He writes about that, how they come, almost in rags, and they're cold, and they don't have food, so there was an institutionalizing of feeding them, giving them something. You see, so the ballet was a form of salvation, It could be that this artistic director is glossing over certain aspects of it, but one thing he was emphasizing is you've got this poverty, you've got this harshness, but there was a kind of sisterhood in the ballet. And that persists. That is a theme that is absolutely vital for today in dance.

And you see that when it's in certain movies now, they'll always show that the camaraderie among the women, because there is a kind of bond that is formed. in the midst of the deprivation and the hard work. And they are all striving to wear those beautiful costumes and have that moment of almost literal transformation, you know, from the reel to the fantastical. So it wasn't an easy life whatsoever. And yet you really had a minefield of sexual predators that you had to learn to navigate.

So it wasn't an easy time. So if you're, let's say that you've managed to get yourself a patron and despite it being a horrendous amount of hard work, you've been very successful as a ballerina, 19th century, maybe Dagar painted you, but there is quite a short lifespan. What happens afterwards? That's excellent again.

Let's talk about Daegas's petite dancer, the 14-year-old. She didn't last long at all. She becomes a member of the Paris Opera, and you have to find the documentation and there isn't a lot of it, but I was able to piece it together that it just looked like such the tragic life. Who knows why she missed practice,

why she compromised, wasn't able to go. As I said, they owe her hell to a very high standard. You don't just roll out of bed and go on to the stage. So she missed a few practices. I think she was put on alert. And then, unfortunately, whatever the circumstances, she is not attending class as she needed to, and she was let go. And that's where she really turned to the prostitution to make ends meet.

This is where we have more documentation of her in the taverns and the clubs of Paris at that time, drinking clubs, dark clubs, where sexual transactions were definitely taking place. And she dives at a very young age. She had a sister, by the way, and the sister similarly went through, maybe the same rites of passage. She is also briefly illustrated, portrayed in a painting by Degas, and she goes on to be a great star of the Paris Opera. So she made it. She didn't fall off the rails. I don't know if there was addiction, because remember there, it could have been addiction at this time. Don't know what the circumstances were with Degas's ballerina for the statue. But yes, she has.

had a very short life. I've also found documentation of young ballerinas who died of venereal disease before they were 24. Honestly, I could talk to you about this forever and ever, but I'm not allowed to do that. My final question, can we link up the history with what's happening today? Because it would be very tempting to look at ballet and go, oh, it was very difficult in the past, but now it's fine. What are the working conditions facing ballerinas today and what's their experience like? Yeah, I'd say they're very difficult conditions. They still make a very low wage. In fact, I had statistics, but there were statistics I used for this book that, at least in my country of Canada, and I think I was looking at the United States as well, that dancers are the lowest

paid artists in this country. They make very little money. That's the freelancers, especially. what they call independence. When a dancer is part of a company, there is more job consistency, regular pay benefits. We all know that. If we've been freelancers, then you get a full-time job, the full-time job can be quite great, right? You can get vacation benefits. However, it is still quite precarious. The wage is very low. I think someone recently calculated for me that for all the hours they put in and they're required to save the National Bile of Canada, here, they're required to go to company class, just like in day guys' time, the dancer has to go to company class, but they're not paid when they go to that class. They can't miss the

class. It's kind of like, well, I can't miss it, but you're not paying me, and you just, you have to do it, so you go. So ultimately, I think you might be looking at between 30 and 45 Canadian dollars, which American dollars is like $20 an hour, you know, for what they earn. As I mentioned earlier, A, B, T dancers in New York City just narrowly averted a strike because they were in negotiations some information was revealed. I think that their annual wage or even a soloist was 58,000 per annum US dollars. And to live in New York City, I think, you know, you definitely need closer to 80 to 90, if not 100,000. So they have to share digs. They have to sometimes get part-time work. And I know here in Canada, why I mentioned again, when I wanted to write about the labor issue, that ballerina who spoke out and then

ultimately was fired for non-existent causes, but the reason she got nailed by management is because she, as an elected official of the dancers union, brought to the table a concern, and the dancers at the time were concerned. There was going to be a very high budget new production of Swan Lake at the exact same time that manager was saying, oops, were broke. So we're going to be laying all you dancers, professional dancers, off for the summer months when you're not dancing. And this ballerina in particular came to the table. Again, she was authorized to do that as an elected union rub. The point was, what do you want us to do?

Work in kitchens? How are we going to live? So that was a current issue there. Sexual exploitation, there's definitely been examples again. I know of that here in Toronto. You read it occasionally in the press and overseas. Anorexia, body disorders.

That's a huge dance issue. That's only gently being addressed today. There's a greater acceptance of different body types. Dancers for the longest time in the 20th century were expected to all speed, like the salet vestal virgins to the dance. They weren't encouraged to marry and God forbid, encouraged to have

babies, that has really changed in recent years. Ballerinas can be mothers too. The other big issue that I wrote about is racism in dance. And that is very apparent. The ballet itself is known as the ballet blanc. It is the white ballet. You know, you kind of have fun with that. And there's been a whole derogatory mythology. I had someone come to me and say, oh, well, we heard that black dancers' feet aren't the same as white dancers' feet. So I said, there's a complete crock of, you know what, who's telling you this? And actually, was an American, and I'll tell you who it was, is Nelson George, black culture critic, who flew to Toronto to interview me for a documentary film he made about the

African-American ballerina, Misty Copeland. So I was the first person to write about Misty book, and her people never forgot that. She was being ignored all the time, you know, at ABT for years. And I remember we spoke over the funk. She was in New York. I was in Toronto. And I remember this very, very vividly. And at one point, you know, she's doing her proper interview speak.

And then she was like, I'm like this. I'm so sorry. You know, I'm so tired. And then I obviously must have said something like, and, you know, if you're working really hard or you get more rehearsals, and she goes, you know, I've been doing this for so long. But as a black dancer, I have to work 10 times harder than my peers in order to get even the minimum amount of recognition. Anyway, that was a real comment from a real person who had tremendous talent.

Anyway, fast forward, I think together we helped make a change in these perceptions in convention or traditional ballet companies, not all black companies. That's why all black companies formed Arthur Mitchell, who had been a sole black dancer, with George Balanchine's New York City Ballet and broke off to create a dance company. And Misty said she didn't want to go to an all-black company. She wanted to make it in one of the greatest ballet companies in the world. And eventually she did. And eventually the public had to change also with the ballet and had to be open to these new changes.

And she becomes the first African-American ballerina in ABT's most recent history to be named the principal dancer, and she became the first black ballerita to grace the cover of Time magazine. For instance, she's definitely been a trailblazer in that regard. Did you have been wonderful to talk to Deb. I've thoroughly enjoyed myself. If people want to know more about you and your work,

where can they find you? I have a website that, frankly, is a little bit under construction at the moment, which is why I hesitated there. But it is there, and it's Deirdriekelly.com. You will have information about all my books. I have a first book, Paris Times 8, which is a memoir. My second book is Ballerina, Sex, Scandal and Suffering Behind the Symbol of Perfection that we've just

had a wonderful conversation about. And I do have a new book out on The Beatles. And it's called Fashioning the Beatles, The Looks That Shook the World, and it just came out this past wall. Deirdre, thank you so much. You have been wonderful. Thank you for this great honor. Thank you. Thank you for listening and thank you to Deidre for joining me. And if you like what you heard, please don't forget to like review and follow along whatever it is that you get your podcasts. If you fancied saying hello, or if you wanted to email us to ask us to explore a subject like Maddie did for this episode, you can get us at betwixt at history hit.com.

We have got episodes on everything from sexuality in Jacobian, Britain, to the history of drag all coming your way. This podcast was edited by Tom Delaggy and produced by Stuart Beckwith. The senior producer was Charlotte Long. Join me again betwixt the sheets, The History of Sex Scandal and Society, a podcast by History Hit. This podcast contains music from Epidemic Sound.