By Victoria Race
As dance teachers we are all too aware of the beauty that lies in seeing something a little bit different. The dancer who stands out from the crowd. The choreography that brings us something unique, striking and challenging. You only have to step inside the Winter Gardens on competition day to see a dancer’s understanding of the importance of standing out. The wonderful array of eye-catching outfits in so many different colours and patterns; the use of animal print, flower patterns, diamantes and applique showing us, with out a shadow of a doubt that to be bold and individual is valued in our dance communities.
Dance performance and choreography have along and healthy tradition of pushing boundaries and challenging societal stereotypes, from Matthew Bourne’s Swan Lake and his direct challenge to gendered roles through to West Side Story and its commentary on racial and socio -economic discrimination in 1950’s New York the dance world has regularly challenged perception and prejudice.
We should be encouraging young people to only do to and with their bodies what they are comfortable with and choose to do.
It is arguable the job of artists to challenge the mind to push boundaries and to shift perception but the way this has been done historically is not necessarily the way we would do it in 2022.When some of our most famous and traditional ballets were first staged the world has very different views about beauty and particularly the beauty found in uniformity. It is the case that the attempt to find identical, uniform beauty was always discriminatory, but that it existed in a time and culture where sadly discrimination was usual. Today we recognise beauty in uniqueness, individuality and freedom of expression as core creative components.
We recognise that by discriminating against an individual who doesn’t meet a particular aesthetic expectation we are damaging the dance, damaging our organisations, damaging the reputation of our profession and above all damaging those dancers.
It is the case that diverse organisations are stronger, healthier more resilient organisations that bring a wider sense of perspective, a broader education and a healthier balance of opinion, there are no circumstances in which embracing diversity, improving representation and creating equity in our organisations doesn’t make things better for us all.
Discrimination on the other hand hurts people.
In some areas of dance, particularly styles such as ballet we have not historically seen a wide representation of different dancing bodies and we have become stuck in an outdated traditional ideal that beauty only lies in sameness and uniformity. We have allowed tradition to govern our approaches inclusive of its outdated and unwelcome aspects.
That desire for a uniform aesthetic is at huge cost to personal wellbeing.
Many dancers feel under- represented in their chosen area of dance, many talk about experiences of not feeling welcome or not feeling belonging as they saw no one like them. Many dancers talk about experiences where not only did they experience a lack of representation but they also faced regular direct and indirect discrimination; in casting, in characterisation and in costume. Where we attempt to create an aesthetic ‘norm’ in our school, in our performances, in our dancers we can alienate and disillusion many.
To create a standardised image, dance teachers and schools may be tempted to specify the colour of make up used or specify a particular hair style or specify a particular brand of tan….. all these ideas are at best indirect discrimination as they suggest a perfect and correct hair type and skin tone which may be unattainable for many dancers.
Under the Equality Act 2010, there are 9 protected characteristics which are; age, disability, gender reassignment, marriage and civil partnership, pregnancy and maternity, race, religion or belief, sex, and sexual orientation.
Not only is this often unattainable or difficult for dancers to achieve, not only does it discriminate against many individuals who have different hair texture or skin tone, those with medical conditions and allergies and those with strong beliefs against the wearing of such products but also by suggesting we have a perfect, correct uniformity we suggest that with out the makeup, the hair and the tan we are maybe somehow less perfect, less correct…… less beautiful.
For professional performers we see the use of stage makeup as an important part of creating an illusion for the stage but when we work with children and young people who through their age and personal circumstances are often already incredibly vulnerable and susceptible to misinformation about body type, beauty aesthetics and self -image we can run the risk of creating something far more insidious.
There is a problem with asking someone to change their body for you, or for another. There is no more important safeguarding message for children that “never let anyone do anything to you don’t want them to do”. It is the start of all good safeguarding practice, teaching all young people to protect themselves and speak out against pressure and harm.
Suggestions that young people should wear a certain shade of make up or even more extreme examples of prescribing suitable styles of hair cuts or requesting the removal of body hair all cross this line. We should be encouraging young people to only do to and with their bodies what they are comfortable with and choose to do. A message that says an adult can ‘make’ you do things to your body you do not choose, is unhealthy for all young people but for our most vulnerable it also sets a potentially dangerous president. To choose to do something is not just about agreeing to do it, it is about having a safe and valid opportunity to say no. If we say a child cannot take an exam or can not do a show unless they do as we ask we are not providing a free, safe opportunity of them to say no.
We are spoken to often about corporate image, branding and marketing. It is important we do not confuse this with a need to protect our students. Yes we want a brand, a unique look, a great advertising tool but our students are unique individuals with unique dreams and responsibilities.
Our website and Facebook page can be uniform, branded and colour coded, our students may not be. Our website helps build our public identity, their childhood experiences are helping them build theirs. It is our role as teachers first and foremost to support our students with that life long task of identity development and building self esteem.