Feminist phenomenology: a theoretical framework

Phenomenologists like Maurice Merleau-Ponty analyse bodily experiences of the world. [19] The point of departure of Merleau-Ponty in Phénoménologie de la perception is that ‘our corporeality is always the perspective from which we engage with the world’. [20] This means that every relation a subject has with the Lebenswelt, the world in which we live, is mediated by our bodily-being-in-the-world. [21] Consequently, ‘there is a world for a subject just insofar as the body has capacities by which it can approach, grasp, and appropriate its surroundings in the direction of its intentions.’ [22] In other words, the body is the viewpoint from which the subject experiences the world. The possibilities that are open for a subject in the world depend on the ‘mode and limits of the bodily “I can”’, the sense that the body can carry out specific tasks and functions. [23]

This perspective not only influences the conceptualisation of the world but also of the subject that knows the world. In Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology, as the body is the medium through which people experience the world, corporality becomes an essential part of the self. [24] More to the point, Merleau-Ponty’s perspective on the relation between a person and the world implies that subjectivity is not, as modern Cartesian thought stated, located in the mind or consciousness, but in the body. [25] Subjectivity rests on the premise that as a subject ‘I am’ my body, and that I/my body can move in the world. For a body to be able to sense this and thus to perform a motion properly it needs to exist in unity with itself and its surroundings. [26] This interpretation of the body presupposes that it is not just an object or an instrument. Instead, the body is part of a person’s subjectivity.

Feminist and postcolonial scholars have added the concept of culture to this perspective. They illustrate that not only the body’s characteristics (for example the abilities of the five senses) but also the social-structural situatedness of bodies frame embodied experiences. [27] This perspective was taken up by Iris Marion Young, in her pioneering work on feminist phenomenology. She describes how the objectification of the female body negatively influences women’s embodied experiences. First, women do not have the sense of unity of their bodies Merleau-Ponty described. Approached as an instrument, the female body becomes ‘overlaid with immanence, even if it moves out toward the world in motions’. [28] This means that women tend to use only one part of their bodies when they perform a task, while the rest of the body remains stagnant matter. Their embodied experience is fragmented. Moreover, it leads to a situation in which women become alienated from their bodies. Second, the feminine body underuses its real capacity. The body simultaneously aims to achieve a goal with an ‘I can’ and ‘withholds its full bodily commitment to that end in a self-imposed “I cannot”’. [29] Third, female bodies are in discontinuous unity with themselves and their surroundings. [30] Consequently, women use a smaller space than is physically available to them. [31] According to Young, these limitations result from the objectification of women and the interconnected threat to the female body of being invaded and getting hurt.

In this reading, the objectification of the female body negatively influences the embodied experience of the self. This raises questions about the ballerina’s embodied experience. Does the objectification of her body inevitably lead to the dancer’s discontinuity with her surroundings and her alienation from, fragmented experience of and believe in the incapacity of her body?

Experience of bodily strength and capability

As is observed by dance and sports researchers, during a ballet class, the dancers practice movements and positions. Contrary to what some researchers have suggested, these exercises do not limit the dancer’s embodied experience but instead offer them an opportunity to experience their bodies’ strength. As Aalten argues in one of her later works, ballerinas experience these strict regulations as ‘a challenge rather than a straightjacket’. [32] Ballerinas need to exercise great physical strength to achieve balletic ideals, while ‘in western culture, physical strength and femininity are believed to be incompatible. (…) Physical achievements are associated with masculinity.’ [33] As a consequence, ‘in ballet, the emphasis placed on technical prowess and virtuosity of the ballerina counteracts the stereotyped images of gender.’ [34] In balletic practices, through the challenge of executing difficult movements, ballerinas are encouraged to use the full capacities of their bodies and even to move beyond them. [35] Indeed, they do not consider their bodies as something fragile that they need to protect from pain, but instead ‘consider pain a part of their profession and often experience it as a positive feeling (push the body to its limits)’. [36] By challenging their bodies, ballerinas thus develop a strong sense of their bodily capacities.

Contrary to what might be expected, the presence of an audience, that can also objectify the dancer, does not weaken this sensation. As dance historian Alexandra Carter points out, this assumption derives from a one-sided perception of the audience. The public is not just passively receiving a visual image but is actively interacting with the ballet in a kinaesthetic manner. [37] The members of the audience are embodied subjects who experience the balletic art through their bodies. It tends not to escape the audience that balletic performances are physical challenges. Indeed, already in the nineteenth-century, newspaper articles demonstrated this awareness of the audience by reflecting on the hard training programmes of ballerinas that involved painful and difficult exercises. [38] Therefore, the audience’s presence does not stifle the dancer, but instead the ‘attendant hypnotic reflection [of the display of physical strength] in the audience suspend [the ballerinas] in a state of continuing power’. [39] In other words, the performance of their bodily expertise in front of such an audience can strengthen the dancers’ bodily sense of their strength and capability.

Experience of the bodily unity

Not only is the experience of the training practice different from what various dance scholars have suggested, but the performance of these exercises is also more complex. While scholars have argued that the objectification of the dancing body happens as ballerinas picture the ideal balletic body in their minds and view it in the mirror, in reality, the training experience is not only visual. This focus on the visual results from the researchers’ position as spectators and their tendency to limit their focus to the ballet class. In dance literature, there is a demarcation of dance spaces. Scholars either restrict their focus to the theatre or the ballet studio. Separating both balletic spaces is problematic as it simplifies the dancer’s experience of her body and space. Indeed, for dancers, the experience of the ballet studio and the theatre are closely linked. On stage, they remember what they have learnt in the studio and during the training, they anticipate their future performative experience. The latter means that during ballet practices, they work on their ‘stage presence’; [40] they imagine that there is an audience watching them and they try to limit their use of the mirror because on stage they need to feel whether their movements are right and are not able to check them in the mirror.

Nuancing the importance of the mirror, it becomes possible to illustrate that dancing bodies are not simply tools, but sites for full embodied experiences. Following this line of thought, ballet exercises should not be seen as practices that lead to the body’s objectification, but as opportunities for dancers to explore the workings of their bodies. [41] Inspired by phenomenological theory, Dorothée Legrand and Susanne Ravn explain that dancers not only consider whether their movements look right, but also contemplate whether they feel right. In this sense ‘what is perceived from within and from the external ideal body are constructed in a tandem where “each influences the development of the other”’. [42] In a similar line of thought, Jennifer Jackson rejects the idea that dancers engage in a thoughtless practice of drilling and instead argues that dancers have to be aware of their body parts, coordinate themselves, make choices and understand ‘the principles and qualities of movement’. [43] Indeed, through balletic practices, dancers are not simply using their bodies as instruments but explore how their bodies can inhabit specific movements.

Moreover, ballerinas’ bodies are not only sites to be explored, but they are also the perspective from which they experience the environment. Through dancing, the body becomes ‘a source of worthy experiences and possibilities’. [44] As Legrand and Ravn argue, dancers experience their surroundings through their movements. This is evident, firstly, in the way dancing shapes how ballerinas make use of the space around them. Dancers are thought to fully inhabit and make use of the physical space available to them. They need to be aware of the whole space around them, to be able to quickly move from here to yonder and, to be able to perform their movements to the fullest, they claim the space they are in by making big movements. Secondly, dancing offers ballerinas the opportunity to experience music through their bodies. As Legrand and Ravn explain, ‘dancers hear through their moving bodies more than through their ears’, as they feel/hear to which steps the music ‘refers’. [45] In these ways, dance does not simply offer ballerinas the experience of having a body but, as they develop a sense that they are connected to the world through their bodies, allows them to come to grips with the idea that they are their bodies.

This sense of bodily subjectivity becomes heightened when the dancers reach the point of bodily know-how. That is the point when they no longer have to think about how they can make their bodies move, but their bodies have become habituated. The dancers no longer have to fragment their bodies and focus on the workings of specific bodyparts but can experience their bodies as a unity. As Aalten claims, a fragmented instrumentalization of the body is only a first step, necessary to achieve the techniques through which dancers can experience ‘the moment when it all comes together’, i.e. the moment when dancers ‘exceed the discontinuity of body, mind and emotions’. [46] The dancers’ instrumental approach of their bodies is temporary and functional, it offers them the opportunity to develop physical skills that allow them a full embodied experience of themselves and the space they inhabit.

Conclusion

The phenomenological lens, when adequately applied, offers dance scholars a theoretical framework to interpret ballet as a potentially empowering practice for women. Dancing offers ballerinas the opportunity ‘to negotiate social ideology relating to female fragility and challenge the assumption that masterful or skilful behaviour is not for women’. [47] It allows them to make full use of their bodily capabilities, explore their bodies, develop physical skills that give them a sense of bodily unity and experience the environment they inhabit through their bodies.

It might seem that ballerinas would perfectly adhere to the restricted and frail embodied experience Young described as characteristic for objectified women. Indeed, as the literature suggests, ballerinas objectify their bodies in the training practices where they try to mould their bodies into ideal movements. However, I have argued that these balletic exercises do not distance the dancer from her body or limit her embodied experience. First, because the ballerinas do not experience these ideal movements as a straightjacket, but as a challenge, that offers them the opportunity to push their bodies’ limits and exercise great physical strength. Second, to learn specific movements the dancers cannot force themselves into an ideal body, but must instead explore how their bodies function and how it feels to dance these figures. Third, instead of being alienated from their bodies, ballerinas experience their surroundings corporally. In this way, dance does not simply offer ballerinas the experience of having a body but, as they develop a sense that they are connected to the world through their bodies, allows them to experience that they are their bodies. Fourth, this sense of bodily subjectivity becomes heightened when the dancers overcome the practice phase and achieve bodily know-how. These four embodied experiences show that for ballerinas dancing is a performance that offers them a sense of physical strength and skill, the bodily ‘I can’ and allows them to explore their bodies’ workings and engagement with the environment, the bodily ‘I am’.

In this paper, only the gendered dimension of ballet is taken into account. Further research should take up the questions of ethnicity and sexuality to inquire whether only particular privileged women become empowered in the balletic environment. Moreover, historical analysis is necessary to see whether there exists a long tradition of empowering experiences of ballerinas or that contextual changes, such as the emergence of the feminist waves, the emergence of new dance and theatre traditions or the integration of women in sports culture, have altered ballerinas’ embodied experiences.