Ballet is a fairly traditional art and isn’t known for being diverse and inclusive. But that’s changing, and it’s amazing. Gaynor Minden pointe shoes come in more colors, Misty Copeland is the first female African American principal dancer for American Ballet Theater, and now Ballez.
Based in New York and created by Katy Pyle, ballez is blazing this new trail by aiming build the lineage of lesbian, queer and transgender people into ballet’s larger canon, according to an article on Vice. They added, “The company, now with ten regular dancers, deftly weaves social commentary into inventive retellings of ballet classics like the Firebird, where they explore a magically perverse landscape of polyamorous princes and their magical sorceress. Sleeping Beauty & The Beast, another Ballez production, melds the two fairy tales with 19th-century union organizing and 20th-century AIDS-advocacy storylines. Future endeavors include online instructional videos that would give more people access to queer- and trans-friendly ballet classes.”
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(Image via Teen Vogue)
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