05 Thomas (JB/K) 19/9/01 11:46 am Page 103

Ballet and the Anthropology of Dance

HELEN THOMAS

Ballet across Borders: Career and Culture in the World of Dancers

by Helena Wulff
Oxford and New York: Berg Publishers, 1998

Ballet across Borders situates itself in relation to the tradition of anthropology and
dance studies and, in so doing, draws on recent anthropological concerns with
‘writing culture’, and developments in dance studies that seek to demonstrate the
importance of dance as a form of (experiential) bodily knowledge within cultural
contexts. Wulff’s study is based on an ethnography of three major national classi-
cal ballet companies – the Royal Swedish Ballet in Stockholm; the Royal Ballet in
London, the American Ballet Theatre in New York – and the contemporary ballet
company directed by the choreographer Willie Forsythe, Ballett Frankfurt based
in Frankfurt-am-Main. Wulff considers that her study differs from dance studies
in general and the anthropology of dance in that her major focus is centred on the
‘culture and social organization of these companies’ (p. 18), rather than the
performance of movement or dance analysis. However, I would argue that the
very best studies in dance anthropology are richer because they do attend to both
social context and the movement, revealing how the one informs the other and
vice versa (see, for example, Ness, 1992; Savigliano, 1995). Wulff points out that
dance studies tend to prioritize Western theatrical dance, while the anthropology
of dance has traditionally focused on non-Western dance forms. To some extent,
although she is perhaps not aware of it, Wulff is following in the footsteps of the
pioneering dance ethnologist Joanne Kaeliinohomoku who, in the 1970s, argued
that ballet should be treated as an ethnic form of dance (1983: 533–49). Several
other dance scholars in recent years have also sought to analyze Western dance

Body & Society © 2001 SAGE Publications (London, Thousand Oaks and New Delhi),
Vol. 7(1): 103–107
[1357–034X(200103)7:1;103–107;020182]
05 Thomas (JB/K) 19/9/01 11:46 am Page 104

104  Body and Society Vol. 7 No. 1

from an anthropological perspective (see, for example, Novack, 1990; Buckland,

1999). While dance studies, for the most part, tend to be ‘about dance’, Wulff
stresses that her study is ‘an ethnography of dancers in terms of the course and
culture of ballet careers from ballet school to professional company’ (p. 17). Thus
there is not much detailed attention given to the moving body in time and space.
Wulff’s focus on the career patterns of dancers and the socio-dynamics of the
group is reminiscent of Edith Cope’s interactionist study of Scottish Ballet’s
Moveable Workshop (Cope, 1979). However, by drawing on the insights of
theories of globalization networks, Wulff is concerned to link the local (national)
manifestations of the ballet companies, their traditions, career patterns, etc., to
what she considers is the increasingly ‘transnational web of encounters, and
communications’ (p. 18) that the dancers inhabit.
In Chapter 1 Wulff sets out the rationale for doing the study and the backdrop
for the analysis of the various ballet companies. In common with much recent
ethnographic work conducted in the name of reflexivity, Wulff situates the study
in the context of her own memories of growing up in a world of classical ballet.
At the age of 17, after many years of rigorous training and performing, she had to
give up dancing because of a serious injury. Wulff turned her back on dancing and
instead pursued training to become an anthropologist. It was only when she
decided to embark on a study of dancers that she was put in touch with that part
of her (dancing) ‘self’ that she had pushed to one side. Just as studying the dancers
enabled her to tap into a forgotten but very familiar aspect of herself, so Wulff
points to two major advantages from a professional anthropological point of view
to her having been trained as a dancer; the first is that it enabled her to have some
cultural capital with the dancers she was observing, and the second that she could
empathize with the highs and lows of being a dancer through the appeal of a kind
of kinaesthetic memory. While I have little doubt that some bodily knowledge
and awareness of the culture of ballet can be of value in conducting research of
this kind, it is by no means a necessary pre-condition. This is a myth (one of
several) that has found a foothold in the fragile and marginalized world of dance
scholarship that, in many ways, has been used to legitimate the area of study. But
it is a double-edged sword and it is useful to remind ourselves, following the
interpretive framework of Max Weber, that experience does not always equate
with understanding.
In Chapter 2, Wulff sets out the theoretical framework for her discussion of
the transnational ballet work which she believes ‘will illuminate the ethnography’
(p. 29). Her construct of the transnational ballet world is borrowed from Howard
Becker’s work on contemporary art worlds (1984). The idea of dance and dancers
traversing national boundaries is not new and Wulff is aware of this. For example,
05 Thomas (JB/K) 19/9/01 11:46 am Page 105

Anthropology of Dance  105

throughout the history of ballet, dancing masters have moved from country to
country to teach their craft. In the 19th century, during the romantic period of
ballet, there was a large influx of first French and later Italian dancers and teachers
to America (see Kendall, 1979). In the early 20th century Diaghilev brought his
company of Russian ballet dancers and choreographers to Europe and the rest, so
to speak, is history (for an exemplary study of the impact of this company see,
Garafola, 1989). The analysis would have benefited from offering an explanation
of the differences and similarities between the contemporary transnationalism
that is at the centre of Wulff’s argument and the earlier forms. This would have
given the book a much stronger comparative historical dimension. This chapter
also draws on Pierre Bourdieu’s construct of ‘cultural capital’ (Bourdieu, 1993) to
demonstrate how the dancers, who, according to Wulff, are mostly from the
working classes or lower middle classes, are inculcated with the vocabulary,
manners and taste that surrounds the ‘high culture’ of ballet. Wulff’s claims about
the class origins/positions of the dancers, however, are based on anecdotal
evidence and experience, and I would suggest that a more rigorous approach is
required in order that these claims may be substantiated.
The career of the dancer is the focus of Chapter 3. Wulff offers a comparative
account of the training and ethos of the national ballet schools in question in the
context of transnationalism, and the chapter is appropriately called ‘Work as a
Vocation’. Here Wulff provides us with a glimpse of the dedication, agency,
competition and camaraderie that are part and parcel of ballet culture of these
dancers. Given that dance is a non-verbal activity and the teachers in general are
too old (or infirm) to demonstrate the steps, Wulff also seeks to explore ‘the social
nature of learning’. The culture of ballet gets taken up further in Chapter 4 where
there is a very interesting section on ballet decorum and manners, discipline and
company loyalty. Although this chapter offers some interesting movement obser-
vations on these issues, Wulff also makes some unfounded assumptions about the
superior qualities of dancers’ non-verbal reading skills in everyday life, as
compared with the rest of the population that I think weaken her case. Just
because dancers inhabit a world in which movement takes precedence, it does not
necessarily follow that they are skilled in analysing it in the communicative flow
of everyday life. A brief glance at Erving Goffman’s vivid ethnographic analysis
in Relations in Public (1973) demonstrates just how skilled ‘ordinary’ mortals are
at reading non-verbal cues and rules for appropriate bodily behaviour in public
places. While Wulff is seeking to offer a positive payoff for dancing in the context
of everyday life, this can also be a double-edged sword. It could be used to
confirm the notion inherent in much former dance scholarship and in common-
sense perceptions, that dancers’ brains reside in their bodies, not in their heads
05 Thomas (JB/K) 19/9/01 11:46 am Page 106

106  Body and Society Vol. 7 No. 1

and that, as a result, their level of verbal articulation (rationalization) is somewhat

lacking (see Thomas, 1995 on this issue). Elsewhere in the book Wulff is at pains
to point out the redundancy of the proposition that maintains that because
dancers are highly skilled in bodily practices, they are wanting on the intelligence
front.
The processes of producing ballet performances constitute the subject matter
of Chapter 5. For Wulff, performances are created and produced ‘through the
management of different perspectives and their frames by a number of agents
occupying different positions in the ballet world’ (p. 117). The discussion of the
overlapping frames and viewpoints that combine to produce the ballet works are
based on observations of backstage ethnography, performances seen from the
auditorium, a view from the wings, the dance critics who also operate in a trans-
national network, and the dancers’ view of creating and performing ballets. The
final chapter seeks to pull together the ‘transnational connectivity of the ballet
world’ (p. 146) through a consideration of the touring culture of the companies
in question and the dancers in the companies. As technology becomes more
important (perhaps here is a key to the differences between historical ballet trans-
nationalism and the contemporary transnationalism that is the focus of the study),
Wulff sets out to consider how the dancers ‘communicate by means of media and
technology across long distances’ (p. 146). Ballet notation scores (usually in the
Benesh system) and videos of dances are also part of this transnational network
as ‘they are sent around between different companies and countries’ (p. 146).
Because of the increasing importance of the use of videos and computers in
contemporary ballet companies, the ethnographic case study that Wulff draws on
in this chapter is from the making of Ballett Frankfurt’s technological ballet,
Sleeping Guts (1996).
Wulff’s ethnographic mapping of the career pathways and culture of dancers
in the transnational ballet companies points to a series of tensions and shifts
between traditional and change, local and global, and centre and periphery.
Despite the movement of dancers across and between national companies and the
touring of national companies abroad, there are differences in national style,
employment laws and systems of funding at the local level that sustain hetero-
geneity in the face of an increasing transnational ballet culture. At the same time,
companies are becoming more ethnically and stylistically mixed as dancers shift
across national and artistic borders although it should be noted that you will
seldom see a black swan in the corps de ballet of the major national classical
companies, or in leading roles. The reluctance to hire black dancers in ballet
companies has been rectified to some small extent in the US and in contemporary
dance transnationally. Wulff is rather optimistic that it is ‘bound to change with
05 Thomas (JB/K) 19/9/01 11:46 am Page 107

Anthropology of Dance  107

time’ (p. 164) in the national ballet companies in Europe, while at the same time
noting that the traditional hierarchical structure of ballet companies which is a
constitutive feature of ‘reproduction of cultural power’ (p. 164) is largely still
intact. Despite criticisms from within the world of ballet itself, it remains
‘supported by an ideology of exclusion’ (p. 164).
Wulff’s study has considerable potential in its topic and empirical focus but I
think it tries to cover too much ground in a very short space – it is only 167 pages
long, including footnotes. This results in the author making a number of unqual-
ified claims or assertions that require testing or explaining in a more rigorous and
substantial fashion. This means that the level of argumentation is not worked
through enough, at least for this reader. Part of the problem, I think, is that it relies
on a weak sense of reflexivity which results in the discussion being overly descrip-
tive, as opposed to being constructed on the basis of an analytic. Having said this,
I would imagine that Chapters 3 and 4 would be the most interesting for Body &
Society readers, as they do contain good discussions of the ballet dancer’s
‘habitus’, ballet etiquette and the regime of training involved, and the dance
injuries that ensue that can have profound consequences to the ‘(dance) work as
a vocation’, as Wulff knows only too well.

References
Becker, H. (1984) Art Worlds. Berkeley, University of California Press.
Bourdieu, P. (1993) The Field of Cultural Production. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Buckland, T. (ed.) (1999) Dance in the Field. London: Macmillan.
Cope, E. (1979) Performances: Dynamics of a Dance Group. London: Lepus Books.
Garafola, L. (1989) Diaghilev’s Ballet Russes. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Goffman, E. (1973) Relations in Public. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books.
Kendall, E. (1979) Where She Danced. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.
Kaeliinohomoku, J. (1983) ‘An Anthropologist looks at Ballet as a Form of Ethnic Dance’ in R.
Copeland and M. Cohen (eds) What is Dance? Oxford: Oxford University Press
Ness, S.A. (1992) Body, Movement and Culture: Kinaesthetic and Visual Symbolism in a Philippine
Community. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
Novack, C.J. (1990) Sharing the Dance: Contact Improvisation and American Culture. Madison:
University of Wisconsin Press.
Savigliano, M.E. (1995) Tango and the Political Economy of Passion. Boulder, CO: Westview Press.
Thomas, H. (1995) Modernity and Culture: Formulations in the Sociology of Dance. London:
Routledge.