Exposing Systemic Violence in the Dance World

Aïnhoa Jean-Calmettes

Over the course of several months, choreographer Lola Rudrauf and journalist Lola Bertet talked with dozens of professionals about violence in the dance sector, from subtle forms of domination to aggressive assault. Their six-episode podcast À corps perdus – featuring interviews with performers, choreographers, historians, psychologists, sociologists, and activists – speaks out about the urgent realities, and risks, of power abuse.

Why did you decide to tackle the issue of violence in the dance world through a podcast?

Lola Rudrauf: When Jan Fabre was convicted in a context when so few articles were coming out on the subject in France, it stirred up traumatic experiences from my past. [Editor’s note: in 2022, the Flemish choreographer was found guilty of “violence, harassment and sexual harassment in the workplace” by a Belgian court]. Talking it over with Lola, I realized that I’d always had to deal with some sort of violence throughout my career as a dancer, but that I’d internalized that as something that came with the territory.

Lola Bertet: These discussions inspired us to address these issues in depth, in serial form, to show that these are systemic forms of violence that concern the dance world as a whole. The podcast form allows more intimacy and emotion and lends itself particularly well to storytelling. But we didn’t want listeners to be able to say “that’s horrible, that’s really tough luck for the victims.” It was therefore necessary to combine a diversity of testimonies with analysis to give context, to unfold the mythologies on which this violence is based.

You start with the training of performers and then continue with the beginning of their careers. What did you opt for this chronological approach?

L. R.: In order for the reflexive dimension which we develop at the end of the series to be understandable, we needed to set out the framework from which everything stems: both the extent of this phenomenon and why it’s so difficult to get out of it. What are we talking about when we evoke this framework? We’re talking about children who are cut off from their families at a very early age and placed in schools where they spend their days alone with a single adult, the teacher. The relationship of domination between young people who can be preyed upon and an all-powerful adult is present from the outset... and it never really disappears. My teacher’s discourse carried more weight than my mother’s, and I had to follow her guidance blindly if I wanted to be able to dance on stage one day. It’s a very particular thing to grow up in such a context, and that explains why you’re not always aware of the limits of your body, why you don’t necessarily know what’s appropriate and what isn’t. Many of our interviewees knew that something was wrong, but they couldn’t name it for what it was: aggression, and even assault.

L. B.: Few people realize what it’s like to be a dancer. To be a performer with no fixed long-term contract is to be constantly subjected to the power of others. It means having to deal with precariousness and the notion that you have to put your heart and soul into your work because you’re “replaceable.” The pressure is so great that you come to accept things you shouldn’t. As dance is a profession one turns to because they’re passionate about it, the boundaries between what’s personal and what’s professional are constantly blurred, and being desired by a choreographer becomes not only natural, but even desirable. Obviously, this suits the abusers, who know exactly what they’re doing.

“Dance, as it is mostly taught and practiced, is a process of dispossession of one’s own body, making people extremely vulnerable”

You deal with many different forms of violence. How do they fit together?

L. R.: Each testimony sheds light on a different type of violence – physical, sexist, sexual, racist, etc. – and as the episodes unfold, we realize that they are all intertwined. They are articulated around the cliché of the dancer: white, able-bodied, light – in morals, body and intellect – and available. This sexualized, lanky, thin body – an ideal forged by Georges Balanchine, long legs, a small chest, no breasts whatsoever, a small butt and zero body hair – is a little girl’s body, not a woman’s body. We learn to hate our bodies when puberty comes, and we’re prepared to make any physical alterations to fit into the pre-adolescent mold and have the most neutral silhouette we can. As a performer, you have to be a blank sheet of paper, something the choreographer can project all their desires on. And since our body is our working tool, and we’re reduced to it, we don’t have the right to speak. This creates a real problem of legitimacy when it comes to speaking out.

L. B.: Dance lies at the crossroads of art and athleticism, which is what makes it so extraordinary, but also so porous to all kinds of violence. Dancers have to endure all the myths that revolve around the art world, starting with that of the choreographer-demiurge, the supreme creator who has every right to do whatever they want. Added to this are the injunctions to devotion and performance stemming from the sports world, which create disturbances in the way we perceive and conceive our pain threshold. When you’re a dancer, you spend your day in front of a mirror, dissecting your body under a microscope; you learn to ignore suffering, even to romanticize it, to tame your body through work, effort and starvation. Learning to dance means learning to live in a showcase-body, an image-body, and not really inhabiting your own body. Dance, as it is mostly taught and practiced, is a process of dispossession of one’s own body, making people extremely vulnerable. That is why it’s urgent to question the culture and practices of the dance world. In our latest episode, we hear from traumatized female dancers who are trying to foreground notions like care and consent. We have to fight, and they do, so that dance can question its own practices and remain something magical.

Aïnhoa Jean-Calmettes is a journalist specializing in cultural and opinion pieces. She was the editor in chief of Mouvement magazine from 2014 to 2023, and she still directs its “Leaving the 20^th century” and “After Nature” sections. She continues her investigations on the connections between contemporary creation and the humanities by writing critical pieces, analytical articles and investigations in the art world. She works with several cultural institutions and often chairs panels and meetings.

À corps perdus
Production: Lola Rudrauf and Lola Bertet
Slate Podcast

“Sexual assault in the dance world”
Mouvement magazine, 2019
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