In Missoula a star is born
Ah yes, trans ballet at last; just what we all needed.
Do check out the Missoula Gala Performance. The dancers do the moves and then he just hangs out, tiptoeing around a bit like a burglar looking for the exit. The dancers are on pointe and he’s not, yet he’s somehow the star. Sums up the whole ludicrous mess.
If the Montana ballet people kick him out then there’s always the opportunity to join the “Play that Goes Wrong” cast and try dancing there. He reminds me of the scene in Angela’s ashes where Frank tries to perform after having skipped all of the Irish Dance classes.
That is truly embarrassing. I feel bad for him. The whole performance looked like a comedy skit from the 1970/80s.
The fact that people go along with this and celebrate his participation I find to be patronising in the extreme. It is just like the X-Factor auditions, where some talentless nobody has been convinced by doting parents or prankster friends that they have a shot at the big time despite being tone deaf and, thus, set them up to embarrass themselves in public. But everyone else goes along with the lie, as if they don’t want to hurt his feelings. It is infantilising.
If that was me I would much rather someone told me right at the start that I was delusional and save me the notoriety.
[watches the first minute or so again] He doesn’t even do the gestures well. Watch him compared to the woman next to him. He just waves his hands around limply, there’s none of the crisp definition of the real dancer’s gesturing. He’s not even doing any damn work, just wandering around being clumsy and lazy while the women dance, and then he gets the applause. It’s the whole damn mess in a nutshell.
There seems to be a strong resemblance between how the general public (especially the women) treat TIMs & how they treat people with Downs Syndrome. They become protective and rather doting. Here are some good-natured folks struggling but doing their level best and my, aren’t they brave and wonderful and good for you, you did that justright. Why, I treat them like anyone else. Their winsome nature, longing to please and putting in all that extra effort, makes them a lot better than many so-called “ordinary” people with advantages.
It’s sort of like clapping and cheering at the Special Olympics. Yes, you want to be seen doing it and there’s that sense of satisfied virtue — but you do think them admirable. The dears.
Yet another example of how everything that embraces trans “rights” turns to shit. This is what happens when you take “Harrison Bergeron” as an instruction manual rather than a warning.
Imagine allowing someone as equally untalented into the cockpit of an airliner, or into an operating theater. I’m guessing any such “performance” in those venues would not generate very much applause. Ballet has a lower body count, but someone was deprived an opportunity by this act of “kindness,” and the women who are actually dancers (and actually women) have been compelled to treat this man as a star worthy of more praise and recognition than what should be due their own skill, dedication, and effort.
I suppose we’re meant to feel bad about ourselves if it makes us laugh.
That whole performance, those women and that audience coopted to make this bizarre troon feel better about himself while he shuffles and slips about. The dancing hippos in Fantasia did it better.
Trapped in the wrong body? If so, still trapped. And that body isn’t suited to be a ballerina.
It’s especially irritating that he’s not even any good. There are male ballet dancers, they are graceful and strong, but this man’s performance is neither. Even men mimicking the female ballet style can perform well; Ballet Trockadero, a drag comedy ballet group, parodies classical ballet but features people who are capable dancers, and they dance en pointe.
If you have a male body & want to be a ballet dancer, the guy in this is what to emulate.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JN8gkmIa6yA
Can’t believe this dude comes gallumphing onto the stage and everyone applauds. It really is like encouraging children or disabled people, look how hard they’re trying! I do think children, and in many cases disabled people, should be encouraged in this way, as they have the potential to excel if they have the confidence that putting in the work will lead to achievement and success, and I do love seeing kids getting out there and having a go at performance or art creation. The difference here, though, is that in this case, as youall have already pointed out, literally the whole performance is about making him feel precious and special. Because that’s all that matters, really.
@5 well yes, but important jobs like that won’t give these guys the ladyfeels so we’re probably safe.
@8 @9 Good point, it’s not as if it would be otherwise impossible for him to become genuinely skilled at ballet, plenty of men (or ‘people with male bodies’) do it well.
#10 guest, re potential to excel, a woman with the height and weight of Troony McTroonface up there would not have potential to excel as a ballerina.
Women well shorter than him are too tall to be hired by a traditional ballet company. Here’s a slender woman, 5’10.5″, who was fired from the Pennsylvania Ballet for being too tall.
https://www.dancemagazine.com/sara-michelle-murawski-too-tall/
I pity the poor fellow who tries to lift the lovely Sophie Rebecca.
But he’s succeeded in forcing his way into a troupe of ballerinas. Perhaps his choice to “be” a ballerina is because lias with princesses, only girls and women can become ballerinas. For a TiM, it’s a perfect pathway to “femininty”. The validation is apparently more important than the pursuit or development (however limited and half-hearted) of any actual skill and ability. And overrides any sense of self-awareness, apparently.
But this man’s validation is dependent upon others, and this is where the anger sets in. If this guy was happy to express himself in front of a mirror at home, or in a rented studio space, no problem. But he’s being inserted into a group of women with actual ability, and foisted on an audience. The women have earned their places; the man has been gifted his despite his manifest lack of ability. This is special treatment. Here we have a massive failure of the institutional gatekeepers of quality, skill, and talent, who have clearly lowered (or disposed of) the usually high bar for acceptance into a ballet troupe. Would they have done the same for a female student of such limited ability? No, otherwise the women on stage with this talentless man would have been just as bad. He’s being granted a position he’s not fit to hold. Not unless the women’s positions are also opened up to dancers as incompetent and graceless as he is. But that would not do. No, the women with actual ability are necessary to center and celebrate him. Never mind that their talent highlight his lack thereof, their self-abegnation plays a vital part in his validation as a “woman” and a “dancer.” We’re supposed to ignore this stark contrast and instead marvel at this man’s “bravery.” We’re supposed to lower our standards and applaud this company’s diversity hire. We’re supposed to submit to, and collude with this mediocre male’s narcissistic demands for affirmation and attention. Rather than being in on a joke, we are being made the victims of one, and paying for the privilege to boot. No, thank you.
(I’m guessing that this might be a little easier to do with a ballet company than an opera company. You can hide a sub-par dancer behind other dancers, and many audience members might not be well-versed enough in ballet to notice all the technical failures that our IT technician in a tutu is committing. If there are other, better dancers to watch, some eyes might be on them, missing the missteps of our wannabe dancer/wannabe woman. An opera singer unable to hit the high notes is heard by everyone. I’m thinking that aspiring TiM sopranos are going to be vetted and trained to a much higher standard than this “ballerina” has been. Still, there’s no knowing what follies might be indulged in in the name of Inclusivity.)
But how far will this fly amongst audiences that have not been primed to accept this clodhopper galumphing across the stage as some sort of triumph of the human spirit, rather than a disastrous lapse in quality control on the part of the ballet’s artistic directors and dance masters? As a publicity stunt, this is going to have a very limited shelf-life. Unless the troupe (re?)brands itself as the ballet equivalent of Special Olypics, most audience members outside woke/trans Twitter are unlikely to give repeat business to a company willing to lower its standards for purely political reasons. How much market is there for what amounts to a freak show? How long will the other dancers be willing to be bit players in a what has become a novelty act? I’ve seen old film footage of the staged collision of two steam locomotives in front of a large fairground audience. There’s probably still a market for spectacles like that, but who would want to be stuck on the train?
Sure, be diverse and welcoming, but don’t bend your own rules (or worse, apply them unequally and inconsistantly) to those you thrust in front of a paying customers. I would feel used and cheated if my presence in the audience was a part of some talentless hack’s need for validation. I’m supposed to be enjoying a skilled performance, not being unknowingly recruited to be a prop in some guy’s delusions of womanhood. I would be angered at any artistic group that stooped to do this to me and to their own reputation.
@10 exactly, I’d have it in my heart to support a kid trying her/his best, but not a grown ass man making a fool of himself while insulting all the women who have worked so hard on this skill, and the women who have been told they can’t participate in something they love because of their bodies.
Reminds me of the trans figure skater discussed here some weeks ago. Not as embarrassingly graceless, but still visibly the least graceful on stage. And yet, he’s the star because he has the ‘bravery’ to lie in plain view and claim womanhood and the employment position of a better woman.
And ballet is a particularly punishing, body-altering, painful form of performance, especially for the women. They literally always have various injuries that they have to ignore to work. Bozo clumping around flapping his hands has no clue.
Side note. I learned relatively recently, reading a memoir by a dancer, that Seattle’s own company, Pacific Northwest Ballet, is one of the best in the country. Silly me, I’d been assuming all these years it was just the local or regional company like many others. Makes it all the more fun that I often see dancers when I’m walking around at the bottom of the hill (where their stage is).
I have been a stage manager for 2 ballet companies, I’ve married a ballerina, and I would just love to see “her” complete a Jeté entrelacé.
Can’t even perform Piqué Tour.
Yeah!
I was a dancer, trained *a lot* – though I came to it much later than needed to properly dance ballet, I did pretty well at modern and real contact improv, and this performance is what the kids would call “cringe”. I just feel sad watching what is basically a fiasco.
Jeesus Christ almighty. What a graceless heffalump.
“We don’t wonder at how well the dancing bear dances, we wonder that it dances at all”
The original of my quote was a crack by a misogynist at women trying to do a “man’s” activity like literature.
However, as in the video I linked to above, there are talented male dancers, just as there are talented female writers.