Let's talk about sex appeal : seducing the dance audiences at the turn of the century : Anna Pavlova and the 'Ballets russes'

Abstract

How can one be seduced by the dancer on stage? How does a dancer manage to capture the imagination of his/her audiences and keep them coming back for more? How is a dancer able to create a fanatic following? Can one separate the dancer from the dance? These are the questions that lie behind the focus of the following paper, whose aim is to pin down the notion of sex appeal within ballet. Moving away from the way the term is used in today's popular culture, 'sex appeal' refers to the way something, in this case, ballet, excites and engages an audience. Through an analysis of the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth century ballet scene in Europe, the following is proposed: that the sex appeal lies in the interaction between what is being performed, how it is performed and why it is performed, in relation to how it is received and read. In other words, the said appeal of a dancer lies in the in-between. For this reason the audience/spectator relationship becomes a main part of the discourse and is discussed in terms of two great figures in ballet's history: Anna Pavlova and Vaslav Nijinsky.