BALLET’S EVER-PRESENT PRESENCE

This chapter tracks ballet’s cultural capital, surveying its colonial roots and the maneuvers that distinguish and elevate the “classical arts.” Scholar Thomas F. DeFrantz grapples with tensions between the art form’s sustainability as a profession and its treatment of students and professionals who identify as Black, Brown, queer, trans, and female. The chapter concludes with proposals for ballet dancers, educators, and publics that are paths toward an intentionally inclusive and capacious future, one that reconfigures how ballet can feel now, and how it can feed a necessary human desire for fantasy.