Dance has become increasingly visible within contemporary culture: just think of reality TV shows featuring this art form. This shift brings the ballet body into renewed focus. Historically both celebrated and critiqued for its thin, flexible, and highly feminized aesthetic, the ballet body now takes on new and complex meanings at the intersections of performance art, popular culture, and fitness. The Evolving Feminine Ballet Body provides a local perspective to enrich the broader cultural narratives of ballet through historical, socio-cultural, political, and artistic lenses, redefining what many consider to be “high art.” Scholars in gender studies, folklore, popular culture, and cultural studies will be interested in this collection, as well as those involved in the dance world.

Contributors: Kelsie Acton, Marianne I. Clark, Kate Z. Davies, Lindsay Eales, Pirkko Markula, Carolyn Millar, Jodie Vandekerkhove

Pirkko Markula is a contemporary dancer and professor of socio-cultural studies of physical activity at the University of Alberta, Canada. Her research interests include social analyses of dance, exercise, and sport from poststructuralist feminist perspectives and performance ethnography. She is the co-author, with Michael Silk, of Qualitative Research for Physical Culture (Palgrave, 2011), co-author with Richard Pringle, of Foucault, Sport and Exercise: Power, Knowledge and Transforming the Self (Routledge, 2006), editor of Feminist Sport Studies: Sharing Joy, Sharing Pain (SUNY Press, 2005) and Olympic Women and the Media: International perspectives (Palgrave, 2009), co-editor of Women and Exercise: Body, Health and Consumerism (Routledge, 2011), co-editor of Critical Bodies: Representations, Identities and Practices of Weight and Body Management (Palgrave, 2007) and co-editor of Moving Writing: Crafting Movement in Sport Research (Peter Lang, 2003).

Pirkko Markula's profile page

Marianne I. Clark's profile page

• Winner, CHOICE Outstanding Academic Titles

"Editors and contributors examine perceptions of femininity through the magnifying lens of classical dance. They are not ballet critics; they number dancers, instructors and sociologists. Yet the conclusions are stark.... "The Evolving Feminine Ballet Body" is fresh and compelling." [Full article at https://www.blacklocks.ca/book-review-what-our-daughters-see/]

Blacklock's Reporter

“… for dance research coming from outside a dance studies context, the dance expertise of these authors grounds the work, giving it additional credence. … Here, ‘evolving’ refers to certain specific and contextual mediatizations and negotiations of this oft-celebrated and sometimes vilified ‘feminine ballet body’ in decidedly contemporary contexts.”

University of Toronto Quarterly, Summer 2020

"In this unique text, Markula and Clark have edited a collection of essays that explore the transformation of the ballet body alongside an inquiry into the history and meaning of ballet. In addition to being dancers themselves, the contributors are scholars from a range of backgrounds, including gender studies, occupational therapy, and kinesiology.... Of particular interest is the book's emphasis on the different ways ballet dancers experience their bodies.... A fascinating work." C. Hauff, CHOICE Magazine, November 2018

CHOICE Magazine