Again, Why Is There So Much Rape And Violence Against Women In Ballet Lately?

Six months ago, critic Siobhan Burke raised the issue in The New York Times. Now, in Britain’s The Observer, Luke Jennings writes, “In the last few seasons the Royal Ballet stage has seen record numbers of female characters brutalised and killed. … Consider this body-count alongside the number of recent abstract works in which women are split, splayed and otherwise manhandled, and certain embedded attitudes reveal themselves. None of these works, in which female characters are defined by their passivity and victimhood, was created by a woman.”