Special Topics: Ballet Culture: Pleasure and Pain

Special Topics: Ballet Culture: Pleasure and Pain

By Raven Crosby, Emory Dance Program Office Assistant

Note: Mara Mandradjieff’s quotes have been incorporated into this story and have been edited for length and clarity.

As spring 2020 registration quickly approaches, if you are a student looking for an interdisciplinary, discussion-based course that combines dance and film, then look no further, “Ballet Culture: Pleasure and Pain,” taught by dance professor Mara Mandradjieff, might be the course for you.

Mandradjieff first discovered the relationship between film and dance at an early age, when her ballet teachers encouraged her to watch ballet-centered films, such as The Red Shoes, Children of Theatre Street, The Turning Point, and White Nights. She also recalled trying to sneak on set with a friend to be a part of the filming of Center Stage. During her undergraduate education, Mandradjieff began to research the connection between dance and film. This research was developed further once she read Adrienne McLean’s Dying Swans and Madmen: Ballet, the Body, and Narrative Cinema. This text from McLean, a graduate of Emory’s Film and Media Ph.D. Program, led Mandradjieff to create her first scholarly journal article on The Red Shoes in 2016. 

Mandradjieff’s course “Ballet Culture: Pleasure and Pain,” strives to depict the emotions of pleasure and pain not as binary opposites, but instead considers ways the two sensations may intersect. This continuing writing course encourages students to refine their critical analysis skills and gain confidence in their own voices and ideas. Some of the many topics discussed in this course include the body (looking at eating disorders, gender, and sexuality), film theory, pointe shoes, and probably most surprising, BDSM, which all can be seen in ballet films and ballet itself. 

Mandradjieff says that “Ballet Culture: Pleasure and Pain,” was inspired by the way media portrays ballet culture, and subsequently, how ballet students (and the public at large) absorb and reconstitute these constructed images. As a result of this, Mandradjieff designed and created this course in order to engage students with these ideas and further her own research into the topic, which she hopes to turn into a future book.