There's been plenty of discussion of Simone Clarke's politics online, particularly on The Guardian's Comment is Free (Scroll past Tim Footman's introductory post). On the dance web there has been virtually nothing (the exception is John Percival's short comment on Dance View Times). This is surprising, to say the least, and reinforces the notion that dance exists in some sort of rarified space untainted by the realities of our wider public culture. It isn't just that such discussion would have been an opportunity for people to parade their consciences. There are aesthetic issues - to begin with, the straightforward question as to whether what we know about artists' private beliefs influences how we view their performances.
A ballerina's costume is iconically powerful. In her tutu and pointe shoes the dancer is suggestive of transformation, of fantasy, of perfect femininity. But the fusion in Clarke's case of ballerina-persona and far right-wing views might, be said to be a case of 'category crisis'.
This is a concept I came across in Tim Scholl's essay, Queer Performance: Male Ballet, a study of the Muzhskoi Ballet, a Russian equivalent of the Trocks (from whom they differ in that they dance the classics straight). Scholl drew on the Harvard academic Marjorie Garber's suggestion that one of the functions of the transvestite in culture is to indicate the blurring and collapsing of borderlines. Garber suggests that the unexpected emergence of male transvestism (in Scholl's case study, the collapse of the USSR) indicates a wider category crisis - an emerging faultline in society at large.
Simone Clarke confronts us with a different kind of category crisis. In her tutu, she represents vulnerability, ethereality, fantasy and aspiration. In her political choices she represents disruption, exclusion, and a fundamental challenge to the tolerant character of our society.
For my own part, I would find it extraordinarily difficult to watch Simone Clarke dance again in dissociation from her political beliefs.
There has been (and continues to be) an animated discussion of this issue on an earlier thread.
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2 comments:
Brendan: Putting aside the rights and wrongs of Ms Clarke's situation, however perceived, and adequately churned over elsewhere, it will be interesting to see to what extent yesterday's events in and out of the Coliseum move things into a new phase. The ENB Board has been playing a predictably staight bat on the issue thus far but if she, rather than the Company, becomes "the ENB story" in the media, at what point may the Board feel obliged to force the issue and invite her to spend more time with her family? We have seen plenty of rough parallels across Trafalgar Square in Whitehall in recent years.
Ian Macmillan
Ian - I think you're right. ENB is damaged by the publicity and the board must be feeling pressure from corporate donors. They have other calls on their sponsorship budgets and will not risk controversy, especially one with such potential to damage them commercially.
Ms C is in any case near the end of her career and it wouldn't be a surprise if she simply weren't cast for the rest of the year and then quietly let go.
I'm sad that this may damage her in her private life: it's hard to see the future demand for her services as a teacher/repetiteur in the light of all this. And although I hate her views, I don't want to see her lose her livelihood as a result.
I don't think ENB has handled this wonderfully well. There should have been damage limitation at the outset. She should have been warned not to give interviews, and then, perhaps, uncast for several months to let things blow over. But The Mail on Sunday interview destroyed any prospect of a quiet resolution.
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