Nation, modernism, gender and the cultural politics of ballet

This dissertation examines how ballet was embraced once again by French culture by highlighting some of the cultural factors that enabled ballet to regain its position as a "primary cultural institution" in France. Among the performing arts, ballet gained a position of cultural and institutional importance in the last century. Yet, the ballet continues to remain marginal to historical scholarship on culture and society. This dissertation seeks to present the resurrection of ballet as historically important and as a distinctive lens through which French modernism, nationalism and gender identity may be understood. It demonstrates that developments in ballet were part of a broader cultural, artistic and political history of early twentieth-century France. It explores how ballet's reputation developed among the arts and why its popularity increased dramatically between 1909 and 1938.;This study examines ballet's revival in the early twentieth century within the context of three themes: nationalism, modern aesthetics, and gender. It illustrates the ways in which critics writing for Parisian newspapers and journals perceived and shaped a certain image of ballet and how their criticism reflects the ways in which contemporary attitudes concerning class, nation, race, the body, sexuality, politics and gender operated to define ballet's reputation as an art. By way of a new modern aesthetic of dance, the French were able to articulate a distinct national and modern identity for themselves. This process of developing such a French aesthetic of dance is complex and multifaceted; resulting in a combination of factors such as the exposure to new forms of dance; a growing critical dialogue and debate on dance; a physical culture movement; nationalist fervor; transformations in French aesthetics, and the search for a modern identity. Each chapter opens a window on to how dance criticism engaged within broader dialogues concerning nationalism, modernism, aesthetics, and gender ideology. The dissertation offers a new perspective into the impact of the Ballets Russes and how the arts are politicized.