Abstract
Reflecting back on her childhood dance training, McClam writes a letter to her ballet teacher, Miss M. As she remembers and interrogates her experiences as a younger ballet student, McClam addresses the ideals of beauty, femininity, and body image she learned under Miss M’s tutelage and examines the history of ballet with respect to race, gender, and body. The letter displays the process of articulating and unlearning the aesthetic of the ideal dancing body.
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McClam, N.Y. (2022). A Letter Re-Membering Ballet Class: My Young Black Self Writes Her White Ballet Teacher. In: Musil, P., Risner, D., Schupp, K. (eds) Dancing Across the Lifespan. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-82866-0_2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-82866-0_2
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