Nineteenth-Century Ballerinas on Fire: An Essay on Real Dangers and Metaphorical Incinerations

Abstract

Based on certain cases of female dancers' accidents that occurred in the mid-nineteenth century and are mentioned in the so-called history of western stage dance, this essay will try to reflect on what those accidents revealed. It will be argued that not only did these accidents invert the ideal image of the romantic neoclassical ballerinas by foregrounding their place as working women, but also that these accidents intensified, in the audience, the experience of the sublime. In this sense, we will also try to approach other dangers (political and/or moral) with which the profession was associated and which had as their center the bodies of these 19th century women who -literally or metaphorically- lived for (and died for) moving on stage.