Art: Objecting Objectivity
What is Art? Is it love? Is it passion? Or in the words of Starr Thomas, a non-binary theatre and art student, who finds worlds of change to unearth within the gender roles of ballet, is it encapsulating a “routine”, where everyone has to, “look the same and act the same”?
In its innate sense, the only definition of art is in definition. Controlling and whittling at its abstract essence, is to convulse its purpose.
It isn’t news to speak of artistic elements like ballet and literature being caged into a criterion or a predetermined angle at odds with the mindset of artists, who create to express, not to earn a papery degree that’s opaque nature betrays the transparency of art and the artist. But wishing with currents enough to actualize will isn’t enough in today’s age where the bar of being is seen to be standardized assessments, and controlled environments- be this for physical appearance or even evaluative wiring.
Such as within fundamental art forms like Ballet.
What do we know about ballet? The renowned dance form has been passed down through generations like humanity’s most treasured heirloom. Poised to a pointe, a ballet dancer possesses all the elegance and perfection we can only hope to embody in some alternate universe. If you were to be seated amongst ballet’s gold-plated stages and velvet curtains, you’d perceive the dance to be a dreamy gauze over reality.
Escapism at its finest? Pivotal poetry narrated through the delicacy of passion? In truth, these ideals are what should be intertwined into ballet’s finesse. But what should be, isn’t always what is.
While in all idealization, we imagine that love and devotion are taught as necessities to all students, you’d have a greater chance of witnessing it in a physics class rather than at a ballet studio. And if you were to take a peek behind the velveteen daydreams, instead of passion, you’d see emotional purgatory.
While in conversation with Starr Thomas, they delve into a heart-wrenching descriptive about the resounding impact of a ballet studio’s self-shattering environment. “Having to look at the mirror every day led to all these doubts, causing so many to wound up with eating disorders. The strictness and aesthetic are definitely responsible for that.”
These unraveling ideals inflict a horde of questions upon the viewer, our thoughts consumed by the conflict between ballet as passion and ballet as a partition. The obsessive desire to create the pinnacle of an aesthetic is so deep-rooted within ballet’s corruptive culture, that it subconsciously eliminates all facets of individuality. And what is any form of art if not an adaption of the artist? If every piece of art were to be a mechanical replica of the previous, we wouldn’t call it art. We’d call it a factory line!
On that note, let's talk about gender roles as an extension of Ballet’s scripture-like strictness. Have you ever witnessed the intimacy of a sapphic ballet? Or have you ever felt your identity’s allure conveyed with riveting transparency on an acclaimed stage?
Chances are you haven’t. The reason isn’t a lackluster will to propose change amongst dancers. It’s the cis-gender heteronormative origins of ballet roles- With women on pointe, and men carrying forth the lifts, breaking through the barrier of an embossed norm finds itself in a distant daydream, intangible to most.
As professed by Starr-Thomas, “There was a time and place where art was done by a certain people and now it’s not and I think it should be moving further and further away from that as possible.” In fact, during ballet’s beginning years, men predominantly performed female roles. Despite so, over the years, this ethereal tinge of fluidity has lost itself to a balletic community that ingrains ballet as correlative to romanticized femineity.
These confines against humanity have resulted in young dancers scouring the internet for sightings of ‘Swan Lake’ with Baryshnikov as the swan, or unseen ballets starring the tale of two Juliets instead of the worn-out one. What they find isn’t an expected revolution, but a void of chronic definitions and conventions.
If we stop to see ballet as an entity unaffected by a disparity on account of time and thoughtlessness, the problem is non-existent. That’s because, "The problem isn’t necessarily the ballet. I think it’s the way it's taught.” The problem is the people.
This armed objectivity isn’t only present in ballet, but dismally, makes its systemic death evident in every sect of art.
“You just can’t read Shakespeare!”, Starr Thomas exclaims in exasperation. A young student rifling through the roughened parchment paper of Romeo and Juliet, reading it instead of acting it, is probably the most sacrilegious infliction on literature and its prowess. So why is it taught in such bland undertones?
To create objectivity.
We study Shakespeare's tone, intent, and context on the same SparkNotes site, and the same study guide. Have you ever paused the mirage of endless memorization to wonder how mesmerizing it would be to play the story out for a change?
The education system would be in ruins.
Have you ever paused to think of the hypnotic beauty of making his story our story? Barraged and crippled, all hell would break loose if we were to find our own tone instead of blindly drugging our senses with the safety net of school-provided answers. What would happen if we pressed pause on learning the structure of a poem? Or learning the criticism of a piece meant to be felt not forsaken for analysis?
Literature is lived not learned.
But you can’t live what you can’t mirror against your own life. And much to the despair of a dead-weight education system, doing so would weaken the criteria bleeding through their robotic veins. So many believe what those like starry-eyed Starr-Thomas relay in their recent interview with Attic. “The schools just don’t understand Arts enough to teach it. Art is subjective. How can you give someone a grade on something subjective?”
You can’t.
If someone writes off Atonement as a foolishly tied-together thematic of ‘reverting to the beginning’, or calculative validation of misjudgment, and addictive escapism, what makes you say they can be sorted into right or wrong? What makes you say anything at all?
In the words of Starr-Thomas, “I think it's really unfair to have one sweeping rule that applies to absolutely everyone.” It just doesn’t make sense! “You grow up saying, everyone should be treated the same. Being told that’s the correct thing. But it’s really not.” If you’re being
burnished in scalding hot complaints and ‘failures’, because someone somewhere doesn’t align themselves with your thoughts because they’re too, ‘distinctive’, the fault lies in their blocked our perspective, not your notions.
“Art is about trying to invite people into your experiences”.
Were we to accept standardization, creation and curated experiences would be a thing of the past. So how do you escape the byzantine walls of Art’s enemy?
First, identify the opposer- Objectivity.
Secondly, find the truth to all Art- Subjectivity.
So, what does the ideal artistic environment look like- be it ballet or literature, or the fine arts?
My piquing curiosity surrounding the particular question led me to ask Starr-Thomas what a school they created would look like. To which they answered with, “Definitely be catered to the individual. I dislike the premise of treating every student the same. My school would be focused on teaching students to utilize what they love and harnessing that passion.” While it seems like there is little we can do to evolve a phenomenon so defined, the simplistic act of standing up for yourself against the blight of beauty standards, academic failures, and non inclusive spectacles are more than enough to suffice the suffrage wrought of a noxious objectivity.
Art is what you make of it.
It isn’t the perfect pirouette, a male and female dancer’s blossoming on-stage romance, the toned thighs, or the perfect grade.
By definition, art is in definition.
a story excerpt from the perspective of a struggling dancer.
The mirrors are mirroring me- me draped in my blue bruises and agonizing allure. My depth is gauged by its ability to perform existence with unflinching ease and flawless
‘failure’- In that, the footsteps of my fallacies must sound like an intentful remake of humanity, not the Genuity of collapse accounting to being a visceral subject of madness and melancholy.
When my reflections lock in on my pink perfection, I have something to prove.
Something to prove to all the masquerading versions of myself- the versions I could pick apart in a crowd of millions, and the versions I wouldn’t recognize even without their mass-bought matte.
A snide giggle draws my attention to a version of me that protrudes out of the mirror. They slink forward and I furrow my eyebrows, wholly confused by a critical eye I don’t remember hearing before now. “Your waist needs to be slimmer”, they whisper, digging their polished nails into me flesh and faculty. I tilt my head slightly, looking at myself again. “You don’t look like the other dancers”, they say stand-offishly, flicking me off for some other ingenue I didn’t notice before now.
More Toned.
More Graceful.
More independent of free thought.
More agreeable.
More more.
As I stare at them, completely awe-struck and bewildered by such untouched perfection, a version of me caged behind an out-of-control rigidity screams for me desperately. I whip around, heart in my throat. My eyes graze theirs, and for a few moments, my blood burns against its walls.
They’re beautiful.
Less Toned, but more thoughtful.
Just as graceful, but also graced with curves and callouses.
Not as agreeable, but composed of incomparable passion.
My crippled toes race toward them and in that very instant the studio’s vinyl floors below me disappear with a crack and a cry for help that goes unheard.
I silently slip into the black oblivion, encapsulated by nothing but the missing mysticism of my purloined passion.
Darkness engulfs.
It’s only a one- way road from here. A road overflowing with bleeding ballerinas, torn apart tongues, and broken backs.
A road overflowing with
me.
By Tanya Tilokani, editorial intern at the attic diaries + featuring Starr Thomas, friend to the attic diaries.