The little baby class ballerinas: a discussion about gender through ballet

Dance has always been present in the history of humanity. Sacred dances, in their oldest form, have been present in diverse rituals. Ballet has appeared more recently, permeated with fantasy, romance and mysticism, influencing the aesthetic of the ballerina’s body and the construction of the image of the ballerina’s figure. As a result, the body plays a central role in dance, be it for the study and analysis of movement, for the beauty of dance or for the ideal of the weightlessness and beauty that it represents. The purpose of this article is to outline the body’s production in teaching baby class, while this body is crossed by binary grammar of gender in the constitution of territories/female and male practices. This text presents the emergence of dance and ballet, from classical to contemporary, in which the construction of gender makes itself present. Although present-day classical ballet is labeled as a typically feminine dance and the majority of performers are female, it has not always been this way. Even today, in the 21st century, there is still much prejudice that is continuously reinforced and naturalized, helping to maintain these conservative thoughts