Crossing Borders - Between Tutu and Tattoo

High Culture Bias against Pop Culture Identity

 

When author and commentator StevenBayley looked at Sergei Polunin he saw a ballerino with a double life and “jailhouse tatts”, insisting the body art was the mark of a disturbed youth with an inclination towards self-harm and rebellion. Most articles about Polunin and his sudden very public defection from the Royal Ballet express the same kind of shock and sorrow. They hit the same reverent tone paying homage to an exceptional artist. He did not die. In fact, he did not even quit ballet. He just left London, moving on to new pastures. After the inevitable realisation that they are not supposed to write an obituary for the 22-year old dancer who is still very much alive, come the relatively generic descriptions of his career, his exceptional talent and his fall into a drug and alcohol induced darkness, followed by the speculations about his reasons for quitting his golden career. Obviously, his age played a role, as did the rigid discipline and the cutthroat backstabbing as well as the behind-the-scenes rivalry and of course the all time favourite that artists by nature are eccentric. Thus, media portraits turn him into a flighty stereotype of a volatile industry, tortured by his own demons rather than a person, implying that he was too young to gauge the consequences of his actions, too fragile to cope with the demands of the ballet world in London and too unstable to know his own mind let alone be his own person.

His high praised mastery of classic technique and stagecraft does not go conform with the reputation as the tattooed ballet rebel. High Culture simply doesn’t mix with the cliché-look of pop culture gang bangers or its sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll image. It is offensive to the delicate sensibilities of theatre audiences, ballet goers and Beethoven fans to see ink portraits etched permanently into the skin of a prodigious talent like Covent Garden’s youngest-ever male principal dancer. Polunin’s torso is littered with images of pop culture heroes like Heath Ledger or James Dean, random quotes and symbols which makes him look more like Johnny Depp than the typical ballet dancer – the fragile almost androgynous creature that doesn’t eat, a beautiful porcelain doll who stays out of the sun for fear, permanent body changes would ruin his chances at the next audition. Especially within the elitist prima ballerina circles, where culture is spelled with a capital C, tattoos, despite being part of the global mainstream fashion, are associated with stereotypes inherited from 19^th and 20^th century social and cultural attitudes towards criminal subcultures especially the mafia in Russia and Japan, racism and folklore. Does a tattoo, the mark of a trivial, sensationalist and consumerist mainstream culture, really change anything about the sensuality of his dramatic gestures, the silky aestheticism of his fluid movements and the electrifying urgency of his seemingly effortless domination of the stage? Does pop culture influence denigrate the cultural and social value of what is depicted on stage and even on screen? Or is it maybe even possible that the combination of different forms of individual and cultural expression create new and innovative sites of criss-crossing discourses, thus forcing the spectator to participate in this critical dialogue by questioning not only mediated regimes of truth but also personal categories and values?

Watching Natalie Portman pirouette across the centre stage in Darren Aronofsky’s 2010 filmic homage to Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake brought the darker sides of the ballet world into the limelight and the mainstream consciousness of the movie goers. Through the mass medium film, ballet draws different spectators into the theatres, making the high culture entertainment more accessible to a broader audience. The post-modern adaptation thematises implicitly the conflicting discourses about high culture and its so-called mass-culture leftover product pop culture. Thus, dance becomes not only an expression of the individual artist but also, in a broader societal context, a means of cultural criticism. Movies like Save the last Dance or Billy Elliot deal with social issues like racism and the media production of gender roles as well as the performativity of male and female categories in connection with ballet and homosexuality.

If we accept the dance itself as an expression of the inner workings of its interpreter on a professional level, why is it so difficult to acknowledge Polunin’s body art as part of that expression on a more personal level? In the end the tattoo, the jewellery we wear, the way we dress and talk and present ourselves on facebook are just everyday-life performative acts. It is the spectator’s responsibility to decode the message behind the Gucci sunglasses, the posh British accent in Harlem or the tattoo on a male dancers body as a distinguishing feature in our quest for individuality. Maybe it is a mark of non-conformity that needs to be viewed dispassionately outside of societal, professional or personal stereotypes as an expression of self. As such it becomes the visualization of the fundamental rejection of the essentialist cultural tendency to compare and categorize. 

 For further reading -

1. Article in The Telegraph:  Levene, Louise. 2012. "Sergei Polunin: The ballet cheek of it".
2. Ballet News. "Ballet dancer Sergei Polunin. A Man in Motion".
3. Article in The Guardian: Needham, Alex. 2012. "Sergei Polunin. I'll give up ballet by 26".
4. Brownell, Ginanne. 2012. "Sergei Polunin and the Mispronunciation."