Katy Pyle’s latest piece for Ballez explores “Coppélia”’s history as a travesty ballet and features an entirely trans and nonbinary cast.

This month, festivals are unfolding in the Bay Area and thought-provoking premieres are making their debuts in New York City—and it’s all available to watch online. Meanwhile, across the pond, a show that got its start as a livestreamed event is being adapted for live, in-person audiences. Here’s what we have our eye on. Drawing […]

Many techniques, especially older ones like ballet and bharatanatyam, segregate movement into gender-based categories. It’s of little surprise, then, how many schools struggle to welcome dancers who are nonbinary, transgender, gender-fluid, gender-nonconforming or still discovering their gender identities. It gets even more complicated when you factor in how early many start training. While creative people […]

Last week, Arthur Pita’s much-anticipated The Tenant, featuring American Ballet Theatre principal James Whiteside, had its New York City premiere at The Joyce Theater. Based on the novel by Roland Topor and the 1976 Roman Polanski film, The Tenant follows a man who moves into an apartment that’s haunted by its previous occupant (Simone, played […]

During a period when I was intentionally taking a step back from performing, I was especially sensitive to the question, “So, are you auditioning for things?” Besides the insecurity of being a freelancer not hustling in that way, I also rankled at the complexity of what it means for a non-binary performer to audition. To […]

A flock of polyamorous princes, a chorus of queer dying swans, a dominatrix witch: These are a few of the characters that populate the works of Katy Pyle, who, with her Brooklyn-based company Ballez, has been uprooting ballet’s gender conventions since 2011. Historically, ballet has not allowed for the expression of lesbian, transgender or gender-nonconforming […]

I’m a transgender ballet dancer (male to female) who desperately wants to perform in a professional company. I haven’t come out about my gender because I’m afraid it will hurt my career. Yet it feels wrong to do male variations and have my teachers tell me to be more masculine. What can I do? —Anonymous […]

For Sean Dorsey, the dance studio used to be a source of pain that had nothing to do with dancing. “I would go to the women’s dressing room and change there,” he says. “That was, every day, this kind of knife in my heart.” Though the classes thrilled him, having to use facilities that didn’t […]