Katherine Ochoa Lipiz and Narciso Arias, Don Quixote
Cuban National Ballet School
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*straightenthoseknees posted:
Kendall Jenner stars in a “ballet-INSPIRED” shoot in Vogue Spain. It is catching a lot of attention from the dance world, especially the last image where she’s wearing pointe shoes and standing on point. In the promo video by Vogue Spain, she’s seen twirling around and doing little hops. Photos/screen capture via Instagram @kendalljenner.
My thoughts:
In today’s world where we have tons of information, authenticity is everything. As soon as we catch a whiff of something that’s not genuine, we know. Thus, it’s no surprise that a lot of dancers are calling out the model’s lack of real ballet background and improper form of the point shoes.
If it were a normal model, someone anonymous, hired to look pretty in leotards and ballet slippers, we’d probably giggle a little and brush it aside. But the fact that it’s Kendall Jenner, she of 239487126 social media followers, rubs a bit of salt into the wound.
If you love an art form, you want to see it presented properly to the world, even when it’s in an “inspired” shoot. Furthermore, it was a bit risky of the magazine or creative director to put her in point shoes when she could have hurt herself (from something as bad as a sprained ankle to something as minor as a bruised toe).
So anyways, I’m not going to bash the model, who is doing her job, or the director, who is coming up with his own idea, but I really wish that in the future if people want to represent ballet they use a) real dancers, or b) consult a dancer so that no one hurts themselves and that ballet can be shown for the beauty that it really is.
See also: American Ballet Theatre corps de ballet dancer Courtney Lavine in Chanel’s latest jewelry promo.
See also: The media sh*tstorm when American Ballet Theatre soloist Sarah Lane reminded people that Natalie Portman’s head was digitally imposed onto Sarah’s body for Black Swan’s dance scenes, and that ballet takes years to learn and perfect, not a few months.