Ballet, Sex and Employment

Having grown up in a small town in middle Tennessee, I wasn’t exposed much to ballet. I can’t remember seeing a ballet, except perhaps on television, until after I was married. Unlike the theatre, to which I also wasn’t exposed much as a boy, I didn’t appreciate ballet for a long time. Men and women jumping around in outfits that would be banned anywhere else. I’m afraid I didn’t get it.

Then my two daughters, one about eight years older than the other, went to high school. It was almost impossible to go to their school without taking a course or two in ballet. It was also possible to be in the school’s high-powered ballet troupe. My oldest daughter loved to dance, and while she danced with her heart and gave every ounce of  her spirit (I still have a video of her that always makes me cry), the talent wasn’t there. The younger daughter was talented. She was part of the ballet troupe for three years, each year becoming increasingly graceful and accomplished. As you might suspect, from my oldest daughter’s first year in high school to my youngest daughter’s last year, I became a fan of ballet.

I enjoy watching amateurs and professionals dance. There is a beauty to ballet that’s stunning. But I still don’t understand it much better than I did when I was in high school myself. Even when an expert explains it as a critic recently did in the New York Times, I still can’t quite get it — other than admiring the beauty and grace of it all.

The critic reviewed a new ballet called Plainspoken. His analysis was a bit too deep for me, until he got to his explanation of two men dancing with two women. He didn’t intend this to happen, but I immediately thought of the difficulty men and women have of being together in the workplace — without sex entering the picture, which can lead to all kinds of employment problems, not the least of which is sexual harassment.

In reviewing the part of ballet that he called a study in erotic neurosis, the critic described what goes on between men and women all the time, often in the workplace. “I’m with him, I want him, except that I also want out. You, yes, you, let me move your legs like this. Don’t look into my face; I’m shielding it from you. Now I’ll be a doll for you to play with. I want you, but now that you’ve got me, I actually want something else, yet what? Oh darling, kneel with me, hold me, I love you alone.”

My point? Make ballet part of your workplace training. Let your employees see that their own feelings are played out all the time, even in a ballet. But the dancers control themselves. They have these thoughts as they dance (i.e., work), without crossing the line. If they can restrain themselves while wearing costumes that would be inappropriate, yet inviting, in most workplaces, your employees can do it, too.  Let’s face it. Most sexual harassment training doesn’t seem to work all that well. Using ballet just might be the way forward.