| Summary: | Includes bibliographical references. === This qualititative, interdisciplinary study predominantly focuses on the South African choreographer Robyn Orlin and her deconstructions of classical ballet. To inform a gender-centred investigation of Orlin’s work, attention is given to the origins of patriarchal dualisms and the way in which these manifest in contemporary Western culture. Emphasis is placed on the institutional repression of the body as a way to preserve particular power structures. In this instance the theories of Michel Foucault, in particular, are referenced. His concepts serve to illuminate a consideration of Western concert dance, with a particular focus on classical ballet, as an institution that sustains gender as a system of power. The origins of the aesthetic of the ballerina as an icon of femininity, and the way in which certain values and expectations impact on the bodies of female ballet dancers, particularly but not exclusively, provides a context for the discussion of Orlin’s work – how and why her form and content questions and undermines the perpetuation of traditional gender stereotypes in classical ballet. This dissertation examines Orlin’s work in order to expand discourse around the subversive potential of the female body, informed by an understanding of the body as an ever-changing entity that resists definition by way of essentialist meanings.
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