All the (Dis)Comforts of Home: Place, Gendered Self-Fashioning, and Solidarity in a Ballet Studio

Abstract

This essay examines ballet as a vernacular landscape, a homeplace where solidarity and competition, surveillance, and self-fashioning come together for adolescent girls. First, the author argues that place itself is performatively produced. Next, specific examples of place in ballet are examined. The author then discusses a Southern California ballet studio as a generative home for a diverse group of young women who navigate the pressures of parental expectations and adolescence by tactically deploying the technique's disciplines and pleasures.