2024/01/19 by Reglińska-Jemioł, Anna
paper · doi:10.34762/ynxf-a889
The beginning of the 19th century brought the absolute domination by women of the ballet stage (although they had to face the challenge of mastering the language of dance created by men and originally intended for them on the professional stage). The process of feminisation, also in this ‘symbolic’ aspect to which theatre dance had been subjected since the 19th century, directed the research of dance theorists towards the so-called “problem of the male dancer” (Burt, 2007). However, the complexities of the code of masculinity can be traced through all stages of the development of choreographic forms, i.e. from the dance intermedia of the Renaissance to the autonomous, in terms of content, action ballets of the Enlightenment (referring, inter alia, to the images of androgynous figures of the burlesque ballets of the time of Louis XIII, or the phenomenon of cross-casting of court ballets of the Sun King era).