Memory, Identity and a Desire to Dance

This article uses the different sections of the pointe shoe of the classical ballet dancer as its structuring device. The article is autobiographic and draws on memories of how both dance and gender identity were constructed and practised by the author through the regulatory disciplines and rituals of dance classes, as well as the desire to conform and to escape from the materiality of her body. From early memories of music and language that combined to produce certain qualities of movement and states of awareness, the line of thought proceeds to later struggles with body shape, image, identity and possible demeanours available to the young adult. The article considers the foot, both its encasement in the hardened silk of the pointe shoe, and the bare foot's exposure and contact with the ground of contemporary dance practice. This experiential tale will draw on feminist theory through the lens of a personal conversation between theory and lived experience. The author considers how desiring transcendence from biology and over determined social roles of femininity and appropriate behaviour became a feature of the dancing woman's psychic landscape and remain as negotiable and contested territory. © 2012 Taylor & Francis.