I have a poem coming out in the near future at Strange Horizons<\/i> (pause for congratulations \u2013 thank you, thank you) and because they also do a podcast, I read it aloud to my writers group so they could point out any snags in the way I read before I record it.<\/p>\n
One of the lines references a grand-jet\u00e9, a ballet move. When I read it, I was thinking of both pronouncing it well in French \u2014 difficult, because despite years of studying French, my accent is poor \u2014 and making it understandable. I suspect I failed at both, because almost everyone mentioned it.<\/p>\n
And it was also clear that some in my group didn\u2019t know what a grand-jet\u00e9 was. It appears that not everyone was forced into ballet classes as a small child.<\/p>\n
I first took up ballet because the doctor recommended it due to my weak ankles. It was not a successful form of exercise, since the ballet teacher put me in toe shoes even though I was six, which probably did even more damage to my ankles.<\/p>\n
I took ballet again when my sister did, for reasons that are no longer clear to me, though I eschewed the toe shoes and recitals. In truth, even had I been more physically talented \u2014 and while I am a person who needs a lot of physical activity, I am not especially talented at it \u2014 I had absolutely the wrong body type for ballet.<\/p>\n
I am too tall, too large-boned, and at what is a good weight for my body type, far too fat. My height is in my torso, so my legs are relatively short. I\u2019m not very flexible.<\/p>\n
Ballet is rigid in many respects, despite the need for dancers to be flexible. Only certain body types need apply, especially when it comes to women. It is certainly unforgiving. And it tears up bodies, particularly women\u2019s bodies, at about the same pace as American football does men\u2019s.<\/p>\n
While I have enjoyed watching ballet, I prefer modern dance, which has more respect for the human body in all its diversity. Modern dancers continue dancing into old age; ballet dancers quit in their 30s.<\/p>\n
All that said, I have always wanted to be able to do a grand-jet\u00e9, which is a great leap in the air with the legs in a split. It looks like flying. It is a glorious move. And landing, particularly in toe shoes, requires great balance.<\/p>\n
But none of that is what dawned on me when people commented on the reading. What dawned on me is that I assumed everyone knew what a grand-jet\u00e9 was.<\/p>\n
And they don\u2019t. <\/p>\n
I think most people know of ballet, but only those who took classes or who go to the ballet likely know the various terms, all drawn from French, that are used for the different positions and moves.<\/p>\n
Ballet classes are a province of the middle class and above. They were a big deal in my youth and judging by the number of dance academies I see in various towns, probably still a thing.<\/p>\n
They were mostly for girls \u2014 boys who take up ballet get mocked, though they are, of course, necessary for performances and the greatest of them are lionized. (Nureyev, Barishnikov.)<\/p>\n
Ballet wasn\u2019t taught in school, though, so if you were poor, it was not an option. And one suspects that there are many cultures in which obsession with a particular form of European-derived performance art was not an important part of life.<\/p>\n
Perhaps poems and stories using words like grand-jet\u00e9 require footnotes, though it is also true that these days most people do have a computer in their pocket for looking up things they don\u2019t know.<\/p>\n
I spent a good many years reading the sort of English (which is to say British) novels in which the authors used Latin or French (and sometimes even Greek) without bothering to translate. There was a snobby assumption that the \u201cright\u201d readers would not need translation, because educated people should know those things.<\/p>\n
This is not generally true of American fiction, which tends to translate everything because we Americans assume that people only know English. Though nowadays I see more Spanish in otherwise English books, which I personally like, but which might make them less accessible.<\/p>\n
I like finding unknown words and words from other languages in my fiction. My Spanish is better than my French and my Latin is limited to expressions from the law (res judicata, res ipsa loquitor), but I can usually guess things from context.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m also a science fiction reader and fond of the made-up words and concepts that are slipped into such work.<\/p>\n
But all those things can be exclusionary. And I don\u2019t like the idea of fiction or poetry being exclusionary.<\/p>\n
So I am pondering where the line is between exclusion and the pleasure of trying to figure things out from context.<\/p>\n
No answers yet, but at least those who read this post and later read my poem will know what grand-jet\u00e9 means, even if they never paid any attention to ballet in their lives.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I have a poem coming out in the near future at Strange Horizons (pause for congratulations \u2013 thank you, thank you) and because they also do a podcast, I read it aloud to my writers group so they could point out any snags in the way I read before I record it. One of the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[814],"tags":[816,252,815],"class_list":["post-3112","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-poetry","tag-ballet","tag-readings","tag-words"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3112","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3112"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3112\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3113,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3112\/revisions\/3113"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3112"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3112"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3112"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}