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'It's really special': the ballet company shaking up the world of dance

When Jillian Davis is on stage, it’s hard to watch anyone else. In a blink of the eye, her body swings from long diagonals into swooping parabolas, from the fullest extension of a line to the most cavernous curve.

For a moment, she suspends time, like her body is a gasp and the air hasn’t escaped just yet. Then, she’s a hiccup in gravity, light but grounded.

Related: How a dancer involved in a #MeToo scandal staged a Broadway comeback

“I definitely try to portray, like, that tall, Amazonian type because that’s not something that you see onstage a lot, and it’s beautiful,” Davis told the Guardian.

At 6ft 2in, she towers over most of her fellow dancers, one of a myriad of qualities that make her an original. But for a long time, that individuality worked against her.

Before joining Complexions Contemporary Ballet, Davis said she attended close to a hundred company auditions. She always got rejected, and nine out of 10 times it was because of her height.

“I just couldn’t figure out why I wasn’t even being looked at,” she said.

Complexions was the first time she made it through an entire audition without being cut. Dwight Rhoden and Desmond Richardson, the company’s co-founders and artistic directors, identified something in her that was apparently lost on other creatives.

It’s not the only occasion in which they’ve made an artistic choice that goes against the grain. Complexions is something of a black sheep in American ballet. One of its recent commissions is described by the company as a “physical reaction to the daily news”. Its programs include music from Kendrick Lamar, David Bowie and Lenny Kravitz – a far cry from the kind of lyric-less instrumentals usually associated with the art form.

But perhaps the most radical part of Complexions is the people in it. “We want to celebrate diversity on every level: body types, looks, training, qualities of movement,” Rhoden said.

He said he and Richardson are attracted to an “X-factor” in their dancers that’s part of what they bring to the table. Richardson echoed that sentiment; he looks for artists who blur lines and boundaries and exude an innate passion. He calls this “otherness,” but without the negative connotation that term sometimes implies.

“I always say it’s like a stew,” Rhoden said. “We’re about toasting the idea of unity – you know, contrasting qualities working harmoniously.”

Complexions’ members are a snapshot of modern America, if more virtuosic and physically fit than an average Joe. Rhoden affectionately calls them his band of misfits; demographically, they’re far more diverse than your typical ballet ensemble.

“I do think that we have to open up our mind,” Rhoden said. “This is 2020. Dance is evolving. And in order for it to continue to be a vital art form, we have to look at everything.”

A number of pitfalls often sabotage ballet’s potential to fully connect with today’s audience. It’s a European craft that sprang from the Italian Renaissance, blossomed in French aristocratic circles, and was canonized centuries ago. But ballet has been slow to evolve and promote inclusivity beyond the confines of a Eurocentric ideal, and even its supporters have taken notice.

Former New York Times dance critic Alastair Macaulay called the art form a “sexist view of the world”, and in contrast to other dance styles, ballet has faced scrutiny for its lack of female choreographers shaping the narrative. Often times, programs stumble into tired gender roles that pigeonhole performers as princes and princesses, boys and girls. It’s these cemented stereotypes that some people blame for misogyny in ballet, a hot topic in the #MeToo era.

Beyond outdated gender politics, ballet has a legacy of privileging white bodies. Misty Copeland’s unparalleled popularity as American Ballet Theatre’s first female African American principal dancer suggests how much of an anomaly she is, and just how few people of color actually make it in the profession, especially at mainstream ballet companies that perform classical repertoire.

Elizabeth Coker, an assistant arts professor of dance at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts, sees connections between ballet’s systemic relationships to gender and race and the body type it promotes. Certainly, there is a predominant visual of how a ballet dancer is supposed to look.

Think of the ballerina atop a childhood jewelry box. She’s almost always white and willowy, her legs like spindles. It’s the image audiences often associate with the art form: a line of jewelry box ballerinas, all carbon copies.

But talented, diligent dancers don’t always fit those conventions. Candy Tong, another member of Complexions, knew she wanted to be a professional dancer when she was nine years old and always dreamed of being a prima ballerina at a top company. As she aged, she realized she couldn’t get the job she wanted because of her height and figure.

“I don’t have the stereotypical ballet body. I’m not stick thin. I have a very muscular and curvy (build), which is very different from a stereotypical Asian woman, too,” Tong said. “My lines come off very unique, so I won’t have that picture-perfect balletic line and shape that classical ballet will want.”

At times, Tong considered leaving dance altogether. Coker said dancers whose bodies don’t fit expectations adapt in a number of ways: Some of them barrel through and conform as much as possible, sometimes through unhealthy, destructive means. Others discover modern dance.

Still others quit.

In the 90s, Coker started her professional dance career in ballet. But as she went through puberty, her body changed in ways she couldn’t control. She transitioned to modern and post-modern dance soon after.

“We just all assumed that if you couldn’t hack it, that that was on you, and that it was just effortless for everyone else,” Coker said. “I think because of this entrenched idea of the body type. Like, you either have it or you don’t.”

Just 10 years ago, Macaulay – the same dance critic who called out ballet for being sexist – caused an uproar when he wrote in a review that a New York City Ballet professional dancer “looked as if she’d eaten one sugarplum too many”. He then doubled down with an essay in which he described in detail the “unfortunate” wobble of multiple dancers’ upper arms.

But Coker said things are changing: there’s more knowledge now about healthy bodies, and there’s been a shift toward more athletic aesthetics in ballet. Even so, she still has students who struggle with their bodies.

That’s why companies like Complexions are game-changing: they’re forging a path for what ballet can be instead of what it historically has been. And while Tong and Davis put pressure on traditional ballet bodies, their colleague Maxfield Haynes is dismantling the very framework that creates those physical expectations.

Haynes, a self-identified “nonbinary butch queen”, has no interest in portraying ballet’s omnipresent prince figure or performing the formulaic choreography those roles entail.

“I can do that, and I can do that fiercely,” they said. “But like, as a dancer and as an artist, I want to tell a different story, and I want to tell the story that’s most true to now.”

Haynes is the only out nonbinary dancer they know at a major ballet company, and their interests haven’t always been accepted by the ballet community. When they were a student at the San Francisco Ballet School, they asked one of the teachers if they could wear pointe shoes for part of class and were immediately shut down.

But after Haynes joined Complexions, their pointe skills were used as fuel. In a featured role with the company, Haynes is engulfed in a spotlight, crouching on their pointe shoes, arms outstretched like a butterfly. They fold in half as their arabesque tilts forward, and they fly high in partnered lifts.

Richardson doesn’t need Haynes to be male or female – “you do you,” he said. He just wants them to embody strength.

“Show that part,” Richardson said. “Knock it out of the park.”

Haynes said they never thought they would find a place where they fit in.

Now, audiences pay to watch them strut en pointe while mouthing David Bowie lyrics, blue glitter streaming down their face.

“We change the world with what we do by just simply being who we are,” Haynes said. “It’s really, really special.”