A “ballet for all bodies,” where dancers cast off convention and cross the boundaries of normativity, moving through the singular physicality of each individual body.

Meta-Ballet: Non-Coppélia Manifesto expands onto the stage the ballet workshop series ‘Ballet for All Bodies’, which was led by choreographer Yoon Sangeun for the past several years. Long regarded as the pinnacle of elite art, ballet has traditionally been regarded as both the norm and the foundation of dance education. Its dazzling technique and fantastical images still captivate audiences, but behind them lie an uncritical veneration of Western culture, harsh training regimes, and the figure of the ballerina objectified into a narrow set of physical standards. With the question, ‘Is that really the only form of beauty there is?’ the work cracks open the seemingly immovable wall of the authority of classical ballet.

On stage, here are people who have broken the standardized mold and have chosen to begin ballet on their own terms. Seven women, brought together through social media in 2023, have layered their own distinct physicalities onto guided movement in place of fixed rules. Precision never mattered to them. As they played with ballet with their whole bodies, laughing and chatting, their bodies were naturally joined into a tight-knit community. For them, ballet is no longer a distant fantasy to be admired from afar; it has become the most useful tool for facing and expressing the realities of their own bodies. The moment we encounter a ‘ballet for all bodies,’ stripping away the fixed image of the doll and moving with their own breath and rhythms, ballet ceases to be a stuffed and mounted classic becomes today's dance, dynamically moving with a life of its own.

The Non-Coppélia Manifesto, Written Together 

- I practice ballet ‘to dance,’ not ‘to be watched.’

- I do not dance ballet by sacrificing my body and mental well-being. 

- Because I practice ballet without overexertion, my appetite thrives; the more ballet I do, the more weight I gain. 

- When I do a ballet turn, I look everywhere—this way, that way, all around—as I spin. Our turns are dizzy.

- I love princes, but I love princesses too. 

- I am not a swan but an albatross*. 

 (*A large seabird found mainly in the North Pacific; of all birds capable of flight, it has the largest wingspan.) 

- I am free to think about anything while doing ballet. I think about going to the restaurant I found on Instagram, selling the biotech stocks I bought a while ago, or going to a feminist rally once I finish dancing. 

- I do not diminish the present moment for the sake of some future perfection. I feel no shame, no guilt in my trembling legs. I concentrate on this trembling that exists only now. 

- I am not a machine designed to repeat the same angle of wingbeat thousands of times over. 

- We are the ones who breathe life into the motionless Coppelia dolls.