Medieval Romance and Classical Ballet

Today I'm thinking about the ways in which medieval romance, as a literary genre, is so strikingly similar to the idiom of classical ballet. Additionally, I'm wondering as to how ballet can provide a means, method, and context that could be useful in understanding romance and how it would have been perceived by its intended audience in the Middle Ages. Despite the separation of the advents of these two artforms by several centuries, I believe that one can inform the reading of the other and I'd like to begin my marking their similarities.

First, romance and ballet both emerged from and were patronized by extremely elite audiences and both emerged from and were developed in French or, at the very least, Franco-phone/phile cultures. Perhaps as a result, both bear very strong and overt imperialist impulses by virtue of the fact that they fetishize and romanticize--and Said would say "orientalize" the cultural Other. They also portray very determined and conventional gender roles, specific to courtly contexts. In other words, the privileged and dashin man woos a beautiful, important, and to varying extents, unreachable woman. Perhaps related to the last two points I just mentioned, both provide what could be characterized as escapist fantasy for their elite audiences. As one ballet critic noted, "Even the serfs have jewels in their hair."

My next task is to consider how each artform could possibly inform an interpretation or analysis of the other and then conclude what is revealed about society at large with regard to the specific contexts of each, or even, what they reveal about Western values, gender and class dynamics, and the relationship between art and audience.

Thoughts?

My favorite ballerina, Darci Kistler, performing a révérance.