extemporally (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
extemporally) wrote2011-07-10 08:49 pm
extemporally) wrote2011-07-10 08:49 pm
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"Ballet for Drina"
Did anyone read the Drina books growing up?
I did. The series was really my sister's. It's a series about a girl who trains to be a ballet dancer and through her schooling years ends up dancing in lots of different locales all over the world because she's "extraordinarily talented" and also her parents are well-off. The first book in the series (set when Drina was 11) was published in 1957; the last book (when she's 18) in 1991.
Mostly, though, I'm talking about them here because I was rereading the latter half of the series and they struck me as being so much more thoughtful than I remembered (although let's be honest; it's still pretty id-fulfillment in terms of "Drina's pretty and has really nice clothes and amazing talent and she's destined to be a great dancer obvs obvs").
1. Is Drina mixed race? She's half-English and half-Italian (her name is actually Andrina Adamo). Not to deny the reality of race and racial experience but it's quite clear that racial categories are also pretty much culturally constructed - i.e. Irish people in England in the nineteenth century (and perhaps afterwards as well?) were considered a separate race. Frequent references are given as to her dark complexion and temperamental nature, the latter of which her English grandmother attributes to her Italian heritage despite the fact that her own daughter (Drina's mother) was frequently temperamental herself.
Also there's the part where she travels to Italy and discovers her long-lost relatives there so even if she isn't biracial per se, she clearly is of dual heritage, which is pretty cool.
2. The series talks about class and entitlement as well. Drina doesn't want anybody to know that she was the daughter of one of the greatest ballet dancers ever (who died when Drina was a baby); and that's kept under wraps for most of the series. But obviously she still has a great deal of moneyed privilege because her grandparents are well-to-do: she has pretty clothes, she gets to travel all over the world, she never has to worry about money, etc. She also has an inheritance her parents left to her - with typical reticence, this is referred to as "Drina had money of her own". Her oldest friend's father becomes bankrupt, his company shuts down, and he has to get a job as a clerk. Said oldest friend has to give up her dreams of agricultural college. Her best friend at ballet school is the daughter of a plumber and has what a referred to kindly as shabby clothes - later in the series that becomes an ever more acute pressure since even after she enters the ballet company she's still hard-up as she has to pay for rent of an apartment (the flat she grew up in being overcrowded) and contribute to her family's finances. Her parents constantly encourage her to take the route of immediate stardom or marry wealthy (I'm not sure of this treatment of working class ethos). The third in their group is a refugee from Eastern Europe.
That Drina is not a snob is constantly referred to; her arch-enemy's snobbery is given as a reason to dislike her; her grandmother is nice but also somewhat of a snob. But Drina's own economic privilege often has the effect of distancing her from her own more hard-luck friends.
3. Ballet is hard work; Drina constantly refers to the impossibility of marriage because she wishes to advance her career at the expense of romance. (She eventually gets married at age twenty, though, I don't know if that was the norm in the 90s but it never gets pointed out as a ridiculously young age to get married, her best friend gets married at seventeen.) She makes it very clear to her fiancee that her career is a priority; by the last book there's the beginning of a rift between her and her mother-in-law, whose expectation is that she'll eventually settle down, start a family, etc, and also thinks little of women's lib.
4. She choreographs a ballet set in New York's Central Park, devises a solo for "Puerto Ricans" - eventually played by white people because it's performed in a Swiss finishing school - and also is "relieved" to find a black child to walk on for her ballet in the Swiss town because "there were many of them in Central Park when I was there and it seems wrong now". So points for an attempt at diversity, but on the other hand other than that the ballet world (a world Drina is utterly immersed in) seems remarkably racially monolithic (despite the narration insisting that at her ballet school Drina was used to "people of various nationalities", her working-class friend Rose who goes there also faces considerable resistance from her family to the idea of "foreigners") if we don't consider European people who are not British as people of other races; her other notable encounter with peoples of other races seems to be when she visits Madeira as a tourist and doesn't have meaningful interactions with locals then. So... mixed scorecard on this, I suppose.
5. The idea that males who do ballet are "sissy" is a stereotype that's discussed in the later books, there aren't any LGBTQ people in the series (despite the fact that I'm relatively certain - feel free to correct me! - there are many gay dudes doing ballet), and instead the assumption is countered with, "Oh no, they're all straight, and also doing ballet makes you really really strong, AND MASCULINE". Rose encounters a snotty flamboyant (and also very straight) male classmate when she's out and about with her mother, who is Alarmed, and in order to staunch the gender panic ("how is our Rose ever to meet any suitable boys?") she brings home a male classmate who talks to her dad about trains and shit. So less great on queerness, I guess.
Tl;dr - this series is more awesome than I gave it credit for being! When I was growing up my sister collected all eleven books in the series and kept insisting there was a twelfth she "couldn't get hold of", which I think is largely non-existent. Given the years between the publication of each book, I would actually buy a Book 12 published right now with the general fudging of timelines/non-reference to contemporary events so as to make it less obvious that Drina was aging really really slowly. And a lot of it would be about gender and class (especially given that some of the Drina books were being written during the Thatcher years!) and shit.
I did. The series was really my sister's. It's a series about a girl who trains to be a ballet dancer and through her schooling years ends up dancing in lots of different locales all over the world because she's "extraordinarily talented" and also her parents are well-off. The first book in the series (set when Drina was 11) was published in 1957; the last book (when she's 18) in 1991.
Mostly, though, I'm talking about them here because I was rereading the latter half of the series and they struck me as being so much more thoughtful than I remembered (although let's be honest; it's still pretty id-fulfillment in terms of "Drina's pretty and has really nice clothes and amazing talent and she's destined to be a great dancer obvs obvs").
1. Is Drina mixed race? She's half-English and half-Italian (her name is actually Andrina Adamo). Not to deny the reality of race and racial experience but it's quite clear that racial categories are also pretty much culturally constructed - i.e. Irish people in England in the nineteenth century (and perhaps afterwards as well?) were considered a separate race. Frequent references are given as to her dark complexion and temperamental nature, the latter of which her English grandmother attributes to her Italian heritage despite the fact that her own daughter (Drina's mother) was frequently temperamental herself.
Also there's the part where she travels to Italy and discovers her long-lost relatives there so even if she isn't biracial per se, she clearly is of dual heritage, which is pretty cool.
2. The series talks about class and entitlement as well. Drina doesn't want anybody to know that she was the daughter of one of the greatest ballet dancers ever (who died when Drina was a baby); and that's kept under wraps for most of the series. But obviously she still has a great deal of moneyed privilege because her grandparents are well-to-do: she has pretty clothes, she gets to travel all over the world, she never has to worry about money, etc. She also has an inheritance her parents left to her - with typical reticence, this is referred to as "Drina had money of her own". Her oldest friend's father becomes bankrupt, his company shuts down, and he has to get a job as a clerk. Said oldest friend has to give up her dreams of agricultural college. Her best friend at ballet school is the daughter of a plumber and has what a referred to kindly as shabby clothes - later in the series that becomes an ever more acute pressure since even after she enters the ballet company she's still hard-up as she has to pay for rent of an apartment (the flat she grew up in being overcrowded) and contribute to her family's finances. Her parents constantly encourage her to take the route of immediate stardom or marry wealthy (I'm not sure of this treatment of working class ethos). The third in their group is a refugee from Eastern Europe.
That Drina is not a snob is constantly referred to; her arch-enemy's snobbery is given as a reason to dislike her; her grandmother is nice but also somewhat of a snob. But Drina's own economic privilege often has the effect of distancing her from her own more hard-luck friends.
3. Ballet is hard work; Drina constantly refers to the impossibility of marriage because she wishes to advance her career at the expense of romance. (She eventually gets married at age twenty, though, I don't know if that was the norm in the 90s but it never gets pointed out as a ridiculously young age to get married, her best friend gets married at seventeen.) She makes it very clear to her fiancee that her career is a priority; by the last book there's the beginning of a rift between her and her mother-in-law, whose expectation is that she'll eventually settle down, start a family, etc, and also thinks little of women's lib.
4. She choreographs a ballet set in New York's Central Park, devises a solo for "Puerto Ricans" - eventually played by white people because it's performed in a Swiss finishing school - and also is "relieved" to find a black child to walk on for her ballet in the Swiss town because "there were many of them in Central Park when I was there and it seems wrong now". So points for an attempt at diversity, but on the other hand other than that the ballet world (a world Drina is utterly immersed in) seems remarkably racially monolithic (despite the narration insisting that at her ballet school Drina was used to "people of various nationalities", her working-class friend Rose who goes there also faces considerable resistance from her family to the idea of "foreigners") if we don't consider European people who are not British as people of other races; her other notable encounter with peoples of other races seems to be when she visits Madeira as a tourist and doesn't have meaningful interactions with locals then. So... mixed scorecard on this, I suppose.
5. The idea that males who do ballet are "sissy" is a stereotype that's discussed in the later books, there aren't any LGBTQ people in the series (despite the fact that I'm relatively certain - feel free to correct me! - there are many gay dudes doing ballet), and instead the assumption is countered with, "Oh no, they're all straight, and also doing ballet makes you really really strong, AND MASCULINE". Rose encounters a snotty flamboyant (and also very straight) male classmate when she's out and about with her mother, who is Alarmed, and in order to staunch the gender panic ("how is our Rose ever to meet any suitable boys?") she brings home a male classmate who talks to her dad about trains and shit. So less great on queerness, I guess.
Tl;dr - this series is more awesome than I gave it credit for being! When I was growing up my sister collected all eleven books in the series and kept insisting there was a twelfth she "couldn't get hold of", which I think is largely non-existent. Given the years between the publication of each book, I would actually buy a Book 12 published right now with the general fudging of timelines/non-reference to contemporary events so as to make it less obvious that Drina was aging really really slowly. And a lot of it would be about gender and class (especially given that some of the Drina books were being written during the Thatcher years!) and shit.
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Anyway, this is an awesome analysis of them!
INTERESTING FACT: The copies I read that belonged to my mother in the 60s had her refugee friend Illonka coming from Hungary. The ones I read that were reprints from the 90s changed the name of the country to something made up.
Oh, and another difference: In the 60s ones the unpleasant girl at her school was named Queen. In the 90s, Queenie.
(PS: I received a teensy Drina-verse snippet for Yuletide last year! http://archiveofourown.org/works/143573)
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Ohhh, that is an intriguing crossover! Aw :D
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