With Orpheus Alive, the National Ballet’s Robert Binet joins the ranks of choreographers bending gender conventions

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Choreographer Robert Binet has always been interested in the ancient myth of Orpheus and Eurydice. But there was just one problem: he had no appetite to present one more damsel in distress.

The tragedy of the mythical lovers goes like this: The poet and musician Orpheus petitions the gods to let him rescue his dead beloved from the underworld. His mission is approved, on one condition: he cannot look at her until they return to Earth. Unable to resist, he looks back and loses her forever. Mr. Binet, who is a Choreographic Associate at the National Ballet, was drawn to the story, but only wanted to tackle it if the genders could be reversed.

“There are almost no female protagonists – in the classical repertoire – who are even awake and alive, and not in captivity through the entire show,” he said. “… And there is a history of male characters in ballet always having this macho, bravura kind of vibe – or like the prince in Swan Lake, just so wrapped up in his own thoughts and sadness.”

Mr. Binet is among some leading choreographers today who want to change that paradigm. Why should women in ballet be fragile and naive, such as Giselle, or captive to malevolent sorcery, such as Swan Lake’s Odette and Aurora in Sleeping Beauty? Why should men so often be princes and cavaliers, seizing positions of power and action but not exploring any depth of emotional expression or vulnerability?

In the world of classical ballet, gender roles are distinct. Women are the ones who strap on pointe shoes, because it gives them an ethereal quality; they are trained for strength but also to exude a delicate grace and lightness; they are lifted into the air. Men, meanwhile, execute thrilling turns, practise stratospheric jumps, and they do the lifting. The movement reflects the way the two genders relate to each other in the stories.

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But as gender norms are becoming more fluid, some are bending ballet’s traditions so that the art form reflects a fuller range of identities. The aim is not only to better represent a diversity of gender expression for its own sake, but also to keep ballet relevant in a changing world – and to better explore the creative range of all dancers. Mr. Binet believes that the more varied the choreographic repertoire, the more dancers will be trained for diverse skills and types of movement.

He’s not alone in pushing for ballet to move beyond traditional gender roles. Brooklyn-based company Ballez features queer, trans and gender-non-conforming dancers, welcoming “all the people whom ballet has left out.” The company has presented its own versions of ballet classics such as Giselle and Sleeping Beauty. In 2017, New York City Ballet choreographer Justin Peck recast the central duet in his ballet The Times Are Racing – a pas de deux that had originally been danced by a man and woman was presented by two men. The ballet was conspicuously devoid of pointe shoes: dancers wore sneakers. “A major part of #TheTimesAreRacing has been an exploration of gender-neutrality to see how far we can push equality amongst the sexes through the lens of ballet,” Mr. Peck wrote on Instagram. It was not the only instance of same-sex partnering at City Ballet that season: choreographer Lauren Lovette’s ballet Not Our Fate showcased another pas de deux featuring male dancers.

Mr. Binet also cites Wayne McGregor, resident choreographer at London’s Royal Ballet, as an influence. As the first choreographic apprentice, he studied under Mr. McGregor, whose approach to ballet is affected by his background in contemporary dance.

“From the moment he stepped into ballet, he was like, men can lift and be lifted and women can lift as much as their strength allows,” Mr. Binet said.

For Orpheus Alive, Mr. Binet is not always reversing moves in this way, but is trying to provide a new context for some elements of classical dance. For example, the male and female dancer will still dance as a pair, but lifts are meant to convey the female Orpheus leading the way for Eurydice, rather than the male dancer simply “picking her up and carting her across the room,” he said. In the underworld, it is Orpheus who has to lead him out without looking at him, which Mr. Binet saw as a way of rethinking those classic lifts.

“We can still use the classical partnering technique, but really have it all driven by the woman's physicality,” he said.

The ballet begins with Orpheus at the threshold of the underworld, styled as a bureaucratic nightmare Mr. Binet refers to as “DMV for the dead.” There, the bereaved Orpheus makes her case to the gods to allow her entry to rescue her dead lover. Orpheus pulls in the rest of the cast – a tragic chorus of mourners all waiting their turn in this purgatorial waiting room – to play roles in her story. This ballet within the ballet is designed to convince the gods to let her descend and find Eurydice.

“Not only is she controlling her own story, but she’s in control when she’s creating this ballet in front of us,” Mr. Binet said. "She’s en pointe, the ballet is all there, but just to have a really commanding female character … it felt like a much more interesting story. And for the male character to be able to explore a much gentler and softer physicality.”

This is relatively unusual, not just in ballet but in Greek mythology. The root of many myths is the archetypal hero’s journey, and the hero is almost exclusively male.

“Women are there to facilitate, or contribute to, or get in the way of, the man’s heroic mission," said Victoria Wohl, a professor of classical Greek literature and culture at the University of Toronto. "They are helpers or hinderers, but the mission is his.”

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However, she noted, scholarship has gone through the same evolution that popular culture has; since the seventies, academics have been reconsidering how myths construct gender roles. And in the past 20 years, gender fluidity has been a topic of discussion. Asked about the idea of a dramatic work deciding to change the gender of characters from the original, she pointed out that there is a tradition, dating back to antiquity, of the same myth being reimagined by different writers.

“Mythology is designed to be flexible,” she said. “There is no standard version.”

Mr. Binet first pitched the idea of a gender-reversed Orpheus ballet to artistic director Karen Kain five years ago. He began developing the piece during an artistic residency at the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity in 2015, and presented an excerpt in Toronto at TEDx that year.

When he was training as a dancer, Mr. Binet was not interested in some of the more macho roles available to men in classical ballet, where the emphasis is on bravura jumps and turns; he enjoyed the emotive side of dance, focusing on musicality and storytelling. But there is not as much repertoire available to those types of dancers, he said – and the same goes for female dancers seeking to express more of the traditionally masculine qualities in dance. He was occasionally told that his dancing was too feminine, something he believes is common for men in dance, because teachers are preparing them for professional expectations: ballet companies still draw audiences with the well-known classical works, and hire dancers who are trained to handle the repertoire.

"We have a unique opportunity to shift what is asked of dancers, and therefore hopefully widen the net as to who feels they can move forward into this career and have a voice in this art form,” Mr. Binet said.

He believes it is the responsibility of choreographers like him to begin changing that repertoire, through the work they are creating – both to keep the art of ballet relevant and dynamic, and to give opportunities to both male and female dancers who want to tap into a wider range of roles.

“In theatre, there is such a thing as having a woman play Hamlet, which is fantastic,” Mr. Binet said. “In ballet, that’s harder because the men just don’t have the training to play the Swan Queen. So I feel like we have a responsibility to create new stories and new productions that break those moulds.”

In rehearsal, principal dancer Heather Ogden, as Orpheus, spreads her hands out wide and then lifts them in an all-rise motion, bringing more than 20 dancers seated around her to their feet as she rises to pointe. Crouching back down, she sweeps her arms back and the wave of dancers ebbs behind her. This is just one part of Orpheus’s appeal to the gods, when she compels the characters around her to help tell her story. The damsel is in distress, but not in captivity. She’s on a mission.

The National Ballet’s Orpheus Alive runs Nov. 15-21 at the Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts.

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