Postings discussion This link allows you to see others thoughts on this piece and contribute to the debate yourself if you want. We look to guarantee this link for a number of years, though after 3-6 months the page may be closed to further additions. The Ballet Independents' Group's next seminar will discuss 'Invisible Women'; what it means to be a woman in ballet, how ballet culture shapes women's roles and how different in the experience of women in modern dance. The speakers include Cathy Marston, Zenaida Yanowsky and Alexandra Carter. 'Invisible Women' will be at 7.00 pm on Friday 22nd March at the Royal Festival Hall's Sunley Pavilion Susie Crow's last piece

Susie Crow, of Ballet Independents' Group, is writing a regular series of 'thought pieces' for us over the season.

Do please feel free to comment, and see others thoughts and views, by using the link over on the left, to a posting thread on this piece.

There is also a BIG discussion at the Southbank about 'Invisible Women' - again see the sidebar for more

Last year I taught choreography at a Royal Academy of Dance Summer School in picturesque Stokesley in North Yorkshire. Based in a local school and fed by dance schools from the surrounding area the course provided an intensive week of ballet based activity for four groups, a total of 91 students - of whom 3 were boys. One of these three has since gone to the Royal Ballet School - to my knowledge none of the girls have.

A couple of weekends prior to that I was a member of an audition panel to select up to 16 students for the Suffolk County Ballet Scholarship Scheme. 74 hopefuls presented themselves - of whom 6 were boys. Despite our best efforts to apply impartial technical and artistic standards across the board, the chances of acceptance onto the scheme were inevitably significantly higher for the boys than the girls.

For the autumn semester I taught ballet to 1st and 3rd year students on the BA in Dance course at University of Surrey, Roehampton. There were no boys in any of the three groups, although the ability range spanned almost complete beginners through to a Royal Ballet School graduate who had performed with Michael Clark. Only last week I watched the Design for Dance evening of collaborations between RAD student choreographers and young designers from Central St Martin's College at the Cochrane. For at least the third year running none of the RAD choreographers or performers were male.

During the autumn I spent a morning watching ballet classes at London Studio Centre. A group of first year students contained almost as many boys as girls. However apart from one lad auditioning, the school's top level ballet class, comprising final year students later to be touring as Images of Dance, had no male dancers in it at all.

Nevertheless all the choreographers for the Images programme are men. A recent trawl through thirty ballet companies worldwide revealed that less than a handful are directed by women. The Royal Ballet

A recent trawl through thirty ballet companies worldwide revealed that less than a handful are directed by women.

has recently taken on its 5th male director in nearly four decades of unbroken masculine leadership. In spite of the fact that the institution was founded by a woman, herself a serious and individual choreographic voice, not one of the ballets on show this season in the Royal Opera House main auditorium is by a female choreographer (I discount Makarova's production of Petipa's La Bayadère). Whatever the problems for boys accessing ballet at beginner's level, once on board they can progress surely through the ranks with the possibility of making it to senior management and directorial posts and choreographic opportunity and achievement.

Meanwhile what happens to the girls? The sheer number of entrants into vocational training at all levels, and the need therefore for exacting selection criteria, surely would ensure that the female intake has talent and ability, arguably higher in quality than the male intake? Or does a ruthless self selection operate among aspiring male dancers that weeds out the inept and the wavering vocations before they so much as set foot in a studio?

Once within vocational ballet training and assuming a level playing field of potential between the sexes, what occurs that tips the balance for successful career development in favour of the men? As a member of last year's judging panel for the annual Kenneth MacMillan Choreographic Prize at White Lodge I can

Does the pursuit of corps de ballet uniformity ... stunt the development of female individuality?

reliably inform you that female choreographic talent is not wanting at this level, nor an enthusiasm to get up and have a go. At what point in the progress from ballet student to mature professional does this expression of female creativity become submerged or re-routed towards other priorities? Does the pursuit of corps de ballet uniformity and the ballerina stereotype in traditional repertoire and training stunt the development of female individuality?

Many of these questions have emerged in discussion with my colleague Jennifer Jackson in preparation for our next BIG Forum. A conversation with a male colleague brought a reaction to the effect that women are actually in control in ballet as never before - the ballet diva reigns supreme in the form of Sylvie Guillem or Darcey Bussell. Their huge followings, media profile and box office draw enable them to impose their wills on mere directors and choreographers not simply over fees and costumes, but casting and repertoire, even choreographic content. Or is this simply another manifestation of a longstanding pattern in the relationship between the sexes in ballet, unchanged since the days of Kschessinskaya, Taglioni or la Camargo - women of exceptional talent and temperament wielding limited power in the only way possible within the confines of a masculine construct?

In ballet education women predominate, both as teachers and students. Few men seem to consider teaching ballet as a career until after they have danced. Are alternative roles in education and administration a consolation prize tinged with bitterness ("those who can, do, those who can't, teach") for many whose love of dance fails to find fulfilment through a professional career in performing or choreography - or can they be a natural and necessary expression of an inherently female instinct to nurture, a peculiarly arduous yet sometimes rewarding outlet for creativity? With so much potential influence are women colluding in the maintenance of the status quo and their own exclusion from sectors of the profession?

On the face of it Ninette de Valois sets a towering role model for female achievement as a choreographer and director; yet she remained a traditionalist in her views on the roles and characteristics of the sexes. She cut back her personal development as a creative artist in order to grow her institution. She willed her succession as Director of the Royal Ballet to the men, and threw her formidable intellectual energy into issues of schooling. While matrimony was acceptable and even desirable in conferring respectability

Watching archive footage from the 60s I have been struck by the projection of a vibrant womanhood in the performance of artists like Ann Heaton, Seymour and Sibley...

on the men of her company, wedding bells could sound the death knell for any female dancer's career, and combining dancing and motherhood was unthinkable.

Watching archive footage from the 60s I have been struck by the projection of a vibrant womanhood in the performance of artists like Ann Heaton, Seymour and Sibley. Now post the outbreak of feminism are there new social patterns and roles possible in ballet? Or are younger generations of women, now under constant siege from pressures to be thinner, more beautiful, more desirable, more mechanically perfect, more inhibited and constrained than ever? Is our compartmentalised age of defined targets, binary logic and ticks in boxes a reflection and affirmation of men's creative strategies and urges rather than women's chaotic and fluid multitasking? Is it necessary to challenge the gender stereotypes apparently supported by the above observations? What can we learn from other dance forms and their cultures?

As a middle-aged woman struggling to balance multiple roles - teacher, choreographer, inner dancer and mother - I do not know the answers to these uncomfortable questions. There are signs that change is possible. Darcey Bussell has returned to the stage from giving birth with her body unbowed, and in some eyes a new authority; the Outside In evenings last week at the Clore Studio, part of the ADI curated by Deborah Bull, offered a programme with choreography by more women than men and more male dancers than female.

And across the river the BIG Discussion Forum will gather later this month to ponder the visibility and role of women in ballet in the twenty first century both on the stage and off it.