My name is Katy Pyle.
I'm the artistic director of a dance company that's called Ballez.
I'm trying to represent lesbian, queer and transgender culture with my work.
I started taking ballet probably when I was three years old.
My technical capacity was good.
I was a good performer.
I was allowed to be in that world, and
then as my body started to change, my gender started to shift.
I saw that those parts of me didn't belong inside of the form
that I really loved, which was really devastating.
We were working on this variation, which was I think from Giselle and
I looked in the mirror and I saw my body and I was like, I am not that.
I'm not a kind of waif, woman that is weak.
I looked at my legs, and
I looked at my arms, and I was like this isn't matching up.
Ballet has a tendency to really privilege this kind of longer,
leaner kind of muscle.
The hardest thing in the world is to do these kind of female ballet variations
where you're inhabiting a projection of weakness, airiness, and lightness.
But in order to do that, you're using every muscle in your body.
The ideal of these feminine archetypes is something like lighter and
not really grounded
I remember really efforting to make my strong body
look weaker and like I was in need of someone.
Why am I always being asked to learn these roles of dying
virgins and tortured women who need to be saved or
swans that are under attack by the advances of these princes.
What is up with all of these roles?
I wanna lift.
Be more aggressive in my own movements, also in my body.
I like to jump.
I like to turn.
I like to do these things that would be not part of
the traditional ballet vocabulary for feminine characters.
Women can be really powerful and
can support themselves and support other people.
And I think that that's a positive shift for
women and I think it's also a positive shift for men and
masculine identified people to be able to see that they can also be supported,
that they can also be lifted, that they could also be tender and soft.
Ballet has existed for centuries and it has changed, so
I have to change the bodies that are inside of that work in
order to serve that community and to tell that story.
I think in this moment, in this time,
I don't wanna exist completely in isolation from the rest of the world.
I wanna be in a bigger conversation and
I think this work is an effort to create connection.