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Only a few brave souls have tackled the ballet body in the visual arts world. Eleanor Antin began the trend in 1986 with her work Recollections of my Life with Diaghilev, featuring a fictional persona, Eleanora Antinova, a dancer with Diaghilev’s Ballet Russes. The exhibit featured photographs of Antin’s enchanting ballerina persona starring in various productions: Pocahontas, The Hebrews, Prisoner of Persia, L’Esclave and Before the Revolution.

Eleanor Antin. Pocahontas from Recollections of My Life with Diaghilev 1919-1929, 1977-1978. Courtesy: Ronald Feldman Fine Arts.

In this show, Antin’s prima ballerina Antinova mocks the glistening, sylph-like dancer in all of her glamorous glory. Antin pokes fun at the ballet ideal using her less than ideal ballet figure. Antin’s deliciously curvy physique and full facial features, though lusted after in contemporary society, are the ultimate “no no” in the ballet world. The ballet, to this day, is noted for its sylph-like women with ballet buns and legs for miles. Thus, Antin, or Antinova rather, infiltrates the dance world, challenging the typical dancing body and its impact on feminine ideals. Classic.

Eleanor Antin, The Hebrews from Recollections of My Life with Diaghilev1919-1929, 1977-1978. Courtesy: Ronald Feldman Fine Arts.

But there’s a new girl in town, and she’s depicting the ballet in a whole new light. Meghann Snow, a grad student at Parsons The New School for Design, shatters the typical depiction of the dancing body like a hammer to fine china, forcing the viewer to explore the moving female body with honesty rather than idealized societal expectations, to examine body in a grittier, more realistic manner.

Meghann Snow, The Ballet Finger, 2008. 5′x10′, acrylic house paint, oil slick, caulking on wood panel. Courtesy: Meghann Snow.

At first glance, Snow’s featured painting, The Ballet Finger, appears to be a pink, pulsing organ-perhaps a pancreas or a pair of kidneys. But when viewed with a critical eye, it becomes apparent that this work, oil on canvas, is a pointer finger,a small, but very important element in ballet technique. Snow selects certain body parts, fingers and feet, zooms in on these body parts and dissects them, revealing both the beautiful and grotesque elements of the female body. This examination lends to a sort of internal duel, a tug of war between the aesthetically appealing and the bodily blemishes.

Meghann Snow, Size 7, dimensions variable. Courtesy: Parsons The New School for Design, Department of Fine Arts.

Though not on view at The Kitchen, Snow’s work Size 7 kicks the typical ballet shoe up a notch. Snow wraps bare feet in various colorful industrial materials. They’re wrapped sort of messily in canary yellows and navy blues, patches of lime green and magenta. This messiness depicts the wear and tear of the dancing foot, the wear and tear of the dancing body and mind, the lack of glamour, the blood, sweat and tears wrapped up in one tiny shoe. Size 7 is winking with dualism: the sweet fervor of the dance world combined with the twinges of physical and emotional pain that sometimes exhaust the joy of movement.

Both Antin and Snow reveal the restrictive nature of the moving body, as well as the restrictive nature of feminine beauty ideals in general. These female artists, though from different generations, are challenging women to do away with perfection, and reclaim the beauty in those infamous measurements: 36-24-36.

Check out Snow’s work at her open studio at Parsons on Monday, May 12th from 6-8 pm! (25 E. 13th Street, Studio 31)