Critics & Reviews
Reviews of the Romantic
ballet, circulating in the mid-nineteenth century,
frequently discussed the ballerina in terms of body parts, rather than
as a whole. As
Roy
Porter (2001) points
out, “praise of female
body parts [is] inseparable from voyeuristic and salacious mental undressing:
with the anatomized woman becoming in effect a pin-up” (p. 244).
Keeping this in mind, the reviews of the Romantic ballet provided an impressive
source
of “pin-up” literature, providing accounts and appraisals of
female bodies rather than dancers. There seems to exist a particular fascination
with the legs and feet of the ballerina, the focus on these two body parts
dominating the commentary of numerous critics from this period. Theophile
Gautier’s remarks on the subject of Fanny Elssler 
demonstrate
this anatomization of the body well (Guest
1965):
"
Mlle. Fanny Elssler is tall, supple, and well-formed; she has
delicate wrists and slim ankles; her legs, elegant and well-turned, recall
the slender
but muscular legs of Diana, the virgin huntress; the knee-caps are well-defined,
stand out in relief, and make the whole knee beyond reproach; her legs
differ considerably from the usual dancers’ legs, whose bodied seem
to have run into their stockings and settled there; they are not the calves
of a parish beadle or of a jack of clubs, which arouse the enthusiasm of
the old roués in the stalls and make them continuously polish the
lenses of their opera-glasses, but two beautiful legs like those of an
antique statue, worthy of being cast and studied with care. We shall be
pardoned, we hope, for having discoursed at such length on legs, but we
are speaking of a dancer." (p. 21)
Gautier’s fascination with Elssler’s body parts, in particular
her legs, is clear. What is also evident is that this fascination is somewhat
taboo.