Imaging & Imagination
The incorporeality of
the ballerina en pointe was eroticized through
the very techniques that affected her 
otherworldliness.
By focusing on the ballerina as supernatural, the middle classes could
side-step “guilt
about the quality of her work life.” This otherworldliness is taken
up and emphasized in the prints of ballerinas. The commercial space of
the stage is transformed into the abstract space of a classical scene or
natural setting. This relocation of the dancer allowed
her to fulfill the contradictory expectations that the middle-class man
harboured. The realities of the impoverished and disreputable
life of the
dancer were effaced, leaving only the idealized and purified legs, arms,
hips and bust of the dancer, who is depicted gazing out enticingly at the
viewer.