Until fairly recently, it has been common practice in ballet companies for the female dancers in ballets like “Swan Lake,” “Giselle” and “La Bayadère” to apply a whitening makeup in order to look like beings from another world, be they swans, sylphides, spirits or Shades. Lopes Gomes, who is French, is the only Black female dancer at the Staatsballett Berlin, and just a few days earlier, she said in an interview, one of the company’s ballet mistresses had told her to use the white makeup to color her skin for “Swan Lake.” Then, she later recounted, she repeatedly dipped a wet sponge into a pot of white pancake makeup, applying it carefully to her face, neck and upper body. Chloé Lopes Gomes had done her hair and makeup and fixed the feathered swan headdress in place before the rehearsal in February.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |