Understanding Ballet — Love, Loss, A Battle I Could Never Win
By Haoran Xia
October 1, 2025
My admiration of ballet started with my obsession with the concept of ‘perfection’, and my obscene desire of keeping everything under control, of discipline, of power, and, inevitably, of art.
1.
The symbol of the military is something we are familiar with in the modern world.
Particularly, what we are familiar with is not the physical subjects involved in the production of the military, but the image, the aura, and the representation of the military: discipline, control, seriousness, and perfection.
If one subjectively thinks of “military,” one cannot help but think of the cultural and historical heritage inherent in the Soviet Union’s military: a homogenous collective made of different individuals. These individuals go through both physical and mental training to become part of this collective, while at the same time losing their sense of individuality. The moment in which they both gain and lose a sense of self is when they put on the uniform, severing themselves into another being — a being of the military.
However, to avoid any conceptual confusion, I must state that the “military” I have been, and will be, referring to is the concept born after the Second World War, namely, the military associated with the invention of nuclear weapons in the era of postmodernity. The term “military” is not archaic; its nature is no longer tied to the traditional definition of an army with weapons or the old-fashioned formation of soldiers. The “military” I refer to is centered on the quality of its homogeneity, and it is in this homogeneity that the military establishes its postmodern aesthetics: the eternal pursuit of complete discipline, sameness, and perfection.
In the post–Second World War era, where politics and the world economy were precarious (and still are), the sense of discipline and sameness the military brings creates a sense of stability — opposing the unstable reality — and therefore produces a false sense of pleasure for the public.
This pleasure does not merely come from the fact that we, as citizens, find stability and a superficial belief that everything is going to be all right within the presentation of the military, but also from the fact that we are more viscerally drawn to the visual symbolisation of the military — namely, the pleasing effect of seeing something flawless. And through being seen and producing such effects, an aesthetics is made.
Unavoidably, this pleasing effect exists in ballet, too.
The representation of the military may have evolved through the establishment of modernity, transitioning from something cruel to something aesthetic. However, the representation of ballet remains archaic over time: something beautiful, something serious, and, of course, something flawless.
The form of ballet is always the first thing that catches the viewer’s visual attention — seeing those extreme positions and movements expressed physically through the dancers’ bodies creates a sense of admiration, making us believe in the existence of the concept of “perfection.” Like the individuals within the military, each dancer trains in hardship to the point that their body and ballet become one — a production of homogeneity.
Within the concept of “perfection,” ballet establishes its image of seriousness and of a high form of art. Its aesthetics, therefore, develops from a foundation that combines both its artistic form of expression and its serious, flawless quality.
Interestingly and truthfully, as I indicated, the aesthetics of ballet never fades, nor does it evolve over time — it remains still, in its own form, on stage, within the dancers’ bodies. Yet, in the contemporary setting where objects are constantly intertwined, the modern myth of ballet somehow finds its root (and/or vice versa) in the military: the correlation of their symbolism of perfection, their discipline, and most of all, the unspeakable cruelty of the production of homogeneity.
2.
He is a professional ballet dancer.
But he is not the first ballet dancer I dated.
My experience with the first ballet dancer (L) was not great — L is reserved, confused, troubled with intimacy. I was not in a good condition either when I met him. I had just graduated from my master’s program, had no jobs, was still working in hospitality, and was living in an apartment that I did not want to return to. Yet, with my respect and admiration for ballet, I felt drawn to him. I also quickly noticed that my attraction to him was not really about him as an individual, but about the image his profession represents — the flawless form of art. It felt like I was confronted by something serious and something beautiful, and I lost navigation of myself in the presence of seriousness and beauty. Truthfully, I was not so much drawn to him per se, but to the power he held through ballet. Simply put: ballet owned me.
L is tall, blonde, strongly built, and loves poetry. Physically, he is the standard representation of a male ballet dancer. I was captivated by his image, and by the metaphoric power he had through ballet. Most of the time while we were dating, I often compared my physicality to his, wondering why someone like him would choose to see me. I was insecure, confused, and fragile.
I lost the battle between me and ballet in the first place.
Two months later, we ended.
We had our last conversation in Oosterpark, near the rocks close to the hotel.
It was November 1st; the weather was getting colder, the chilly wind felt both fresh and harsh, and when you breathed in, it felt like a sharp needle going through your nose. Hands in pockets, scarves around necks, he was sitting on a rock and I was standing right in front of him. Before we exchanged goodbye, he shed a few tears — to this day, I still don’t understand where those tears came from — was he upset that he is never going to see me again? If yes, then why would he initiate this conversation in the first place? I’ll never find the answers.
I was traumatised by this experience. Or rather, I was deeply disappointed in myself — in how much I lowered my self-esteem in front of ballet. I was afraid. And I said to myself: this won’t happen again; I need to win.
When I met him (not L) in March, and when I found out he was also a ballet dancer, I felt nothing.
I had gone through this before, and this time I had trained myself to separate my personal feeling towards an individual from my worship of the form of ballet. This is my own battle — simply because I cannot fall in love with a profession and let my passion, sense of worship, and desire for art carry me away.
Luckily, he is very different from L.
Passionate, smart, ambitious, vigorous — his being is like a beam of light, illuminating the gloomy Amsterdam.
He has darker skin, curly hair, long features, and he is always full of energy.
This feels real, I said to myself.
At first, I couldn’t believe the attraction, nor the intense emotions I felt towards him.
This is simply because I have always viewed intimacy and love as research topics where I detach my personal feelings and see myself as an object to study, and to analyse. I struggled with intimacy because of the tragic marriage of my parents, but I had learned to overcome my own fear from my first breakup and allow myself, fully, to be intimate with another person. So intimacy is something difficult for me — in a sense that I take it too seriously, and in a sense that I either give it my all, or nothing at all.
We started to hang out more.
We took walks. We went for ice cream while it was still 10 degrees outside. We sat in a park. We once ate out in a small but authentic Tibetan restaurant in De Pijp, which was the first time we went out for dinner. We smoked cigarettes on his balcony. We talked about dancing, me teaching a class in the sauna, politics, and dancing.
I had no expectations whatsoever when I met him, and no pursuit of romance, or even of a potential relationship. For the longest time, I truly enjoyed spending time with someone without worrying about what the future might be, or what ‘we’ could turn out to be.
It was joyful, I was happy, he was honest, and this felt real.
One month later, I fell in love.
3.
Most of the conversations we exchange are about dancing/ballet.
As I mentioned, I admire ballet for its seriousness and its beauty, but also for its extreme technicality that seems impossible to achieve.
Dancing, one of the major artistic categories, is one specific discipline where the body is the medium. To dance simply means to use one’s body to express the rawest emotions through different forms of movements that create space for the body to achieve an artistic goal. Movements vary in direction, too — one lifts up, one jumps down, one goes left, and one runs in circles. And to be able to move, one takes up much of their physical momentum to create certain flow of movement in a certain space and in a limited period of time.
This momentum allows the body to shift into forms it wants to/is required to be. It is a force that moves against many other sources of forces: the force of emotions, the force from the audience, and the force from the symphony. So this is to say, the technicality of dancing does not merely lie in the body’s momentum pushing itself into movement for the creation of art, but also, ultimately, in fighting against the most powerful force of all: gravity.
Each movement — a jump, a twist, a lap of running on stage, even just a lift of the neck to look up at the ceiling — is a test of the body, where its limit is examined again and again.
In this sense, a dancing body becomes a complex system where emotions, physicality, technique, and constant force are crucially required and consumed in parallel, making dancing — this movement itself — the most challenging and demanding form of art.
It is cruel, and this is exactly why it is so pleasing to watch.
Another reason why this form of beauty is cruel, according to French playwright Antonin Artaud, is because it is always in motion. As Artaud writes: in stillness we find the true form of beauty (if you look at film studies, this is also why the application of the ‘still frame’ is widely encouraged). The simplest translation could be: stillness allows enough time and space to be used in the pursuit truth and beauty.
In that sense, movement, on the contrary, consumes time and space (this is a different kind of ‘consumption’, as time and space are consumed naturally) and blurs the boundaries between beauty and ugliness, realness and falsehood. What movement does is shift focus and and to create a dream-like image where one loses track of time and space, and fully immerses oneself in the world of dancing.
And it is in being lost in world of dancing that we find ourselves stilled — viewing in silence, touched by the waves of tremendous force that dancing produces. This is when time freezes, and true beauty is found. And this is exactly what he told me after I went to his premiere of David Dawson’s The Four Seasons: ballet dancers can freeze time.
4.
He also froze my time back when we were together.
There are moments in life — specific moments — where you physically feel that time has stopped, that every little thing in that one moment is meant to happen, and that you viscerally feel your soul is leaving your body, looking at yourself, transitioning into another dimension where you feel true happiness.
Moments like these are rare.
Moments like these happen two times in my life so far:
The first time was when my first boyfriend and I went camping somewhere in a forest near Tel Aviv on June 9th, 2019: it was late in the evening; he set up a fire by collecting wood nearby, and we sat on a large bench by the flames, listening to Thru These Tears by LANY; I lay my head on his shoulder, watching the fire, thinking: I am the luckiest person in the world;
The second time was when he took me out to dinner at an Italian restaurant we both liked, on August 10th, 2025: it was eight in the evening; the sun was still out but turning orange, the whole sky clear and clean — it was one of those perfect summer evenings in Amsterdam. We walked along the streets by the Amstel River, then sat on a bridge, our legs hanging over the edge. Facing the sun, his head on my shoulder, I smelled his hair and then kissed his forehead, thinking, six years apart, I am the luckiest person in the world, again.
But happiness never stays.
June 12th.
I went to his premiere of David Dawson’s The Four Seasons with my friend. Before the premiere, he and I had been talking about this piece for months. It is one of the most successful and artistically outstanding contemporary ballet works in recent years. I was curious to see the show, as Vivaldi’s Four Seasons has been one of my favorite classical pieces ever since I started playing violin at the age of ten; he was excited and happy to have been selected to be in the first cast.
The day arrived. The show was brilliant. While I was watching, there were moments when I had trouble breathing and felt the urge to cry — simply because I was deeply touched by the theme Dawson created: life and death. And because I kept thinking of Kundera’s philosophy on human existence, and his death two years ago. I was so deep in my emotions I didn’t realize the show had ended. Suddenly, I saw him — with his fellow dancers — step forward, bow, and thank the audience as always. I was clapping, endlessly, until my hands began to hurt. I was still buried in my emotions, but at the same time, I felt proud, confident, happy. I wanted to tell the whole world: you see that man up there? He is mine.
After the premiere came celebratory drinks. My friend and I went out into the hall.
Unexpectedly, I saw L again. It was the first time in 7 months we saw each other again since we ended. For a moment, I felt I was taken back to last year where I was insecure and fragile. But I felt noting. He didn’t change at all — the same haircut, the same tone when he speaks, the same person I thought I knew 7 months ago. But I’ve changed.
Two drinks, a few conversations, and a backstage tour later, we left with his friends. Spirits were high, and we all went back to his apartment, just around the corner from the national theatre.
It was me, him, and three of his close friends. We sat in his living room, the balcony doors wide open: summer breeze drifting in, cigarettes lit, beer cans opened, and conversations flowing on and on and on.
I watched them speak. I listened. And I noticed how passionate they were about their profession. In that moment I realized how much ballet meant to them: it was their hobby, their profession, their career, and their dream. For him, ballet perhaps even meant faith — it was through ballet that he was treated as a normal boy: a boy who dared to dream big, a boy who worked hard and expressed himself fully through his body. He was given the chance to be himself, regardless of his race and his sexuality.
Then I thought of myself, my friends, the people I’ve met — how many of us ever allow ourselves to be in such a position? Perhaps none. So I was genuinely happy for him, and for them. Yet, at the same time, I had an epiphany: this relationship was never about the two of us.
June 19th.
We became official.
June 27th.
It was almost the end of their season. Me, him, a few of his close friends, and two of my close friends went to Sissi’s for a few drinks. A few beer and glasses of wine later, we went back to his. Spirits were high, and then we went to TillaTec.
Friday night, the whole city was out.
In the smoke and under the blurry lights from the DJ set, we held hands, danced on the floor, getting tipsy and high, and the next thing I knew, his lips were on mine. We walked out and sat on a leather couch in the middle of the lobby, watching other people converse and smoke through the massive windows in front of us.
"I don’t want you to leave,”
His head on my shoulder, his cheek touching the skin of my neck, his breath so clear and close that I don’t feel the existence of the whole world — it was only us.
“I’m not going anywhere. I’m right here.”
I said, firmly. Butterflies in my stomach. My breath caught short. Thousands of horses running in my body, pushing me to my edge.
He nodded. My fingers touched his hair. My face was clam, but my heart was burning.
“You know, my love for people is always conditional, but this is the first time I love someone without conditions.”
He looked at me and nodded again.
Our gazes met, and then our lips.
We stayed in silence. I heard his heartbeat, and then I heard mine.
It was real. I said to myself.
We stood up and joined the crowd again.
One hour later, we went to Raum.
We left at 6am, and the sun was out. It was beautiful. It was complete.
Our story had just begun, I thought.
Two months later, we broke up.
5.
Breaking up with him also meant breaking up with ballet, which made me think about what ballet means to me, to this relationship with him, and to my feelings — after all, I had been in a relationship with ballet for a whole year. I was trying to seek the truth. And the truth is: subconsciously, I am still afraid of ballet, even though I tried to train myself not to be. This is not just abstract theory — I lived it, in my awe and fear during every performance.
This battle between me and ballet, in the end, is a battle between me and myself — between the part of me that worships this form of high art with its homogeneous quality, and the part of me that tries to be vulnerable within intimacy while remaining consciously aware of the modern myth of ballet. So indeed, this relationship between him and me was never really about the two of us: it was between me and him, him and ballet, and then me and ballet.
I was jealous — because as someone who not only worships ballet but also the power of control, I had lost my control, and I envied how much power ballet has over me. I resented myself for losing it again, when I should have learned from the first time with L, and in doing so, I lost this battle.
6.
I still want to understand how I lost, and what this relationship with ballet gave me. And this is my final argument on ballet: that the body is the medium.
That’s the truth about ballet. Or, about dancing in general.
In other categories of art, there is always another form of material to support the production: in music there are instruments; in painting, there is color and canvas; in writing, there are pens and paper (or computers); and in architecture, there are hundreds of materials.
In dancing, there is only one material: the body.
On stage, the body and the dancing becomes one, demonstrating the union of the physicality as well as the technicality of the body with the materiality of dancing. This is not a relationship where one depends on the other for its existence — it is a relationship where independence is diminished, and complete codependence is sought and required. In this sense, the body becomes the material for dancing.
The materiality of the body, therefore, becomes the most crucial factor in the making of any dancing production. It is one essential technology that any production needs to complete its last stage, and this technology entirely depends on the condition of life.
If we look at this in a Marxist approach, an interesting exchange occurs:
the life of the body = the materiality = the technology = its use value (not the value of agency) = its use in production = its monetary value.
This is to state the materiality of the body applies its use of value to generate profits for dancing companies and theatres — after all, this is a profession where employment contracts are made and signed. The body furthermore becomes a currency: you are flexible, and you are beautiful, you can stay; you gain weights, or have been inactive, and you are suggested to leave.
These are just a few of the material realities in the dance world, where dancers’ bodies are treated solely as monetary objects to support capitalist production. If we only look at the body as the medium for dance, we ignore the unbearable truth of its materialisation, where it becomes both technology and currency. This truth allows us — the viewers — to understand and see dancers not just as beautiful beings, foundational to art, but as human beings: strong and vulnerable, made of blood and flesh. This is when the fetishisation of ballet dancers is demystified: without their homogenous military aesthetics, deprived of their material form — bodies being bodies.
To conclude this section, I would like to extend my argument to a broader context, imploring you to share compassion, care, and to create an open space — a different route, an exit — for dancers to appreciate their being, regardless of the cruel and harsh judgments they may face from an injury or an unsuccessful move on stage. This is simply because, in the current capitalist, technopolitical world, we are all exchanging parts of ourselves for money — for survival. In this sense, we are all, one way or another, technologically and materially constructed.
So when I saw him on stage, I saw the entirety of him.
7.
But he left, and I stayed.
But he never left.
Every relationship is like an education.
There are moments of hardships where we struggle to understand ourselves and the other person. There are moments where we pass certain tests and feel proud of ourselves, but the next day we fall into another void again, wondering when the testing will end. There are also moments of heartbreak, where we are thrown back into our own world, making us question what is left for us now that we are all by ourselves again.
But every time — through heartbreaks, tears, breakdowns, and countless hours of grief — we emerge as different people, feeling things we’ve never felt before. We thought we were still the same, but we are not. Something internal has changed eternally — a part we gave away to the other person is refilled by something they gave us. We feel confused, lost, beaten up, but renewed.
So yes, he never left.
Before we met for the last time, I was afraid I would be too emotional to speak, so I wrote him a letter to express my thoughts.
In this letter, I wrote:
After all, we are two complete strangers who come from two completely different worlds and communicate in a foreign language. So we were both brave enough to give this relationship a try; however, we are in two different places.
We tried, we loved, and now I speak of him in the past tense.
The battle ended. I’ve lost again.
I thought I knew how I lost, but I guess I’ll never find the answers.