ABSTRACT
As a form of intertextual palimpsestuous practice, reworkings are hybrid texts that evoke, at the very least, a bidirectional gaze. These dances have the potential to demythologise the dances of the ballet canon, for as canonical counter-discourse (which may be intentional or otherwise) reworkings engage in cultural debates that have sought to deconstruct and rewrite the ideologies embedded within canonical practices. Emphasising two recurring aspects of reworkings, on the one hand I brought to the fore the ways in which these dances have reconceptualised gender, sexuality and race, creating a proliferation of identities, bringing viewers’ attention to previously unseen and unnoticed perspectives. On the other hand I suggested that, however radical or subversive any particular reworking may be, the canon continues to reverberate within them as they simultaneously reveal and reiterate their sources.
