Kendall Jenner and Vogue Espana angered Dancers Everywhere
Kendall Jenner has angered the dance world with her latest Vogue Espana video. The video was to promote Jenner’s October cover.
The premise of the video was the fact that Jenner didn’t have a normal childhood. She didn’t get to do kid things.
“I had to grow up pretty fast, but I love being a kid,” Jenner says in the video’s voiceover. “Run around like a child — just not care. I’ve always been super adventurous so I love doing stuff like that. I don’t know, stupid stuff. I have a really weird sense of humor, I think.”
It’s an adorable premise, however, the controversy comes from Jenner being dressed as a ballerina (tutu and leg warmers and slippers, oh my!) and prancing around. It’s meant to be harmless and fun, but dancers everywhere took offense to it since Jenner has had no formal dance training.
DanceSpirit.com, in my opinion hit the nail on the head saying “they [Vogue Espana] decided to dress Jenner up in tutus and legwarmers and have her “do ballet,” though she’s clearly not ballet trained. In the voiceover, she talks about “loving being a kid” and missing childhood; the video is, apparently, a sort of little-girl fantasy on ballerina-ness. Which, OK. But to our eyes, the whole thing reads as pretty disrespectful to the artists who devote their lives to this demanding craft.”
But Jenner isn’t trying to “do ballet.” She isn’t doing grand battements, pirouettes, or arabesques. She is pretending to go back to a time when she wished she was a ballerina. Think of a small child in their first pair of ballet slippers, they don’t know proper ballet, so they just kind of prance and jump around. It’s cute on a 6 year old, but not a 20 year old super model.
Whether the video was meant to be offensive or not, it as angered a bunch of dancers. Many took to Twitter to express their outrage. Even Abby Lee Miller got in on the Drama!
I myself, being a former dancer initially took offense to Jenner’s video. I really did. I thought why did Vogue pick someone who wasn’t a dancer to do a dance photoshoot?!? Hello, that’s the the stupidest thing ever! But then I watched the video a couple of times and I kind of get what they were going for. I still don’t like it, but I get it. I think that it would have been a beautiful video if it showed Jenner actually taking a ballet class. Or if there were actual ballerinas in the video with her.
Us dancers are very sensitive when it comes to our craft, and it hurts when someone waltzes in (pun not intended but you get the drift) and pretend to do what we’ve spent our whole lives doing.
Jenner is a FABULOUS model. But she isn’t a ballerina. Watch the video below.
Neither Vogue Spain nor Kendall have spoken out about the controversy yet.
Source: seventeen.com
When Beth “grows up” she wants to see her creations appear on the screen and stage. In her free time, Beth blogs about her love of craft beer and writes screenplays. She received her bachelors in journalism from Youngstown State and received her masters in communication from The University of Akron. She is honored to be a part of the FanFest family.
