"Perhaps because it's Christmas, perhaps because I've been overdue on this column, but red shoes have been haunting my steps all month. I've written before about the charge that our most girl-coded garments and accessories have always possessed for me - a charge that is felt regardless of whether a girl happens to be wearing them. For me, that charge is never greater than in a pair of ballet shoes; certainly never more strongly felt than when those ballet shoes are red."
"It's lovely: a jazzy, period-specific confection, and perfect for Christmas. But, for me, it glides and darts about the surface of what The Red Shoes - both the 1948 film and the 1845 Hans Christian Andersen tale - is really, substantively about. The production's take on the fate of a young female ballet star is like Baz Luhrmann's take on sex work in Moulin Rouge!: the sheer spectacle is the message."
"Meanwhile at Art Basel Miami, Maya Man showed her piece (The Angels Wanna Wear My Red Shoes) with bitforms gallery. (Man and I first bonded a couple summers ago over continuing to age and yet never letting go of investigating girlhood). The generative work scrapes user-generated posts from Depop of individuals selling red shoes, displayed on a collection of screens."
The fifth season is called Primary Sources and focuses on how adaptation, translation, and the thin line between fiction and memory form depictions of girlhood. Studies of film and visual culture will include closer readings of the texts they draw from. Red shoes recur as a charged symbol, especially red ballet shoes, conveying a concentrated sense of girl-coded allure and danger. Matthew Bourne's 2016 ballet, drawing on the 1948 film and Andersen's tale, emphasizes spectacle while skimming deeper themes about a young ballerina's fate. Maya Man's generative artwork scrapes Depop listings of red shoes to probe teenage image-making and the overlap of advertising language with intimate domestic photography. There is also mention of missed Maryam Nassir Zadeh boots perceived as 'too red.'
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