Narratives of Progress and Les Ballets Jazz De Montréal

Abstract

This chapter offers Les Ballets Jazz de Montréal as a challenge to historical narratives that identify the contemporary moment through a lens of liberal progress. While there may be some validity to scholarship that sees the ballet performed today as increasingly inclusive, ethnically diverse, and culturally sensitive, Les Ballets Jazz de Montréal’s historical trajectory is not a move toward multicultural inclusivity, but rather a renewing of racist imagery and a continual struggle to legitimize itself by strengthening its connection to Europeanist aesthetics. Using the company’s past as a lens for thinking about historiography, this chapter studies Les Ballets Jazz de Montréal to disrupt linear narratives that connect the evolution of contemporary ballet to notions of multicultural advancement.