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Silent Fighter

Non-binary in pointe shoes: the fantastic Leroy Mokgatle liquefies every gender boundary at the Berlin State Ballet

by Dorion Weickmann

She comes onto the stage bouncy, elegant, lively and turbo-dynamic. Her leg whizzes up, the pointe shoe seemingly extends the arched instep to infinity. A mischievous smile flashes across her face, while the tutu bounces up and down around her waist, whipped up by jagged jumps. The performance took place last winter, the venue was Berlin's Deutsche Oper, and the arrangement was the work of none other than the legendary choreographer William Forsythe: Blake Works I, originally designed for the ballet of the Paris Opera, turned out to be a revelation in more ways than one. In fact, the evening became a revolution quietly instigated on pointe: Leroy Mokgatle, born as a boy in South Africa 24 years ago, convinced everyone as one of the greatest ballerinas ever to be seen in the capital.

Series of Pirouettes
The colleagues who train with Leroy Mokgatle think so too. A few chats in the hallway in the ballet wing, high up under the opera roof, and everyone knows: "Flawless technique, wonderful person," is the unanimous verdict. Not the slightest feeling of competition? Heads are shaken vigorously. The same reaction, half an hour later in a conversation with Leroy Mokgatle. Although she has rushed straight from rehearsal, she does not seem stressed or tense. Black scarf around her head, discreet earrings, dazzling laughter and cheerful facial expressions, immediately the assurance on her lips: "I am infinitely grateful to the dancers because they give me courage and dispel my self-doubts." Fears that Mokgatle's performances do not even begin to reveal. When the dancer, who has been promoted to demi-soloist since the current season, performs a series of pirouettes in Forsythe's Blake Works I or parades as a socialite in Christian Spuck's Bovary, all necks in the audience crane: so much charisma, esprit and skill appeases even skeptical advocates of tradition who consider fluid gender boundaries and crossings from one gender faction to the other to be an attack on the core brand of ballet.

The appearance of non-binary dancers does in fact shake the foundations of an art that has traditionally been based on the principle of polarity: here female, there male. Unless it was about drag roles or relevant upper-class shows. For half a century, for example, the boys from the Ballets Trockadero de Monte-Carlo have been touring the world to perform classic women's numbers from Swan Lake or Don Quixote. Not for trans dancers who don't want to spend their stage life making fun. For artists like Leroy Mokgatle, who makes it clear right at the start of the conversation: "I am genderfluid, but I prefer the female pronoun."

Ballet, a Chance Discovery
About ten years ago, the previously solid gender facade in classical dance began to crumble. Ballet directors around the world were faced with new challenges, which most of them met with a shrug of ignorance. Tamara Rojo, then head of the English National Ballet in London, was the first to practice tolerance. In 2017, she hired Chase Johnsey as part of the female corps de ballet. However, it remained a one-off production, after which Johnsey disappeared into obscurity. Nevertheless, the path was paved and over the years, talents such as Ashton Edwards and Maxfield Haynes emerged, shaking up the US scene in particular. In Europe, in addition to Mokgatle, Naomi Brito at the Tanztheater Wuppertal Pina Bausch, and Max Richter at the Ballett Zürich are currently making a name for themselves. But even theatres like Kaiserslautern have hired non-binary dancers. The shift to the female-labelled field seems to dominate events so far — the direction that Leroy Mokgatle has also taken.

This required a lot of courage, because darker skin and a ballet career were considered incompatible in Leroy's early teenage years. The dancer comes from a rather conservative family which she had to convince one after the other: "I'm gay, I want to dance, and I'm also non-binary." Her relatives reacted with irritation and sniffles. Her father had already disappeared from the scene at birth, and her mother died when the child had just started school. So her grandparents took care of her, which also meant moving from the provinces to Pretoria.

Leroy Mokgatle came to ballet purely by chance: "I must have been seven or eight years old when the question of what to do in the afternoon came up. I went swimming, which was quite nice, but I soon got bored. The pool was near a school gym where girls practiced ballet. I was immediately hooked." Leroy put on her pointe shoes quite early, was recognized as a talent and was gradually sent on to the next academy. Officially (at that time) only the men's repertoire was open to him, but his androgynous dual talent can hardly be denied.

Path to Freedom
In the depths of the internet there is a clip showing Leroy Mokgatle at the Prix de Lausanne in 2016 — before the victory: the appearance of a young person who dances a manly, toned sirtaki in the footsteps of macho hero Anthony Quinn alias Alexis Sorbas, not deviating from the frame of the Mediterranean youth for a moment. Today, less than ten years later, Leroy Mokgatle has matured into a radiant Forsythe ballerina, a winegrower's girl in Giselle, and a "fairy of wisdom" in Marcia Haydée's Sleeping Beauty — thanks to her captivating ability to connect with the other person and at the same time remain completely true to herself, in the outlines of her own personality. Even a mini-performance like the one in Christian Spuck’s Nocturne alongside Jan Casier becomes an admired vignette: a pas de deux, as lyrical as a love poem and as elegiac as an epitaph.

Leroy Mokgatle's dance wafts sensually onto the dance floor like a unisex perfume making polarities disappear: through dissolution, reconciliation, fusion. This highlights her stage appearance, a transformation that overcomes physical boundaries. How does that feel? Mokgatle describes the two-faced traditional repertoire vividly: "When I dance male parts, it feels as if the figure is behind frosted glass. I can see their outline, but not the person. When I dance female roles, the door inside unlocks and I end up outside." The path to freedom took place in stages and apparently relatively conflict-free: "I am a quiet fighter," says the twenty-something, "but all the more persistent for that." She wins the Prix de Lausanne, stays in Europe and takes a job with the modernized Béjart Ballet in Lausanne. And again, chance comes to the rescue: "A dancer dropped out and I stepped in." A little later, she was on stage in pointe shoes — officially still a man. A breakthrough, both artistically and career-wise.

Change and Uncertainty
Leroy Mokgatle moved from Béjart to Ballett Zürich in 2022, only to follow director Christian Spuck to the Staatsballett Berlin just one year later. She can no longer imagine any other life, enjoys the city, makes friends with her colleagues and spends her sparse free time preparing her pointe shoes like any other ballerina: "Sewing on ankle straps, softening the soles, the usual procedures." Only in passing does Leroy Mokgatle let on how strenuous the last few years have been for body, mind and soul. Perceiving the change in one's own feelings, thoughts and dancing means uncertainty. At the Staatsballett she feels well looked after and supported, "no matter where the transition leads". After all, everything is in process, nothing is meant to last forever. And a lot of it is a question of how you feel on the day: "You don't have to commit yourself to anything, identity has countless faces." Leroy Mokgatle knows what she's talking about, and lives by this maxim. @leroy_mx now has almost 34,000 followers on Instagram.

Start afresh somewhere else? Not imaginable at the moment. The State Ballet offers training and staffing conditions that are appropriate for diversity, clearly more so than other companies. Before routine sets in, Leroy Mokgatle ensures variety herself. For example, by moving — recently from middle-class Charlottenburg to the more varied Schöneberg. The dancer envisions getting to know a different Berlin neighborhood every year. It fits perfectly with the continuous expansion of her profile, which is nothing less than: pioneering work in pointe shoes.

To be seen as Puck in Edward Clug's new Sommernachtstraum from 21 February; in Forsythe's Approximate Sonata 2016 on 27 February, 2, 10 April;
www.staatsballett-berlin.de