“There’s a subdivision of feminist thinking that condemns the beloved storybook ballets of the nineteenth century for their ostensible political incorrectness. All those sylphs and Wilis, it maintains, all those maidens suspended in states of enchantment represent women as frail, vulnerable creatures, deprived of power over their own destinies, the victims—often in the name of love—of dominant men. I think it’s absurd to apply sociological convictions and agendas to aesthetic creations—particularly when it comes to the sociology of one era and the art of another.”