âGentleman Jackâ Brings a Quiet Revolution to Ballet
Annabelle Lopez Ochoaâs new ballet, based on the life of one of the first modern lesbians, is changing how dancers view their traditional roles.
by Laura Cappelle - The New York Times, March 2, 2026
One morning last August, the female dancers of Northern Ballet tried something most of them had never done before: partnering each other.
In one of the companyâs studios in Leeds, England, there were giggles and some near falls. Carefully but eagerly, the dancers tried to steady their partners on pointe â in ballet, usually the task of men. By lunchtime Federico Bonelli, the director of Northern Ballet, was demonstrating the correct way to hold out an arm for support â palm up, not too close to the body, at bellybutton level â to women in line for coffee.
âItâs the opposite,â said the dancer Nida Aydinoglu, 20, miming how she usually gives her hand to a male partner, palm down.
âItâs just a new technique,â Bonelli replied with a smile.
Six months later, Aydinoglu and her female colleagues are now flying through closely entangled lifts and turns â and will soon showcase them in a landmark new work that premieres on March 7 at Leeds Grand Theater: âGentleman Jack,â Annabelle Lopez Ochoaâs adaptation of the 2019 television series about Anne Lister, a 19th-century English landowner known as one of the first modern lesbians.
For most of ballet history, heterosexual romance has been the default. Telling Listerâs story is a quiet revolution. Openly queer characters are a rarity in the art formâs repertoire, and allusions to romance between women are always fleeting: a scene in Bronislava Nijinskaâs 1924 ballet âLes Bichesâ; a pas de deux in Roland Petitâs âProustâ half a century later; a kiss in Wayne McGregorâs âWoolf Works,â a 2015 production inspired by Virginia Woolf.
Rachael Gillespie, foreground left, and Gemma Coutts in a rehearsal for âGentleman Jack.â Sophie Stafford for The New York Times
By contrast, Lopez Ochoa offers an intimate, in-depth look at Listerâs relationships with two of her long-term lovers: Mariana Lawton, who has chosen to be married to a man over staying with her, and Ann Walker, a local heiress whom she âmarriesâ in a secret, symbolic ceremony. Both women are described at length in Listerâs diaries, which were partly encrypted to hide her sexuality.
âTo actually have a ballet centered on a queer woman â thatâs a really radical shift,â said Clare Croft, a dance historian and theorist at the University of Michigan, and the dramaturg for âGentleman Jack.â
The idea came to Bonelli, he said, after he was appointed to lead Northern Ballet in 2022. The company of 36 dancers has long specialized in storytelling, and boasts a repertoire of original ballets inspired by literary works and historical figures, like David Nixonâs âWuthering Heightsâ and Cathy Marstonâs âVictoria,â based on Queen Victoria.
Yet Bonelli wanted to diversify the stories ballet often tackles, and âGentleman Jackâ âfelt right in so in so many ways,â he said in February. In Yorkshire, the English region that is home to Northern Ballet, Lister is also a local celebrity: Her estate, Shibden Hall, is about a 20-minute drive from Leeds and open to the public for visits.
When Bonelli pitched the idea to Lopez Ochoa, an in-demand Belgian Colombian choreographer who has created a number of biographical ballets, her answer was a resounding yes. Her interest in gender fluidity had already led her to develop a script with the writer Luke Jennings for a ballet adaptation of âThe Danish Girl,â the 2015 film inspired by the life of the pioneering transgender woman Lili Elbe.
But no ballet company wanted to produce it, Lopez Ochoa said, adding: âThey told us, âWe think our patrons wouldnât want that.ââ
Left, Annabelle Lopez Ochoa, the ballet's choreographer. Sophie Stafford for The New York Times
She could relate to Listerâs struggle with gender norms. Lopez Ochoa âwanted to be a boyâ growing up in Belgium, she said, and struggled with balletâs expectations of dainty femininity throughout her training as a dancer. âI wanted to be taken seriously,â she said, âto have a voice.â
In âGentleman Jack,â the women performing Listerâs role have had to undo some of their classical training, too. For most of the ballet, they are in flat shoes rather than the more unstable pointe shoes, to allow them to be more grounded. They also wield canes and have gotten sore arms from lifting their partners, albeit not overhead. âThe more you allow yourself to take space, the better it is,â Lopez Ochoa told them in rehearsal.
To help the dancers, Croft, the dramaturg, showed them video compilations of the commanding walk developed by Suranne Jones, the British actor who played Lister on television. âShe looks like sheâs always on a mission,â said Gemma Coutts, a 24-year-old dancer who is set to dance Lister on opening night. Instead of stretching her feet elegantly, Coutts had to think âheel-toeâ: âIâm not just wafting off the stage,â she said. âIâm going from A to B.â
For Coutts, who said she usually gets ânervous and shy in front of a lot of people,â playing the unapologetic Lister has been confidence boosting. âGemma has come out of her shell,â said her colleague Julie Nunès, who plays Ann Walker.
The women of Northern Ballet have also embraced portraying same-sex romance. âI think they are less prude than I am,â Lopez Ochoa said with a laugh. Coutts said that she was a little anxious at first about kissing a woman, but the feeling went away fast. âFemale or male now, I realized that Iâm just acting,â she said, pointing out that gay men in ballet companies âhave to pretend like theyâre in love with women all the time.â
For âGentleman Jack,â Lopez Ochoa, who is straight, put together a creative team that included several members who identify as queer. Croft, who grew up taking ballet classes and later edited a book on queer dance, was especially elated. âBallet is my first dance love, but the codes of chivalry are so deep in it,â she said. âWhen it shows up in relation to queerness, it tends to focus more on the men.â
Gillespie, center, as Ann Walker, whom Anne Lister âmarriesâ in a secret, symbolic ceremony. Sophie Stafford for The New York Times
Initiatives like #QueerTheBallet, a collective started by Adriana Pierce to bring queer women and nonbinary artists together during the coronavirus pandemic, have improved visibility in recent years. Pierce, a former New York City Ballet dancer who is now a choreographer, said she has gone âfrom being the only person I knew to meeting people every day in the New York dance scene who are young and queer.â
Still, challenging balletâs gender binary through choreography takes the kind of research and time that mainstream ballet rarely provides. âI donât see a lot of larger companies investing in specifically queer voices and stories, or even anything thatâs different,â Pierce said. Queer retellings of ballet stories have come instead from independent artists, like Kade Pyle, who has produced queer versions of classics including âGiselleâ and âThe Sleeping Beautyâ through her company, Ballez.
By contrast, an established company like Northern Ballet, which tours widely around Britain, can bring a story like Listerâs to âa massive audience,â said Croft, who described the âcivic functionâ of the art form: âPeople take pride in their ballet companies.â One worry for Bonelli was that the male dancers of Northern Ballet would have little to do in a production like âGentleman Jack,â with only two soloist roles for them. But Lister âlived in a manâs world,â Lopez Ochoa said, and throughout the ballet, she squares off against businessmen to defend her financial interests, as she did in real life.
The men havenât complained. âPeople are interested that the company is willing to take this direction,â the dancer George Liang said. âAnd having a strong woman challenge me onstage is so much fun.â Aydinoglu, who performs the role of Lister, commented with a laugh: âIâve really enjoyed bossing the men around, Iâm not gonna lie.â
âThe more you allow yourself to take space, the better it is,â Lopez Ochoa told dancers in rehearsal. Sophie Stafford for The New York Times
Northern Ballet hosted an open rehearsal in January to gather feedback from women from Calderdale Friends of Dorothy, a social support group for lesbians, and a handful of younger queer women. They took their role to heart: In the discussion afterward, a sensual pas de deux between Lister and Walker came under criticism because Lopez Ochoa had opted to have two men â embodying genderless âwords,â a reference to Listerâs diaries â carry the women aloft in the scene.
âOne of them said, âYou cannot put men into an intimate moment between two women,ââ Lopez Ochoa recalled. âI let it simmer. Then I thought, I have to fix it.â Now, the women are alone onstage.
The group of queer women who sat in on the rehearsal were âblown away,â said Rachel Lappin, the Anne Lister program coordinator for Calderdale Council, who organized the outing. âOne member commented that it was the best day out sheâd had in decades.â
Support for âGentleman Jackâ has also translated into âincredibly successfulâ fund-raising for Northern Ballet, Bonelli said. Last year, the project, which is co-produced by the Finnish National Ballet, won the Fedora - Van Cleef & Arpels Dance Prize, a prestigious European award that supports the development of innovative stage productions. A crowdfunding campaign that runs alongside the prize ânot only met but surpassed its target,â Edilia Gänz, the director of Fedora, said in an email.
Ahead of the premiere, the dancers of Northern Ballet say the effects of embodying Listerâs bold individuality are already felt. âAs a woman, you often try to blend in, even in real life,â Aydinoglu said. âItâs been really, really different to just be my own person. At the end of the day, you donât need to please everyone.â
And for queer women in dance, âGentleman Jackâ is a special milestone. When asked about it, Croft paused, visibly moved.
âItâs probably telling that Iâm trying to catch myself from tearing up,â she said. âItâs rare you get to do something that you never imagined would happen.â
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