Dark Ballet

Background and composition#

In 2017, Madonna relocated to Lisbon, Portugal seeking a top football academy for her son David, who wanted to become a professional association football player. While living in the city, she began meeting artists, painters and musicians, who would invite her to “living room sessions”. In these sessions, they would bring food, sit around the table and musicians would start playing instruments, singing fado and samba music. On April 15, 2019, Madonna revealed Madame X as the album’s title. For the album, she worked with longtime collaborator Mirwais, who had previously worked on her albums Music (2000), American Life (2003) and Confessions on a Dance Floor (2005), as well as Mike Dean, who was a producer on Rebel Heart (2015), and Diplo. “Dark Ballet” was written and produced by Madonna and Mirwais, and samples Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s The Nutcracker (1892). It has been described as an experimental pop and electro-gospel piano ballad, with the vocals making use of a vocoder, and lyrics that address the singer’s faith and “lifelong crusade against the patriarchal forces of religion, gender, and celebrity”. In the opening verse, Madonna sings with “forceful confidence” the phrase “I can dress like a boy/I can dress like a girl” and, in an ironic tone, how “our world is obsessed with fame”. Following a piano interlude, it morphs into a “sinister” and “mangled, glitching” fragment from The Nutcrackers Dance of the Reed Pipes, in which Madonna sings in a heavily edited robotic voice “I will not denounce the things that I have said/I will not renounce my faith in my sweet Lord”. This last part, according to AllMusic’s Stephen Thomas Erlewine, evokes Stanley Kubrick’s 1971 film A Clockwork Orange. The song ends with Madonna’s daughters Stella and Estere blowing air through their lips, simulating wind. Madonna said the main inspiration of the song was Joan of Arc. During an interview with Rolling Stone, she explained that even after Joan of Arc won the fight against the English, the French were not pleased and “judged her”. They affirmed she was a man, a lesbian, a witch, and “burned her at the stake”, despite her being fearless. Madonna concluded, “I admire that”. “Dark Ballet” was released the final promotional single from Madame X on June 7, 2019.

Reception#

“Dark Ballet” received generally positive reviews from music critics. Stephen Thomas Erlewine from AllMusic deemed it an “ominous number” and one of the highlights of Madame X. Varietys Jeremy Helligar deemed it, alongside “God Control”, as one of the moments in Madame X where “true weirdness sets in”, and “the closest Madonna may ever come to her own ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’”. In a further review, Wass said it was the singer’s “most experimental” single. For Nicolas Hautman, from Us Weekly, it’s a “dark, glitchy number”. The HuffPosts Daniel Welsh said “Dark Ballet” was the strangest song on the album, where the singer “takes the opportunity to let her detractors know that no matter what is thrown at her, she won’t be backing down”. Louise Bruton from The Irish Times, stated that the song is “an experimental stand against authoritarianism”. Johnny Coleman, from The Hollywood Reporter, noted that Madonna “does a decent Wendy Carlos impression” on “Dark Ballet”. Sean Maunier, from Metro Weekly, called it an “infectiously weird track”. Jaime Tabberer, from Gay Star News, compared it to Madonna’s previous singles “Human Nature” (1995) and “What It Feels Like for a Girl” (2001), as all three songs exude “the same ferocious attitude” and touch on the themes of discrimination and sexism. Michael Arceneaux of NBC News called it one of the album’s “oddities”. On a negative review, Rich Juzwiak from Pitchfork said that “the 808 gloom of ‘Dark Ballet’ … is horrendous”. The Chicago Sun-Times Mark Kennedy wrote that the song “starts promising enough but drifts into a computer-altered pile of jumbled, pointless slogans”. In the United Kingdom, “Dark Ballet” peaked at number 83 on the official downloads chart the week of June 14.

Music video#

The music video for “Dark Ballet” was released on June 7, 2019, and was directed by Dutch-Ghanaian director Emmanuel Adjei. Madonna met Blanco through producer Mike Dean and became interested in working with her. After contacting her, Blanco flew to London and met her at her home. She had her listen to a finished version of the album and asked her to portray Joan of Arc in the video. Blanco is openly gay and HIV-positive, and Madonna felt she could relate to Joan’s struggles; “if you had existed as you in her time — you would have been burned at the stake as well”, she told her. According to CNN’s Chloe Melas, the video was “fresh proof that Madonna has never been afraid to push the limits”. In June 2019, it was named by Billboard as one of “The 20 Best Music Videos of 2019 (So Far)”.

Live performances#

Madonna first performed “Dark Ballet”, known then as “Beautiful Game”, at the 2018 Met Gala. Several dancers, wearing similar costumes, performed a choreography that seemed to control and restrain her movements. A fragment of “Dark Ballet” was included during Madonna’s performance of “Future” and “Like a Prayer” as an interval act in the final of the Eurovision Song Contest 2019. The song was then included on the singer’s Madame X Tour (2019−20), where it was the second song of the setlist. The performance featured “Joan of Arc references, religious garb and battles with dancers in gas masks reminiscent of the mice in The Nutcracker”, as well as a ballet breakdown halfway through. At one point, the singer gets pushed off a piano by one of the dancers. Billboards Joe Lynch praised the number’s “compelling mixture of Christian iconography and pagan pageantry”. The performance was included on the live album Madame X: Music from the Theater Xperience. On October 9, 2021, following the release of the Madame X concert film, Madonna gave an “intimate cabaret performance” in the basement of Marcus Samuelsson’s Harlem restaurant Red Rooster, and sang Lounge renditions of “Dark Ballet”, “La Isla Bonita” (1987), Madame X album track “Crazy”, and Cape Verdean coladeira song “Sodade”; she was dressed in a black cocktail dress with a “dramatic leg slit”, lace gloves and long blonde wig.

Credits and personnel#

• Madonna – writer, vocals, producer
• Mirwais – writer, producer Credits and personnel adapted from the Madame X album liner notes.