The ballerina character created by Eleanor Antin emerged at the same time as the king and the nurse characters. According to the artist, the ballerina character is her feminine ideal, since, as an artist and as a woman, she finds herself marginalised by society. The ballerina is an idealised artist who is totally devoted to the mastery of her art; however, she must face up to many failures and deceptions. Moreover, the ballerina is the paradigm of every little girl's dream that is never realised.

Eleanor Antin studied dance for several months in order to play this character of the dancer, which she uses in several videos. In this way, she was able to make the character evolve to the point that she became Eleanora Antinova, black, aging, American ballerina, a former star of the Russian ballets of Sergei Diaghilev. While the character is fictional, the ballet company is very real.

In The Ballerina and the Bum, Eleanor Antin appears as a highly ambitious dancer, whose main objective is to traverse the United States to get to New York, the city of success.

In the course of her journey, while she is awaiting the departure of a freight train, she makes the acquaintance of a vagrant, and shares her dream of success with him. They talk about life and their hopes as they wait for the train that will take them to New York: the place where their dreams will come true.

Eleanor Antin reveals her talents for parody in this video, in a similar manner to Charlie Chaplin; she is dressed like a dancer, with a tutu and ballet shoes. Through an atypical encounter, this humorous work examines and ironises the American myth that imagines that any person living in the United States can achieve success through sheer hard work, determination and talent.

Priscilia Marques