Well...George Balanchine wasn't. Igor Youskevitch wasn't. EddieVillella isn't. Paul Mejia was so non-gay he lost his job when hemarried Suzanne Farrell out from under Balanchine's nose. RobertWeiss isn't. Mikhail Baryshnikov isn't. Kent Stowell isn't. Jacquesd'Amboise isn't, & neither is his son, Chris. I'm pretty sureArthur Mitchell isn't. Those are the ones that come to mind justnow. And I'll admit this isn't a positive test, but the one time Itook a class at the Atlanta Ballet, the men's dressing room wallswere covered with pin-ups: pages from Victoria's Secret catalogsand one big 24 by 36 poster of a babe in a bikini posed next to a bike.
Someone whose knowledge I trust once told me that, one season in the late nineties, there wasn't a single gay man in the PittsburghBallet. He said that that same season the Pittsburgh Steelers were1/3 gay. It figures. If you were a gay man, would you rather dancewith a young, good-looking, scantily-clad girl, or would you ratherget in a pile-up with a bunch of hunky boys?
[Shameless plug:] For more on this topic, see my FAQ, Part 3, thequestion "I'm a man. I feel funny about taking ballet classes. Imean, isn't it...er...a little...?"
Tom Parsons[/i]