 the male dancer
written by Jaliberto at on 30.01. at 23:39:36 - as answer to: Re: Gay dancers? ( no im not offering its an essay question i would like an opin by Jeffrey >" I had the same beliefs and expectations about male dancers as most people. But my real-life experience of dancers just did not jibe with my beliefs and expectations, so I've had cause to reflect. Now I read these posts in this forum and I can see that the other gay men here have bought into the stereotype about male dancers as much as straight men. ">Well, sure, these are stereotypes, and I'm sure they are probably not accurate nowadays, but I'm wondering if there might have been some truth to them in an earlier era...say, the 1940s-1950s, perhaps even the earlier 1960s, when masculinity was more rigidly defined and homoerotic display and imagery was more repressed and closeted....perhaps we are talking about some of the audience for ballet, rather than the actual dancers, during that era?>Yet, one could name quite a few famous dancers from that earlier era who where gay, such as Merce Cunningham, Nuryev, Alvin Ailey, Fred Ashton, Eric Bruhn, Mark Morris, and Bob LaFosse (I think)...and impresarios like Lincoln Kirstein. ,,,but one could name straight ones too, like Michael Somes., so not sure what that proves, if anything. >Still, an interesting stereotype. Despite what I said before, I think there have been and continue to be grounds for ballet to be perceived as a haven for gay males as dancers. I use the word "haven" deliberately. Historically, certain endeavors have been set aside for gay men; among them, hairdressing, interior decoration, fashion design - and ballet. Inside the reservation (or ghetto), gays could expect more freedom and safety and social acceptance than outside, not to mention a certain measure of respect and even honor. The importance of these things can't be overstated enough, when you consider how dangerous and circumscribed gay mens' lives were until relatively recent times. Of course, it's still dangerous out there, but not like it used to be. Even in paleo-conservative regions of the U.S., gay men can reasonably expect to live and work openly. Straight men and contemporary young gay men can no more understand that this has not always been so than can contemporary young feminists imagine the world before Roe vs.Wade or the women's movement of the 1960s-70s. So ballet was for a very long time a kind of refuge for gay men. It was an art that accepted gay men and even actively recruited them. A couple of years ago I was leafing through a library book about ballet, written for parents of young dancers and prospective dancers. This book was about 50 years old. It had a short chapter about boys. In this chapter, the author encouraged parents of boys "of a delicate nature" to enroll them in ballet, which was extolled as an excellent alternative to "rough" group sports for such boys. Nowadays, the power of homophobia to dictate a boy's choice of ballet as a field of endeavor can't be underestimated. Many boys who dance feel that they have no choice but to drop out of ballet in order to gain the acceptance of their peers, or at least to make the teasing and harassment stop. A boy who is gay, on the other hand, has nothing to lose by continuing in ballet. He is going to be ostracized and harassed by his peers anyway. Thus, homophobia vastly reduces the number of heterosexual boys who continue to dance and to pursue careers in dance, while the number of gay boys remains relatively unchanged. So an imbalance in the number of gay males who dance, relative to the number of straight males who dance, is to be expected. If the ratio is changing, that is very encouraging (I can't fully endorse the notion because I think that there may be a tendency among the management of some ballet companies to be selective in their hiring, in order to promote the idea that the majority of their dancers are straight). Any boy, regardless of sexual orientation, who manages to resist the hate and who goes on to become a danseur should be congratulated. He must have a powerful sense of self and a strong character. But even straight male adults who dance professionally still have problems with society's persistent stereotypes. Ethan Stiefel has been candid about his fears of admitting to strangers, especially to other men, that he dances ballet. Answers to this message:
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