Demetra Chiafos, December 2017
Marginalized Privilege: Boys Who Dance
Final History/Theory/Literature Paper
In sheer numbers, dance has been a female-dominated field for centuries. Men began to be edged off the Western concert dance stage around the time of the 19th century romantic ballet. Despite this and perhaps because of this, male bodies as both performers and directors have been coveted and revered—even nurtured at the expense of the majority. Yet, because of the coding of dance as a “feminine” endeavor, male dancers struggle with their masculinity and are frequently mistreated by their peers, their coaches, and their audiences. Due to culturally entrenched gender roles, sexism, and homophobia, men in dance endure systematic isolation and oppression from all sides—including their own internalized ideas about their role in the world.
In his article The Trouble with the Male Dancer, Ramsay Burt asserts that the 19th century bourgeois male audience enjoyed female dancing as an erotic spectacle—therefore, for them to enjoy watching other men dance meant that they must be homosexual. Due to this, the male dancers were either absent from the stage entirely or placed behind the ballerina. Burt speculates that the stereotype that male dancers are homosexual stems from this reaction: a reflection of the male audience’s own discomfort. However, this raises two questions: why is this stereotype still so pervasive two centuries later, and what does the current culture say about men who dance?
There are many, dancers and non-dancers alike, who try to explain the role male dancers play and why they are “allowed” to enjoy dancing. As pointed out in Doug Risner’s What We Know About Boys Who Dance, nearly all common explanations in Western countries are heteronormative statements that devalue dancing as an art form while bowing to the culturally accepted ideas of hypermasculinity. Examples of such statements include “It’s just as athletic as any other sport” and “Instead of tackling other boys, you get to lift pretty girls.” The implication given is that sports are more valued than arts, and heterosexual male dancers more than homosexual male dancers. Risner discovered that while dance is perceived to be tolerant of men who identify as homosexual, there are homophobic prejudices deeply engrained into the field. Through quoting a study conducted by Deborah Williams, Examining Psychosocial Issues of Adolescent Male Dancers, he discusses the frustration that many young male dancers go through when dance is likened to sports, some studios going as far as changing the names of their ballet classes to “Sports Movement for Boys” (63).
According to Risner’s report, while the boys who self-identified as bisexual or homosexual in Williams’ study say they feel “supported” in the dance world, none of them can clearly articulate how this support functions. They seem to describe it, in other words and through examples, merely as an environment free from slurs and hate speech. Yet this is not entirely true. The boys themselves use homophobic speech against other homosexual male dancers, saying that they don’t like to hang out with them. They also are self-deprecating, one of them quoted saying that he feels he has disappointed the field of dance because he is a homosexual and that is what male dancers are expected to be. Risner also quotes dance teachers who use homophobic language to coach their male students and place importance on making their dancing “more masculine.” This begs the question of: what do we consider “masculine” and how does that relate to the coding of gender in dance?
Many iconic choreographers have used the imagery of male athletes in their work, relating dance back to sports in attempt to showcase its athleticism and masculinity, as discussed in Maura Keefe’s Is Dance a Man’s Sport Too? Keefe points out that while most Americans grow up well-versed in sports, they are not nearly as versed in dancing: “[dance]…has long been considered challenging and threatening to many people” (93). I speculate that this may relate to why audiences see sports as more “valid.” The American educational system especially does not place much emphasis on the arts in K-12 education, while any public or private school large enough to have one probably has a football team. The lack of emphasis on the arts imprints upon us early in our lives which profession—sports or fine arts—is more educationally valid. As Risner points out: “Historical notions […] often link the feminine with intuition, nature, the body, and evil; conversely, the intellectual, culture, and mind historically have been perceived as masculine […]” “Labeling dance as female prevents dance from functioning fully as an academic medium” (59). While it would add “educational validity” to the field if dance were coded as more masculine, men are often ridiculed when they dance, lacking support from their families and peers.
Perhaps choreographers began trying to associate sports, something more traditionally masculine, with dancing in effort to combat this stigma. Keefe discusses Vaslav Nijinsky’s Jeux (1913), Ted Shawn’s Olympiad (1936), Gene Kelly’s Dancing—a Man’s Game (1958), and Twyla Tharp’s Dancing Is a Man’s Sport, Too (1980) in terms of each choreographer’s conversation with the concepts of dancing and sports, and the role of men in each. Dance historian David Gere states that Shawn’s goal with Olympiad was to assert that dance did not equal compromised masculinity by associating dance with athleticism, according to Keefe. Shawn used a group of male athletes. He was pleased with their sports training partly for the physical prowess it awarded them, writing that “The students […] found that the fundamental dance exercises, which looked effortless and easy […] were more strenuous than basic training for football, basketball, and wrestling” (96). However, many critics of the time looked down on Nijinsky’s Jeux, a trio performed in tennis dress, with rackets and tennis balls used as signifiers. They thought that Nijinsky did not truly understand the game because the dancing did not mirror the game’s actual movements. Keefe points out surprise at these comments, because “…at the time of the premiere of Jeux, no one expected any authenticity or realness in dance-making” (95). This critical reaction implies that the athletic, goal-oriented movement of sports is more culturally valued than the artistry and expression involved in dancing.
Yet Nijinsky’s Jeux ran even deeper than a game of tennis. As Keefe explains on page 94, in his own notes, Nijinsky wrote “The story of this ballet is about three young men making love to each other…” He continues on to reference the man he was in a romantic relationship with at the time: “In the ballet, the two girls represent the two boys and the young man is Diaghilev. I changed the characters, as love between three men could not be represented on stage.” Nijinsky, a star choreographer and performer, had to sanitize his choreography to make it appropriate in the eyes of his audience. He was criticized when he stepped out of his “more feminine” realm into a “more masculine” one by creating Jeux, doing so “incorrectly” with his misrepresentation of the movements in tennis. This makes it painstakingly obvious that men in dance, especially homosexual men, have been silenced for centuries—despite reaping more benefits than female dancers, partly due to the unequal percentages of men and women in ballet.
This silence forced upon male dancers is alarming because it is ongoing. The dance field is still reluctant to discuss its attitudes toward men in dance, which prevents men from coming forward when they are harassed and discriminated against. Risner cites horrifying statistics from 1998: “…although there are far fewer males in dance overall, they are three times as likely to experience sexual harassment in dance than females, and […] perpetrators of sexual harassment are more than seven times as likely to be male than female. In addition, male dancers in their teens are propositioned for sex by their dance teachers, directors, choreographers, and fellow dance students at a rate of three to one compared with female dancers, with the gender of the solicitor being male nearly 70 percent of the time” (Hamilton 92). Male dancers would be more willing to come forward with this information if it were more openly discussed within the field.
While the four choreographers mentioned above tried to validate male dancers by relating dancing to a profession viewed more traditionally as masculine, there are other choreographers in different conversations with gender roles in dance, as discussed in Jill Nunes Jensen’s Transcending Gender in Ballet’s LINES. According to Jensen, Alonzo King’s company, LINES, is less concerned with confirming or denying gender roles than it is offering choices: all the dancers are required to access all aesthetics of dancing. The women are expected to take up space and dance with the physical power male dancers are traditionally associated with. On the other hand, the men are expected to be capable of tender arm gestures, demure tilts of the head, and fast footwork typically coded as feminine.
Still other choreographers attempt to invert gender roles in various ways. “Travesty dancers” were common in the 19th century ballet: females who dressed in male costuming and danced the man’s part, which the male audience read as erotic, according to Burt. This was partly because male costuming revealed the shapes of their bodies more than female costuming at the time. Some choreographers, such as Mark Morris, utilize drag in their pieces. In reference to costuming and gender roles, I contemplated Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo, an all-male ballet company that performs women’s roles in drag. The dancers often “fall,” “make mistakes,” and otherwise showcase their “incompetence.” The company intends their choreography as comedic and the audience reads it as such. Why is it culturally considered humorous for men to dress as women, but erotic for women to dress as men?
The process through which young boys are socialized into their masculinity—what Risner refers to as “The Boy Code”—may shed some light on this question. Risner cites sociologist Timothy Curry: “…boys learn to be masculine […] by avoiding all that is feminine, homosexual, or unmasculine by any degree […] [the] expression of dislike for femaleness or homosexuality demonstrates to oneself and others that one is separate from it and therefore must be masculine” (62). This has led to what Risner quotes Katz and Earp dubbing the “crisis in masculinity”: the divorce of men from their deeper feelings, individual identity, and self-expression, which plays a large part in the rise of depression, suicide, and other mental health struggles for young boys. Clearly, overall culture has affected the dance field—but, as an art form, dance also affects the overall culture. Beyond that, as a professional field, dance has its own culture that must be addressed and discussed openly, as seen by the staggering statistics of unaddressed sexual violence against males in dance.
Finally, the oppression of men in dance is not universal. In Choreographing Masculinity, Anthony Shay discusses the effects of European colonialism on traditional male dancing in Iran, Egypt, and Uzbekistan. The Europeans saw the traditional male dancing styles in those countries as “effeminate” and it disgusted them. Furthermore, in the Middle East, the Europeans were revulsed by lewd comedic performances they had mistaken as literal representations of sexual acts. Shay comments that their disgust was not due to the content of the dancing, but because the Europeans were not “…ignorant of bawdy and raunchy performances, but these were enjoyable only if the performers were women” (291). The preference of lewd female dancing relates to Burt’s statement that the European male audience in the 19th century viewed ballet as a showcase of female erotic display.
Moreover, in other dance traditions, the gender binary is less strict, evident merely in the dress codes for different kinds of dance. Hip-hop, which evolved from street dance, typically requires street shoes and whatever clothes the dancers feel most comfortable wearing. Hip-hop choreographer Kyle Hanagami’s online videos are a strong example of uniform movement for men and women, with room for improvisation and individual expression. However, in classical ballet, the dress code assigned by gender is very strict. Women typically wear pink tights, leotards, pink flat shoes or pointe shoes, and skirts or tutus with their hair in a French twist or a bun, which “feminine” jewelry such as drop earrings often accompanies. Men often wear white shirts, black tights, and black flat shoes, typically with short hair. Beyond dress code, their movements belong to the gender binary: the men perform large jumps and huge turn sequences, while the women perform quick footwork and are typically en pointe. The men lift and otherwise lead the women when they dance together.
In conclusion, through homophobia and gender roles, men in Western concert dance are oppressed and devalued—despite being honored as stars. They are also more likely to receive leading roles, scholarships, and other awards than female dancers. Many efforts to normalize men dancing are conducted in a misogynistic and homophobic way, buying into cultural hypermasculinity and patriarchal values. As this oppression is not a universal experience, it likely sources directly from the historical development of ballet, tracing back to the roles of men and women in the European courts ballet developed from, as well as the taboo against homosexuality at that time. Both in Western culture and in the dance field, addressing the silent suffering that all males, but especially male artists, go through while navigating the “crisis in masculinity” is necessary.
WORKS CITED
Burt, Ramsay. “The Trouble with the Male Dancer.” The Male Dancer: Bodies, Spectacle,
Sexualities, Routledge, 2007, pp. 9–29.
Burt, Ramsay. “Looking At The Male.” The Male Dancer: Bodies, Spectacle, Sexualities,
Routledge, 2007, pp. 30–57.
Hanagami, Kyle. “M.I.A. - Go Off | Kyle Hanagami Choreography.” YouTube, YouTube, 1 Oct.
2016, www.youtube.com/watch?v=O7WuTXB5PH4.
Jensen, Jill Nunes. “Transcending Gender in Ballet's LINES.” When Men Dance, Jan. 2009, pp.
118–146., doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195386691.003.0005.
Keefe, Maura. “Is Dance a Man's Sport Too?” When Men Dance, Jan. 2009, pp. 91–113.,
doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195386691.003.0004.
Risner, Doug. “What We Know about Boys Who Dance.” When Men Dance, Jan. 2009, pp. 57–
78., doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195386691.003.0003.
Shay, Anthony. “Choreographing Masculinity.” When Men Dance, Jan. 2009, pp. 287–309.,
doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195386691.003.0010.
“Swan Lake Act II - Little Swans - Les Ballets Trockadero De Monte Carlo.” YouTube,
YouTube, 19 Nov. 2015, www.youtube.com/watch?v=F83BbbtoX8Q.