The Boys at the Barre: Ballet counts on sexuality and power
There is an iconic scene in the film Billy Elliot where Billy, the 11-year-old protagonist, is discovered taking ballet lessons when his family thought he was in boxing school. His father and brother, both hardened coal miners, are shaken. “No, not for boys, Billy,” his brother, Jackie, shouts at him. “Boys do football … or boxing … or wrestling. Not naughty ballet.”
The film was a huge hit. It turned out to be an amazing one $ 109 million worldwide on a budget of $ 5 million. Then it became a musical, which it was seen by almost 12 million people and won 10 Tony Awards.
It was a movie made in 2000 about a boy who wanted to dance. It reached out to millions of people across the globe, proving that boys are not just “making football … or boxing.”
And yet, twenty years later, that stereotype persists. Despite generations of famous male dancers like Fred Astaire, Mikhail Baryshnikov, Paul Taylor, Arthur Mitchell and current stars like Sergei Polunin, despite the popularity of shows such as Dance with the stars and So you think you can dance, dance is somehow still considered a feminine exercise. Newsreaders still make insensitive comments and boys still get backlash from their own families.
In dance classes around the United States, there are more girls than boys with 20 to 1. 71% of professional dancers in this country are women. 78% of all dance teachers are women. The overall implication, of course, is that dance is for girls, but there are forces out there that are seeking to change this.
Thomas Forster, a main dancer with American Ballet Theater, has written a children’s book with Shari Siadat entitled My father can fly coming out in November. The book’s narrative focuses on Forster’s son, Ben. In the book, Ben tells his classmates that his father can fly, that he is strong, that he is fast and tough, and they guess what he may be. A pilot? A firefighter? When it is revealed that the correct answer is a ballet dancer, the class cheers. Forster wrote the book from Ben’s point of view and explained the Observer, was targeted. “He does not have any of those stereotypes ingrained in him … he’s just like, ‘oh, that’s what my father does.” He sees qualities like being strong and being able to jump high, not ‘it’s for girls’ or other things that people think of when they think of ballet. ”
Forster’s comments underscore the reality that affects many boys: an idea of what they should and should not be interested in that is imposed on them over time. They watch pictures on TV, on their phones and computers, they learn things at home and are encouraged to perform certain “approved” activities. Doug Risner, a professor at Wayne State University studying gender and dance, found in 2014 examination that 93% of the boys who dance experience teasing. 68% are exposed to verbal or physical harassment.
When Scott Gormley came across Risner’s research after his own son was bullied into practicing dance, an idea arose in his mind. Eventually this became Dancing, a documentary that explores the struggles that male dancers face. Throughout the project, Gormley interviewed dancers at various stages of their careers – from stars at large companies to young students. The common thread throughout was a shared experience of bullying. “Everyone just assumes their daughter will dance, but no one assumes their son would,” Gormley said. Observer. “It was, of course, the biggest obstacle they all had to overcome – making dance acceptable to other people in their lives and in some cases to themselves. They were so deep inside a stereotype of boys playing football, basketball, what .
In 2018, New York City Ballet’s lead dancer was Chase Finlay came under fire for having sent around explicit images by her then-girlfriend Alexandra Waterbury without her permission. A text thread was dug up which included other NYCB principals Amar Ramasar and Zachary Catazaro. Texts like “Do you have any pictures of girls you’ve fucked? I’m sending you some … ballerina girls I’ve got screaming and squirting,” were found on the thread.
When the story broke, Finlay withdrew from the company. Waterbury sued Finlay and the NYCB, accusing the company of creating a “fraternity-like atmosphere.” I happened to be working for the ballet at the time in the administrative offices, and as I learned more about the story, I could not help but think that there was an element of the dancers’ abominable behavior that almost felt like a blemish. boy posting, as an attempt to assert their masculinity in the worst possible ways. Of course at the expense of women.
This narrative shows the complicated ways in which the cost of these stereotypes is borne not only by the men themselves, but by all of us. At some point, the toxic tropics we cling to will reinforce certain images of what men, women, trans, and non-binary people can and cannot do to make us all worse off.
The strangest dichotomy of all, in a world perceived as dominated by women, is that men still possess much of the power. According to the Dance Data Project, a nonprofit dedicated to revealing the gender imbalance in dance, only three women have worked as artistic directors at the ten largest ballet companies in the United States. This gap is even bigger when it comes to choreographers. So why do we accept men in positions of power on dance companies, but less so as dancers themselves?
Despite the deeply embedded gender stereotypes in our culture, change seems to be on the horizon. According to a study from Harvard University, implicit and explicit gender stereotypes have weakened over the past decade and gender bias is expected to continue to erode over time. As ideas about gender are deconstructed and gender fluidity is examined in more detail, the dance world also begins to struggle internally with these issues.
In 2018, the same year that Gormley produced Dancing and Finlay retired from the NYCB, Chase Johnsey, a gendered dancer who uses his / her pronouns, became the first trans dancer in modern history to perform a traditionally feminine corps de ballet role. In an interview with the BBC, said Johnsey: “If a transgender person wants to join a ballet company and they are talented enough, that person should have the freedom to do so. That was what the English National Ballet showed me, they saw me for how I danced . ” Recently, Liberated from London, one of the largest suppliers of pointe shoes for professional dancers, has started making pointe shoes for men.
These questions have also been explored through the dance itself. IN Boys in trouble, Sean Dorsey, a transgender modern dance choreographer, considers ideas around contemporary masculinity. The work was shown on a critically acclaimed international tour from 2018-2020. In 2019, Dorsey was the first overtly trans dancer to adorn the front of Dance Magazine.
Little by little, these inner and outer forces catalyze change. “Hopefully,” says Forster, reflecting on his forthcoming book, “it lets the kids know … whatever you enjoy, whatever you want to do, you can go for it.”
Hopefully we all reach the time.
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