When Men Dance Choreographing Masculinities Across Borders

by Fisher, Jennifer; Shay, Anthony

• ISBN13: 9780195386691
• ISBN10: 0195386698
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2009-10-09
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

While dance has always been as demanding as contact sports, intuitive boundaries distinguish the two forms of performance for men. Dance is often regarded as a feminine activity, and men who dance are frequently stereotyped as suspect, gay, or somehow unnatural. But what really happens when men dance? When Men Dance offers a progressive vision that boldly articulates double-standards in gender construction within dance and brings hidden histories to light in a globalized debate. A first of its kind, this trenchant look at the stereotypes and realities of male dancing brings together contributions from leading and rising scholars of dance from around the world to explore what happens when men dance. The dancing male body emerges in its many contexts, from the ballet, modern, and popular dance worlds to stages in Georgian and Victorian England, Weimar Germany, India and the Middle East. The men who dance and those who analyze them tell stories that will be both familiar and surprising for insiders and outsiders alike.

Author Biography

Jennifer Fisher is an associate professor in the dance department of the University of California, Irvine Jennifer Fisher and the author of the prize-winning Nutcracker Nation: How an Old World Ballet Became a Christmas Tradition in the New World (2003,Yale University Press). She has contributed dance writing to a number of scholarly publications, as well as the Los Angeles Times. Anthony Shay is the founding artistic director and choreographer of the AMAN Folk Ensemble and the AVAZ International Dance Theatre, dance companies that specialized in world dance. He received numerous choreographic fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, James Irvine Foundation, and the California Arts Council. He currently teaches at Pomona College.

Table of Contents

Introduction

Issues In The Pink And Blue West

Maverick Men in Ballet: Rethinking the ""Making it Macho"" Strategy

What We Know About Boys Who Dance: The Limitations of Contemporary Masculinity and Dance Education

Is Dance a Man's Sport Too? The Performance of Athletic-Coded Masculinity on the Concert Dance Stage

Transcending Gender in Ballet's LINES

The Performance of Unmarked Masculinity

Historical Perspectives

Pricked Dances: The Spectator, Dance, and Masculinity in Early 18th Century England

Gender Trumps Race? Cross-dressing in Early Blackface Minstrelsy

Ausdruckstanz, Worker's Culture and Masculinity in Germany in the 1920s and 1930s

Legacies Of Colonialism

Invented Hypermasculinity: Colonial Influences on Dance Styles in Egypt, Iran, and Uzbekistan

Native Motion and Imperial Emotion: Male Performers of the 'Orient' and the Politics of the Imperial Gaze

Ibrahim Farrah: Dancer, Teacher, Choreographer, Publisher

From Gynemimesis to Hyper-Masculinity: The Shifting Orientations of Male Performers of South Indian Court Dance

Notes on Personal Histories

Notes on Contributors

Index

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