When Men Dance: Choreographing Masculinities Across Borders »

Jennifer Fisher is Associate Professor of Dance, University of California - Irvine, and author of Nutcracker Nation: How an Old World Ballet Became a Christmas Tradition in the New World (2003).

Anthony Shay is Assistant Professor of Dance and Cultural Studies at Pomona College and author or editor of several books, including Choreographic Politics: State Folk Dance Ensembles, Representation, and Power (2003).

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.

Introduction 3

Part I Issues in the Pink and Blue West

1 Maverick Men in Ballet: Rethinking the "Making It Macho" Strategy Jennifer Fisher 31

Aaron Cota 49

Knstopher Wojtera 53

2 What We Know about Boys Who Dance: The Limitations of Contemporary Masculinity and Dance Education Doug Risner 57

David Allan Michel Gervais 78

3 Is Dance a Man's Sport Too? The Performance of Athletic-Coded Masculinity on the Concert Dance Stage Maura Keefe 91

Fred Strickler 107

Rennie Harris 113

4 Transcending Gender in Ballet's Lines Jill Nunes Jensen 118

Christian Bums 146

5 The Performance of Unmarked Masculinity Ramsay Burt 150

Donald McKayle 168

John Pennington 173

Part II Historical Perspectives

6 Pricked Dances: The Spectator, Dance, and Masculinity in Early 18th-Century England John Bryce Jordan 181

Seth Williams 214

7 Gender Trumps Race? Cross-Dressing Juba in Early Blackface Minstrelsy Stephen Johnson 220

Paul Babiak: Channeling Juba's Dance-d Rehearsal Journal 248

8 Ausdruckstanz, Workers' Culture, and Masculinity in Germany in the 1920s and 1930s Yvonne Hardt 248

Hellmut Gottschild 276

Part III Legacies of Colonialism

9 Choreographing Masculinity: Hypermasculine Dance Styles as Invented Tradition in Egypt, Iran, and Uzbekistan Anthony Shay 287

Jamal 309

10 Native Motion and Imperial Emotion: Male Performers of the "Orient" and the Politics of the Imperial Gaze Stavros Stavrou Karayanni 314

Namus Zokhrabov 349

11 Ibrahim Farrah: Dancer, Teacher, Choreographer, Publisher Barbara Sellers-Young 355

Saleern 375

12 From Gynemimesis to Hypermasculinity: The Shifting Orientations of Male Performers of South IndianCourt Dance Hari Krishnan 378

Naatyaachaarya V.P. Dhananjayan 392

Arun Mathai 397

Appendix: Notes on Personal Histories 401

Notes on Contributors 403

Index 407