The Male Dancer: Bodies, Spectacle and Sexuality

by Ramsay Burt

In this challenging and lively book, Ramsay Burt examines the representation of masculinity in twentieth century dance. Taking issue with formalist and modernist accounts of dance, which dismiss gender and sexuality as irrelevant, he argues that prejudices against male dancers are rooted in our ideas about the male body and male behaviour.

Building upon ideas about the gendered gaze developed by film and feminist theorists, Ramsay Burt provides a provocative theory of spectorship in dance. He uses this to examine the work of choreographers like Nijinsky, Graham, Bausch, while relating their dances to the social, political and artistic contexts in which they were produced. Within these re-readings, he identifies a distinction between institutionalised modernist dance which evokes an essentialist, heroic, `hypermasculinity'; one which is valorised with reference to nature, heterosexuality and religion, and radical, avant garde choreography which challenges and disrupts dominant ways of representing masculinity.

The Male Dancer will be essential reading for anyone interested in dance and the cultural construction of gender.

236 pages, Paperback

First published May 4, 1995

Reviews

[Kamilla Peter · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read for my MA thesis.

[Art Wangchu · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book is merely worth skipping through. Even if you miss many paragraphs, it does not hinder your understanding, because many of the contents are repetitive.

1. In the stereotype, men are the judging, not the judged. So a man cannot be judged by his body appearance. It becomes reluctant for a man to understand how another man can act on the stage. This stereotype didn't exist until the advent of the industrial age and the occurrence of the modern middle class.

Quit! I wanna read a book, not a bibliography, not a compilation of other scholars' viewpoints! Too many quotations to read! In every paragraph!

[Jesse · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book articulates a lot of what has gotten me interested in dance over the last few months: in a reversal of the usual situation, it is the male and male body that can be put under the focus and scrutiny of the audience, performing to the female and gay male gaze. This study is heavy on theory--predominantly feminist and queer-- and analyzes a number of different figures and movements in 20th century dance, including Nijinsky, Martha Graham, Ted Shawn, Alvin Ailey and a number of contemporary avant-garde artists and choreographers. Very specific in subject matter, but much of what is discussed throws other art forms into interesting contrast.

[Sevi · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a good read: a very clear and informative work. However, it is limited in its approach to history as a linear, progressive timeline in which men's liberation occurs towards the end of the 20th century. Because history addressed in this book is created mostly by individual choreographers, non-heroic dance makers in the 19th or early 20th centuries were not mentioned as part of theatrical/ performative resistance against conventional ideologies of gender and sexuality.

[Mills College Library]

792.8081 B9737 1995