When Men Dance

When Men Dance explores the intersection of dance and perceptions of male gender and sexuality across history and different cultural contexts. In many societies, the public performance of dance is regarded as a feminine activity, so that men who dance often operate in a sea of stereotypes. This volume's scholarly essays tackles the history and dilemmas that revolve around dance and notions of masculinity from a variety of dance studies perspectives. Accompanying the theoretical chapters are a group of fascinating personal histories that complement their themes. The dancing male body emerges in its many contexts, from the ballet, modern, and popular dance world 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.

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.

"Issues in the Pink and Blue West"
Maverick Men in Ballet: Rethinking the "Making it Macho" Strategy (Jennifer Fisher)
Kristopher Wojtera, Aaron Cota
What We Know About Boys Who Dance: The Limitations of Contemporary Masculinity and Dance Education (Doug Risner) David Allan, Michel Gervais
Is Dance a Man's Sport Too? The Performance of Athletic-Coded Masculinity on the Concert Dance Stage (Maura Keefe) Fred Strickler Rennie Harris
Transcending Gender in Ballet's LINES (Jill Nunes Jensen) Christian Burns
The Performance of Unmarked Masculinity (Ramsay Burt) Donald McKayle, John Pennington
"Historical Perspectives"
Pricked Dances: The Spectator, Dance, and Masculinity in Early 18th Century England
(John Bryce Jordan )Seth Williams
Gender Trumps Race? Cross-dressing in Early Blackface Minstrelsy
(Stephen Johnson)
Paul Babiak: Diary of "Channeling Juba" Rehearsals
Ausdruckstanz, Worker's Culture and Masculinity in Germany in the 1920s and 1930s
Yvonne Hardt
Hellmut Gottschild
"Legacies of Colonialism"
Invented Hypermasculinity: Colonial Influences on Dance Styles in Egypt, Iran, and Uzbekistan (Anthony Shay) Jamal
Native Motion and Imperial Emotion: Male Performers of the 'Orient' and the Politics of the Imperial Gaze (Stavros Stavrou Karayanni) Namus Zokhrabov
Ibrahim Farrah: Dancer, Teacher, Choreographer, Publisher (Barbara Sellers-Young) Saleem Azouka
From Gynemimesis to Hyper-Masculinity: The Shifting Orientations of Male Performers of South Indian Court Dance (Hari Krishnan) Naatyaachaarya V.P. Dhananjayan Arun Mathai
Appendix A: Notes on Personal History Interviews
Appendix B: Questions for Personal History Interviews
Notes on contributors