What Masculinity Means for Male Ballerinas: the Stereotype, the Hope, and the Reality
In my almost two decades of classical ballet training, I have taken class with two men. Although this isn’t a surprise, it was never a ratio that my studio wanted. Male ballerinas are important parts of the art and our performances, and the utter lack of interest in ballet from males in general makes some recitals slightly monotonous.
In the early renaissance, it was different: in fact, only men were allowed to dance for many years. However, in today’s society, one obsessed with football, man-caves, and drinking beer, ballet is rarely practiced by men. It’s understandable, as ballet seems to represent everything that modern masculinity isn’t: tutus, pink, frailty, and expression of emotion. While dancers know that ballet is not all tights and romance and is actually a test of endurance, agility, and skill, society sees both male and female dancers as weak and therefore feminine. It is due to this attribution that men avoid ballet. “According to…dance sociologist Doug Risner, 93% of boys involved in ballet reported ‘teasing and name calling.’” Stereotypes label all male ballet dancers as homosexual, feminine, and weak. In fact, a principal dancer at the Boston Ballet was forbidden by his father to join an elite ballet school because his father said “You have to stay home, I don’t want you to be gay.” More than half of all male dancers lack the support of their fathers, often because the practice of ballet is not the manly activity that their fathers had pictured their boys doing. For no other reason than dad’s pleasure, boys are pushed into sports like football and soccer, told to “be a man,” and ushered into a strict gender-binary society.
In response to the lack of male interest, the ballet world tries to fight stereotypes and encourage participation by rebranding what it means to be a dansuer. Because society conditions us to praise athletes as the ultimate men, dance turns to sports. Ballet is often advertised as a sport on par with football because dancers are just as strong. For example, weightlifting is a vital part of a dancer's training, as men are expected to effortlessly hold women above their heads. “Ballet body” workouts are some of the most challenging tutorials, and even popular culture demonstrates the difficulty of dance over sport, like in High School Musical 2’s “I Don’t Dance.” In emphasizing the sport of ballet, instructors try to recruit male dancers by highlighting just how athletic (and therefore masculine) dance is. “Dance scholar Michael Gard calls this ‘legitimation through athleticism.’” Dance forces itself into society’s definition of masculine just because dancers are strong.
In addition to accentuating the sport of dance, the dance society recruits through representation. Writer Latham Hunter notes that TV show So You Think You Can Dance (SYTYCD) is one place where an audience sees an equal portrayal of males and females in dance. The male dancers often show off the ‘trickiest’ steps like the Argentine Tango to demonstrate the challenge that dance provides. SYTYCD also fights against the stereotype of homosexuality in dance by labeling two men dancing together as brothers or father and son. In other words, the program shows both how common and heterosexual male dancers are, which is hoped to encourage other males to want to dance.
But does it work? Does comparing male dancers to football players and showing off their heterosexuality on TV actually lead to increased representation? Unsurprisingly, society’s definition of masculinity is so deeply ingrained in our brains that even this rebranding can’t convince men that ballet isn’t for weak, homosexual males, and participation levels remain low. Plus, this exact assumption that males would like ballet if linked to football and heterosexuality reinforces the rigid definition of masculinity that the dance world is working against.
Despite the efforts of the ballet world, males remain a minority. There’s a reason: the thing that attracts males to the practice of dance is not how athletic or cool they would be, but rather the love of performing and expression. The need to avoid what you love because it is stereotypically feminine is dissuading thousands of boys from being dancers and pursuing their passion. We must find a way to reimagine masculinity without devaluing femininity, a way to step away from the binary. The answer is appreciating the simple notion of a unified humanity. Michael Kimmel explains, “You’ve [males] cut yourself off from half the human experience by embracing this traditional notion of masculinity, the thing we call toxic.” We are denying males in society the joy that comes from dancing, an “intrinsically human activity.” By upholding society’s strict definition of masculinity, we deny them a part of life itself.
