Queer eye.....

I've been reading Peter Stoneley's A Queer History of the Ballet for Dance Now


Stoneley’s book is ‘a queer eye on the ballet’ – the art refracted through a specific sensibility, rather than a discussion of how homosexuality informed aesthetic choices and movement styles. A dance readership will find it surprising that Hans Van Manen, Rudi Van Dantzig and Glen Tetley all go unmentioned, and Maurice Bejart only incidentally (for Horst Koegler, Bejart’s Ballet of the Twentieth Century was ‘the identification company for the world community of gays’). Indeed the dancer’s perspective is mostly absent except in reference to the ‘queerly happy ending’ of Pina Bausch’s Nelken when the cast explain why they started to dance (‘Even in the kindergarten I was different’).

At the time I wrote the review I had only begun to read Matthew Murphy's blog. He's a member of ABT's corps and here he is on rehearsing MacMillan's Romeo and Juliet

"At first glance it seems like the easiest ballet for the corps, no pointe shoes for the girls and hardly any dancing for the boys, but that is exactly the type of mentality that gets us in trouble. To create a believable scene there needs to be 100% commitment from every person on stage because you are only as strong as your weakest link. The minute laughter sneaks into the performance is the minute it flies off its hinges. My intent is not to point fingers at anyone because I am just as guilty as having my moments of "fatigue laughter" as the next person. Yet I find that is what keeps me from being a great corps dancer; the ability to leave fatigue and mental lag off stage and immerse myself in the story like I have never seen it before, night after night. A true example of this professionalism is Marian Butler whose acting and dedication I can only emulate...."

- and in his current post:

"While I was sitting in the wings today my harlot Andrea asked me if I found it hard to fall in love with a woman being a gay man. This was a topic that had come up between Daniel and I last week when we were discussing different people playing Romeo. I find the biggest deal breaker is whether or not there is actual chemistry. Just because I am gay doesn’t mean there can’t be chemistry including underlying sexual tension with a woman. However, if there is no chemistry it doesn’t really matter gay or straight."

It's so rare to find a dancer who writes vividly and honestly about his world (and while he's still in that world, not afterwards). He mustn't stop.