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.

This book examines men, masculinities and sexualities in Western theatrical dance, offering insights into the processes, actions and interactions that occur in dance institutions around gender-transgressive acts, and the factors that set limits to transgression. This text uses interview and observation data to analyze the conditions that encourage some boys and young men to become involved in this widely unconventional activity, and the ways through which they negotiate the gendered and sexual attachments of their professional identity. Most importantly, the book analyzes the opportunities male dancers find to develop a reflexive habitus, engage in gender transgressive acts and experiment with their sexuality. At the same time, it approaches gender and sexuality as embodied, and therefore as parts of identity that are not as easily amendable. This book will be of interest to scholars in Gender and Sexuality Studies as well as Dance and Performance Studies.

Norms of embodied behaviour for males and females, as promoted in mainstream Western public arenas of popular culture and the everyday, continue to work, overtly and covertly, as definitive and restrictive barriers to the realm of possibilities of embodied gender expression and appreciation. They serve to disempower and marginalize those not inclined to embody according to such dichotomous models. This book explores the ramifications of the way our gendered, sexed and culturally constructed bodies are situated toward notions of difference and highlights the need to safeguard the social and emotional well-being of those who do not fit comfortably with dominant norms of masculine/feminine behaviour, as deemed appropriate to biological sex. The book interrogates gender inequitable machinations of education and performance arts disciplines by which educators and arts practitioners train, teach, choreograph, and direct those with whom they work, and theorizes ways of broadening personal and social notions of possible, aesthetic, and acceptable embodiment for all persons, regardless of biological sex or sexual orientation. The author’s own struggles as a performance artist, educator, and person in the everyday, as well as the findings of empirical fieldwork with educators, performance arts practitioners, and high school students, are employed to illustrate and advocate the need for self reflexive scrutiny of existing and hidden inequities regarding the embodiment of gender within one’s own habitual perspectives, taste, and practices.

With its roots in Middle Eastern and North African dance, belly dance is a popular leisure activity in the West with women (and some men) of all ages and body types pursing the activity for diverse reasons. Drawing on empirical research, fieldwork, and interviews with participants, this book investigates the social world and small group cultures of American belly dance, examining the various ways in which people use leisure to construct the self and social relationships. With attention to gender expectations, body image, sexuality, community, spiritual experiences, and the process of identifying with a leisure activity, this book shows how people engage in the same pursuit in a variety of ways. It sheds light on the manner in which dancers strive to deal with the challenges presented by internal power struggles and legitimacy bids, public beliefs, narrow cultural ideals of beauty and often sexualized assumptions about their art. A fascinating study of identity work and the reproduction and challenging of gender norms through a gendered leisure activity, Gendered Bodies and Leisure: The Practice and Performance of American Belly Dance will be of interest to students and scholars researching gender and sexuality, the sociology of leisure, the sociology of the body and interactionist thought.

Through popular culture, we can define, explore and experiment with our identities. This vibrant text provides an understanding of popular culture in a globalized world through the intersection of sociology and cultural studies, combining cultural theory with a wide range of examples from everyday life, including fashion, social networking and music, drawn from the United States, the UK and the Asia-Pacific.

This unparalleled collection, international and innovative in scope, analyzes the dynamic tensions between masculinity and dance. Introducing a lens of intersectionality, the book’s content examines why, despite burgeoning popular and contemporary representations of a normalization of dancing masculinities, some boys don’t dance and why many of those who do struggle to stay involved. Prominent themes of identity, masculinity, and intersectionality weave throughout the book’s conceptual frameworks of education and schooling, cultures, and identities in dance. Incorporating empirical studies, qualitative inquiry, and reflexive accounts, Doug Risner and Beccy Watson have assembled a unique volume of original chapters from established scholars and emerging voices to inform the future direction of interdisciplinary dance scholarship and dance education research. The book’s scope spans several related disciplines including gender studies, queer studies, cultural studies, performance studies, and sociology. The volume will appeal to dancers, educators, researchers, scholars, students, parents, and caregivers of boys who dance. Accessible at multiple levels, the content is relevant for undergraduate students across dance, dance education, and movement science, and graduate students forging new analysis of dance, pedagogy, gender theory, and teaching praxis.