Overview

This text examines the representation of masculinity in 20th-century dance. Taking issue with formalist and modernist accounts of dance, which dismiss gender and sexuality as irrelevant, it 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 and 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 valourized with reference to nature, heterosexuality and religion, and radical, avant garde choreography which challenges and disrupts dominant ways of representing masculinity.

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9780415089005

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Ramsay's interpretations of dance are often surprising and unconventional, yet they are very convincing. He is truly rewriting dance history as we know it. -Sally Banes, University of Wisconsin

Ramsay's interpretations of dance are often surprising and unconventional, yet they are very convincing. He is truly rewriting dance history as we know it. <br>-Sally Banes, University of Wisconsin <br>

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