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Over the last decade, mainstream media sources from the US and UK have shown an increased interest in topics involving transgender and non-binary populations. Yet, their portrayals of such individuals tend to reaffirm rather than challenge cisnormative ideas surrounding bodies and gender. In this article, we consider this ongoing trend within the highly body-centric, traditionally-gendered artform—classical ballet. With a transgender studies and dance studies lens, we analyze current discourse surrounding the recent move for classical ballet companies and schools to adapt casting and training curricula to better include non-binary dancers. Through these analyses we reveal ways media sensationalizes the transgender body by focusing on information regarding hormone therapy and surgeries, and with the topic of ballet in mind, how this transphobic move becomes intertwined with ballet-specific processes of reshaping the body. We claim that although these popular press pieces contribute to a greater awareness of the lived experiences of transgender and non-binary dancers, they simultaneously reiterate ongoing balletic gender tropes that mark the artform as feminine and designate particular body types and movements to specific binarized genders.
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A few pioneers have shown the way, but who will follow?
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Chaz Bono’s appearance on Dancing with the Stars (DWTS) marks one of the first primetime, network appearances of a postoperative transgender person. This article deconstructs the mediated gender subjectivities of Bono as constructed by the show itself via prerecorded segments, costume and song choices, dance partner interaction, and judges’ commentaries as well as those projected by Bono during the live, unscripted portions of the show. Combining notions of the normalization of taboo sexual subjectivities through mediated contexts with lens of gender performativity, we demonstrate how transgender subjectivities are presented to a mainstream audience via such mediated choices, but also how Bono welds some agency to resist such normalization through his live performances. Bono’s appearance on DWTS stands as an important step toward acceptance of transgendered persons in mainstream society, however through a neutered, sex-free rhetoric as projected by the mediated portions of the show, his appearance is not without controversy. Additionally, we posit that Bono represents a transnormativity of a White, upper-class postoperative heterosexual male, which others all transgendered persons who fall outside of those hegemonic parallels of safe subjectivities.
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Dance, ballet and modern in particular, is culturally defined as a feminine activity in the United States. The purpose of the present study was to examine the experiences of professional male modern and ballet dancers in the United States. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 12 current professional ballet and modern dancers. We examined the ways in which the dancers initially became involved in dance, any support or opposition they may have confronted, and the ways in which they negotiated the stereotypical assumptions surrounding men’s involvement in dance. Four emergent themes are discussed: (1) exposure to and entrance into dance; (2) the gay stereotype; (3) negotiating the gay stereotype; and (4) homophobia within the dance community. The social significance of this study is rooted in the ways in which our culture constructs gender, the body, and movement, restricting both males and females from using and exploring their bodies in ways not deemed gender-appropriate. Attention is also given to the ways in which we can create and nurture meaningful experiences for a greater number of individuals.
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Recent research about sexuality and dance has begun to address the needs of gay male dancers, yet the needs of lesbian dancers have remained mostly absent from scholarly discourse. Exploring the lesbian lacunae, or invisible spaces of dance education, reveals the personal, political, and pedagogical implications of their existence within the dance community. The experiences of lesbian dancers “on the fringe” combined with new approaches to acknowledging lesbian artists and perspectives within dance history suggest the need for re-envisioning lesbian invisibility as a “liminal presence” within dance. In addition, ways dance educators can reduce the effects of heterocentrism within their institutions and celebrate the contributions of lesbian artists and educators to the field are proposed. By reconfiguring the invisibility of lesbian dancers as a liminal presence, we make visible the borders and limits of the dance profession's notions of sexuality and gender, acceptance and equality, and thereby strengthen our potential for dancing beyond them.
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Lesbian dance performance has to come to terms with the cultural invisibility of the lesbian body, and the dichotomy of traditional gender representation. This paper charts strategies for the play with the invisible, the grotesque and the liminal in the dance performance of three UK-based choreographers: Emilyn Claid, Yael Flexer and Kate Lawrence. Their performances create tension between the role and the body, between the public and the private, and it is this tension that points towards alternative representational strategies.