Dancing in the closet: The coming out of ballet

Abstract

Considering the fact that dance and ballet hold the greatest contingent of homosexuals among all the performing arts, its coming out has taken an unusually long time. Actually, we know next to nothing about the role homosexuality has played in the history of ballet. Judged by the recent interest of musicologists in exploring the gay and lesbian inclinations of composers (so far mostly American ones: I am thinking of militant manifestos like Susan McClary's Feminine Endings: Music, Gender, Sexuality, Philip Brett and Elizabeth Wood's Queering the Pitch: The New Gay and Lesbian Musicology, and Ruth Solie's Musicology and Difference: Gender and Sexuality in Music Scholarship), it is not difficult to foresee an upcoming similar trend among the younger generation of dance scholars, concentrating on this sofar ignored, if not actually suppressed, aspect of their art. And I would not be surprised if it were primarily female writers who took up the issue. That these bypasses of sexuality in dance have so far generated so little serious study is the more surprising as travesty roles, with their