The Male Dancer

Fülszöveg

"Ramsay's interpretations of dance are often surprising and unconventional, yet they are very convineing. He is truly rewriting dance history as we know it"
Sally Banes, University ofWisconsin
In this challenging and lively book, Ramsay Burt examines the representation of masculinity in twentieth-century dance. Taking issue with formálist and modernist accounts of dance, which dismiss gender and sexuality as irrelevant, he argues that prejudices against male dancers are rooted in our ideas about the male body and male behaviour.
Building upon ideas about the gendered gazé developed by film and feminist theorists, Ramsay Burt provides a provocative theory of spectatorship 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 whieh they were produced. Within these re-readings he identifies a distinction between institutionalized modernist dance which evokes an... Tovább

Fülszöveg

"Ramsay's interpretations of dance are often surprising and unconventional, yet they are very convineing. He is truly rewriting dance history as we know it"
Sally Banes, University ofWisconsin
In this challenging and lively book, Ramsay Burt examines the representation of masculinity in twentieth-century dance. Taking issue with formálist and modernist accounts of dance, which dismiss gender and sexuality as irrelevant, he argues that prejudices against male dancers are rooted in our ideas about the male body and male behaviour.
Building upon ideas about the gendered gazé developed by film and feminist theorists, Ramsay Burt provides a provocative theory of spectatorship 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 whieh they were produced. Within these re-readings he identifies a distinction between institutionalized modernist dance which evokes an essentialist, heroic 4hypermasculinity' and radical, avant-garde choreography which chall-enges and disrupts dominant representations of masculinity.
The Male Dancer will be essential reading for anyone interested in dance and the cultural con-struction of gender.
Ramsay Burt has taught art and design history and film studies to art students. He currently lectures in dance studies at De Montfort University, Leicester. Vissza