Male Dancing Body, Stigma and Normalising Processes. Playing with (Bodily) Signifieds/ers of Masculinity

Abstract

Based on a multi-sited ethnography on Western theatrical dance, the article focuses on the “problem of the male dancer”. Once discussed the historical genealogy of the stigma and its effect on men’s participation in dance, I consider three stigma “antidotes”. Two of them – artistic-professional excellence, manifest in structural inequalities, professional practice and social discourse ; and athleticism, involving discursive and representational strategies – consist of emphasising the masculinising aspects of dancing-as-art/profession (virtuosity, creativity), and dancing-as-leisure/body-activity (prowess, self-control). Neither of them presents as legitimate alternative masculinities ; they are normalising strategies. The third antidote leverages on the choice of the dance style/s, and the use of the markers of embodied identity that styles as bodily, kin­(aesth)etic sub-cultures provide. The increasing variety of styles not only chan­ged Dance’s representation in the West and thus affected men’s presence, but also provides semiotic resources for expressing gender and, more generally, for forms of identity construction and self-presentation that may be alternative to dominant models.

Keywords

• masculinity
• dance
• embodied identity
• normalising strategies
• stigma