Perhaps the average premier danseur could not beat a gold medalist in swimming, but his body is just as perfect. It is training for specific tasks demanded by a particular sport that shapes the body of the athlete. A dancer must only dance, but it's ridiculous to maintain they are, somehow, less "athletic." Dancers are called upon to things a sportsman -- let's say basketball player, although Cocteau used them as models for his angels in paintings -- would not, and certainly could not, do. Now that the dansuer-as-homosexual argument has been demolished as a stereotype, we know that some dancers are straighter than Mitt Romney (though, arguably, Romney is still a sissy). Movies like
Billy Elliot helped end the bullying, perhaps, but its denouement is nevertheless an affirmation of gay orientation.
I once interviewed Nureyev and both he and I knew that he was a sleeparound slut. Because his gaydar picked up on my recognition (I'd seen him with neophyte John Lennon in a stand up and fuck bar on Santa Monica or Melrose, I forget which) and the conversation went south very quickly. He'd come to dance...for one of the last times, as it developed.
Above, Chase Finlay shown dancing the New York City Ballet's revival of "Apollo" by Stravinsky in a post-Petipa choreography by the great Balanchine.
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