Men in tights. A bit of shock the first time you see it on stage. First, the tights tend to be white in classical ballet. Then white spotlights are trained on the one wearing them highlighting - the bulge. Li Cunxin, the principal dancer with the Australian Ballet who wrote the book MAO’S LAST DANCER (he defected to the US in 1981) writes that the first time his parents saw him dance on stage, his father asked afterwards “Son, why didn’t you wear any pants?!!!”
In the 2021 BBC documentary titled MEN AT THE BARRE Inside the Royal Ballet, film-maker Richard Macer addresses this question first - what do men wear inside those tights? The answer said First Soloist Valentino Zucchetti is called a dance belt – a supportive thong that hoicks everything up into a neat parcel, out of the way for those beats and stays in place with all those gravity defying leaps and jumps.
The BBC documentary came about when American TV presenter Lara Spencer got into trouble for ridiculing then 6-year old Prince George for taking ballet lessons at his school. Boys have been ridiculed for taking ballet for a long time that Spencer’s comment was a call to arms by Travis Wall, founder of So You Think You Can Dance. He has spoken about the bullying he received as a young dance student - 'Children should be entitled to experience things without being bullied. Just let people follow their dream, whether it's dance, whatever it is.' Under the #BoysDanceToo, hundreds of dancers gathered in Times Square and did a ballet class in protest. Lara Spencer had to issue a grovelling apology.
Attitudes are changing to boys and men doing ballet but not fast enough it seems. One film which help turn the tide was Stephen Daldry’s film BILLY ELLIOTT in 2000. Set in Country Durham in 1984-85 Miner’s Strike, an 11-year old miner’s son taking boxing lessons discovers a passion for ballet instead. His father objects - "Ballet is for girls, not lads, lads do football, boxing, wrestling not freaking ballet!" He comes around of course and Billy, nurtured by a tenacious ballet teacher manages to get a scholarship at the Royal Ballet School. The ending is his Dad and his brother watching him dance the lead in Matthew Bourne’s all male Swan Lake at the Royal Opera House in London. This seminal film was released in the autumn of 2000. 18 months after the release of the film, the Royal Ballet school accepted more boys than girls, a first in its 76-year history. They accepted 14 boys to 10 girls compared to the year before - 8 boys and 12 girls. Gailene Stock, the director of the Royal Ballet School said, "The film has certainly had some effect on the younger boys. A number of the boys at the school have said Billy Elliot made them feel more comfortable about telling people they are ballet dancers." Miss Stock added that the film had helped change the image of male ballet dancers as sidekicks to ballerinas. The seed for this article was when I noticed that in the 8 years that I’ve been going to the Prix de Lausanne, only twice was it won by a female dancer – in 2016 by YU HANG from China and in 2019 by MACKENZIE BROWN from the United States. Going further back, in the 1990s – 3 male dancers won it. In the 2000s, 4 males dancers and from the 2010s, 6 male dancers. So far, 2020, 2021, 2022 and 2023 –has been won by a male dancer! The trend is certainly promising. The boys at the barre who followed Billy Elliot are now men in tights. They’ve arrived. This is the part where the audience in auditorium gives them a standing ovation. The chorus of “Brava!” has become “Bravo!”
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