Commentaire
'Queers in ballet!? This shocking development is revealed by Mr. Stoneley in this very interesting book on the secret culture of ballet. As a homosexual choreographer., I was pleased and relieved to have the éléphant in the room acknowledged.' Mark Morris
'Peter Stoneley sheds welcome light on an open secret: that ballet has long responded to and ïnspired-gay maie culture. Of use to scholars and students aiike. this book will be an important addition to any library of queer studies. dance studies. and contemporary perfor-mance history and theory.'
Thomas DeFrantz, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
There has long been a popular perception of a connection between ballet and homosexuality, a connection that, for stratégie reasons, has often been denied by those in the dance world. A Queer History of the Ballet focuses on how, as makers and as audiences, queer men and women have helped to develop many of the texts, images, and legends of ballet. Further, the book explores the ways in which, from the nineteenth century into the twentieth, ballet has been a means of conjuring homosexuality - of enabling some degree of expression and visibility for people who were otherwise declared illégal and obscene.
This book présents a sériés of historical case studies, including:
• the perverse sororities of the Romantic ballet;
• the fairy in folklore, literature, and ballet;
• Tchaikovsky and the making of Swan Lake
• Diaghilev's Ballets Russes and the emergence of queer modemity;
• the formation of ballet in America;
• the queer uses of the prima ballerina;
• Genet's writings for and about ballet.
Stoneley ends with a considération of how ballet's queer tradition has been memorialised by such contemporary dance-makers as Neumeier, Bausch, Bourne and Preljocaj.This lively, accessible study will appeal to students, scholars and général readers with an interest in dance and in queer history.