The Male Dancer: Bodies, Spectacle, Sexualities, (Second Edition), Ramsay Burt (London and New York: Routledge, 2007).

Abstract

Masculinities revealed through ‘dancing bodies’ is an important subject which, as Ramsey Burt observes, is framed by but invariably diverges from the dominant white, heterosexual male position which patterns western thought. At ground or rather stage level, Burt aligns the discussion from the ever-changing vantage points of spectators. To his credit, he is also sensitive to the limitations of visual reception in a medium, dance, which arguably operates simultaneously on visceral levels of reception. His premise focuses on the excess of meanings, albeit in limited western parameters, that a human being who dances can provoke.