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The persistent myth about the male dancer in Western culture is that he is gay. Sometimes the “myth” is true and sometimes it isn’t. Can you tell a person’s sexuality by the way he/she moves? The standard stereotype ignores the fact that some of the strongest, most muscular presences on the dance stage, in this century at least, have been men the public knew and knows are gay. And what about those still in the closet? Ballet and modern dance have traditionally expressed human relationships in terms of heterosexuality. Although men have danced with men and women with women, not until recently has that partnering become explicitly erotic. Homoeroticism is still as shocking on stage as nudity was a generation ago. On the dance stage, to break that taboo is even more difficult than in film or drama. To talk about gayness is one thing; to express it bodily is quite another, because it is precisely at the overt physicality of gay culture that the straight world purses its lips. k 91 k “Men Together” and Bloolips : Dance Magazine, March 1981 “Men Together,” a festival of gay performance organized by Tim Miller (November 14–16 at P.S. 122), explored a number of aspects of male relationships, bringing together diverse artists, not all of whom ordinarily deal with gay content in their work. For me, the festival was striking in several ways. First, the artists were primarily young men of the post-Stonewall generation. Unlike past generations of gay men in America , they confront mainstream culture with a sense of pride and they are aware of their shared culture and history. Still, the verbal and nonverbal signals a covert gay community developed out of necessity are no less vital for the current generation just because the culture has emerged from underground. Second, the styles and means of expression at the festival varied widely, even though all six items in the festival began with the notion of performance art as an arena stripped of theatrical conventions . Third, a sympathetic, often enthusiastic audience gave the event a sense of community involvement and validation of both content and intent. John Bernd and Tim Miller collaborated on a piece called We Had Tea. We Ate Cashew Chicken. Bernd is a dancer who has been performing solos mixing dance movements, texts, and objects; Miller doesn’t call himself a dancer, but he had just finished several months of weekly performances involving meditations on history, reading poetry, cooking, amateur arson, and some movement. Both men manufacture meaning obliquely, through correspondences and juxtapositions. Bernd and Miller met at one of the latter’s Monday evening performances and decided to make a dance together, which they originally titled Post-Modern Faggot. At one point during We Had Tea, Miller (who is fond of writing on things with spray paint) wrote “F-A-G” in big letters across his chest. “I prefer the word ‘faggot,’” he confided to the audience, “but it doesn’t fit.” Bernd obligingly took the can of paint and wrote the remaining three letters on Miller’s back. The mixture of roughness and attentiveness matched the tone of Miller’s erotic poetry, which Bernd read later. We Had Tea opened with the two men running in large circles in the vast gym of P.S. 122. Their black overcoats and pants gave them both an anonymous and an antique look. At times jogging together, at times overtaking one another, they set up an uneven rhythm of unity, leading, following, and gentle competition. They traded coats while running: gestures of sharing and aid. Bernd danced solo while Miller read from Proust about the beginnings of a friendship. Miller took his turn while Bernd read writings by Miller. Finally, the two again jogged together, 92    this time along a diagonal, circling arms, advancing and retreating, and talking about their own relationship in parallel, echoing phrases. The two have similar movement styles: Both hold their torsos straight, gesturing abstractly with the arms while stepping in easy rhythms. But Bernd has a chunky, solid quality, while Miller bounces and skitters, always veering off balance. The two made pleasing formal contrasts. “We had tea.” “We had tea.” “We ate cashew chicken.” “Then we came here and did this dance.” The collaboration, we came to understand, not only resulted in a product—the dance—but was also a process of two people discovering things about each other, becoming friends, perhaps also lovers. Threaded with ambiguities, the gentle dance...

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