Extracts from...
Queer Invasions at Sadler's Wells
Goldsmiths 2020
​
These are extracts of an essay in response to the question 'Examine the processes sparked by the arrival of ‘Space Invaders’ in places which have not been historically or conceptually reserved for them.
Acknowledging the homoeroticism of dancing bodies, in the canon of contemporary dance, has been avoided at all costs. There is a popularity to the process of conceptually separating ‘male dancers’ and suggestions of homosexuality.
‘Homophobia comes into operation so that men can be as close as possible – to work powerfully together in the interests of men – without ever being too (sexually) close to one another … homophobia actually brings men into close homosocial relation’ (Bristow, 1988: 128).
Counter intuitively, one’s desire to separate themselves from homosexuality, in fact brings them closer to it.
We can see this closeness between men in many contemporary dance works in recent years. Hofesh Shecter’s all male dance piece ‘In Your Rooms’ made in 2012, presented the audience with men in combative exchange, aggressive partner work, touching, jumping, fighting. In an attempt to build an image of strong, heterosexual masculinity, Shecter brings his male dancers together. Through the combative performance, the audience is assured by Shecter that this definitely doesn’t have homosexual connotations, and yet, as Bristow points out, this combat enables the dancers to come together in a close homosocial relation.
Matthew Bourne's Swan Lake
We can also see this refusal of the homoeroticism of work in Matthew Bourne’s Swan Lake. Bourne’s all-male Swan Lake has been widely considered ground breaking work in contemporary dance, and has been performed across the world year on year since its first opening in 1995. Hargreaves unpicks the response from the press, highlighting the explicit anxiety around the possibility that the queerness of the piece may be noticed. Despite Adam Cooper (the Swan in the 1995 production) portraying romance between his Swan character and the male prince character, there is un-ambiguous concern that this could possibly be read as queer. Hargreaves refers to an interview where Emma Manning talks to Cooper for Dance Europe magazine. Cooper (and Manning in collusion with him) tries to ‘ward off the reading of homosexuality as present only in the minds of those that ‘nothing can be done about’’ (Hargreaves, 2003: 141). Cooper says;
The amount of people that did come and say ‘there’s no homosexual aspect to it at all’ was great. Obviously there are one or two people who saw what they wanted, but you can’t do anything about that! (Cooper, 1996)
Despite explicit homosexuality - the portrayal of love between two men - the press and Cooper himself work hard to separate themselves from any notion of queerness. This process of anti-queer rhetoric firstly allows for men to carry on dancing alongside men, as well as allowing Swan Lake to be considered part of the ‘canon’ of contemporary dance in late 20th and 21st century. It deterred us away from queer readings, and stays firmly in the commercial word, instead of being part of a queer, fringe body of work, that isn’t ‘serious’.
….
Women in dance have not yet achieved the status of being able to express desire, or become part of the conversation about sexual desire as subjects. The female dancer is a desirable object, and not a desiring subject.
Citations
Bristow, J., 1988. ‘How men are’, New Formations, 6(winter), pp. 119-31.
Cooper, A., 1996. 'Editorial'. Interview with Adam Cooper. Interviwered by Emma Manning for Dance Europe Magazine, Feb/Mar 1996.
Cunningham, J., 2018. m/y. London: [Sadler’s Wells. 13 – 18 Oct].
Hargreaves, M. J., 2003. Performativity, Spectrality, Hysteria: the performance of masculinity in late 1990s British dance.