Dancer Tights Views
Former Balanchine dancer Robert Weiss thinks negative preconceptions about male dancers stem from America's Puritan heritage. One strategy that has worked for him as artistic director of Carolina Ballet is to present and market accessible works in which men aren't dressed in tights (or ballerinas in tutus) to first-time ballet goers. He cites a piece his company did in collaboration with the Red Clay Ramblers and choreographer Lynne Taylor-Corbett in February called Carolina Jamboree, including one act with a down-home hoedown.
Houston Ballet artistic director Stanton Welch points out that very often male dancers themselves, regardless of sexual orientation, have trouble with tights. When men begin ballet, it takes the dancer himself quite a while to become comfortable in tights, he says. With full figure tights and a support and everything, you feel very exposed. For that matter, a tutu is also a very revealing thing. The irony of it is that nowadays a lot of choreographers, including myself, don't use tights at all. Bare legs are more common, and this can actually leave the dancer feeling more exposed than wearing tights.
Whether in tights or bare-legged, a dancer expects his body to be scrutinized. Let's face it, says Kansas City Ballet artistic director William Whitener, as an audience member, what you are doing is observing--hopefully, the entire being of the dancer, and everything that he has to express with his emotions and his body. We seem to accept the fact that in athletics you can wear something that's tight fitting and slenderizing, and efficient for movement. Why should this be different for dance?
Dancer Tights Images
