TED Conversations

Ashley Tanberg

This conversation is closed. Start a new conversation
or join one »

Why do queer women assume that they cannot move elegantly, gracefully, or lovingly on stage?

Dance produces bodies and ideas about our bodies. Different dance trainings and techniques create different body types and execution of movement. Moreover, dance normalizes ideas about racialized, gendered, aged and sexualized bodies.

However, there seems to be an unease with the idea of a dancing lesbian body. For years, the male gaze has left little room for queer female movers and relationships to take place on stage. Why? Why do queer women assume that they cannot move elegantly, gracefully, or lovingly on stage? Is because of their inherent queerness?

The astounding invisibility of lesbian dancing bodies in Western dance history a constructs a lesbian dancer as a contradiction. As a society, how can we make room for the feminine touch of the lesbian dancing and moving body on stage and in life?

+1
Share:
progress indicator

  • Random Chance 30+

    • 0
    Mar 14 2013: Yes, their orientation does occur to me.
    Why? Because I see something and because I have been raised with deep-seated beliefs (lies and falsehoods), planted within me by others, it is sometimes a first thought/reaction that I have. Sort of like a quark bursting temporarily into existence in my photon-like mind.
    But then I move away from that and see or try to see whether or not a dancer is comfortable in their own skin, which can also mean, and many times does, their own sexuality.
    They are not immune to the lies bestowed upon them as a useless burden and neither is civilization, and some fight and win over the lies and their effects easier and sooner than others do.
    A terrible thing done, not only to gays and lesbians, but also to the public at large.

    I can only imagine that since dancing is a wonderful thing and children love to dance, why have we allowed an immorality to have been planted into dance the further and older we go in the education system, making it more difficult for people to enjoy, with abandon? Or to even judge another who is brave and willing to follow their muse and dream? Every time I see a very overweight person jogging, I think power for and to them.

  • carolyn mcauley 10+

    • 0
    Mar 8 2013: Ashley,this is interesting! You are yourself presenting a stereotype I was aware existed,I came ti a defencive position and in fact you are the mythic being you speak of...you in fact are the answer to your question...I am glad..I was worried there was a new catagorey of prejudice ...Sorry to hear about your relationship with "myth" .You are your own evidence,times it by millions of other dancing females times since the beginning of mankind..dont worry..this is mostly a spikey gossip comment on which you have caught ontoa sharp barb

  • carolyn mcauley 10+

    • 0
    Mar 8 2013: I will attempt to answer this question. It assumes a perspective that many lesbians are failing the dance test...if only I knew there was one(alas). However there are nightclubs that cater exclusively to lesbians and inside they are to be seen dancing..for hours..in groups and couples and alone. Proffessional Dancers as a group,like athletes are a group so therefore presenting their sexual preferenc is not part of the show they are a cohesive unit. The other fact you are missing is that some lesbians are feminine and small and very girlish.so they are unspotable to the heterosexual untrained eye.You may have danced next to one and been oblivious. So now that you are informed ,you may have an opportunity to observe again and your confusion about this mythic group will change.Women loving exclusively women as a sexual stereotype would not erase the pulse of natural lightness of being that dance may embody

    • Ashley Tanberg

      • 0
      Mar 8 2013: As a lesbian, the small and feminine type, I am not encouraged to move like an animal ... to exert extreme efforts, go into inversions, rather, I am encouraged to find softness and delicateness. People outwardly tell me that I do not dance like a lesbian. What does that mean? I don't dance bulky? I don't move like a man? Can I embody both characteristics?

      I am real. I am here. This is not a mythical concern.
  • thumb

    Fritzie Reisner 100+

    • +2
    Host
    Mar 8 2013: Many people of both genders are not comfortable on stage, dancing or otherwise.

    Many people of both genders do not feel comfortable dancing.

    Beyond this, is there some evidence that women's sexual orientation is related to how comfortable they are on stage, dancing or otherwise?

    When you watch dancers on a stage, does their sexual orientation even occur to you?
Showing all 5 comments