I’ve been really conflicted about writing this post. There is an Instagram account called @BalletMoods that is clearly run by a professional dancer. Recently, they posted a meme that was meant to be funny. And, to some, it was.

While there is merit to what this meme says – I’m looking at you Swan Corps – it really discounts the path most boys have to navigate to get to the point where they can be made fun of in a meme. 

This post is not meant to set up an us vs. them discussion. Let’s just all agree that ballet is hard. For everyone. And, there is no question that ballet is still a patriarchy at the highest levels. Artistic directors and well-known choreographers are largely men. We have all read the articles that talk about how some ballet companies operated like Animal House, allowing the men in those companies to get away with damn near everything. And, this ALL needs to change.

But, we are not talking about the upper levels of a ballet company. What I want to talk about is the five year old boy who tells his parents he wants to take dance class. We were that family and my now 18 year-old is still dancing. He was lucky. He was and is more self-assured than just about anyone I know. That served him well when the inevitable bullying attempts started. But, I just saw yet another post in a Facebook group I’m part of where the parent talked about her ten year-old son being bullied, called names and had his sexuality questioned.

“I dream of seeing my little boy in tights and ballet slippers,” said no parent ever. This is where it all starts. Dance is socially acceptable for girls. For boys it just isn’t. According to the National Dance Education Organization, there are 3.5 million children in the U.S. who study dance. Only 10% of those are boys. 

My family lives in one of the most progressive cities on the planet and I still had parents ask me if my husband was ok with my son dancing. Uh, yes. Yes he is. In fact, he has never missed a performance my son has done. Not one.

However, according to Doug Risner, a professor of dance at Wayne State University, only 32% of fathers in the U.S. support their boys dancing ballet. Yes, you read that correctly – 32%. 

Can you imagine a dad of a little girl saying that they didn’t support her dancing? Risner’s research shows that mothers play a critical role in their son’s initial exposure to dance and then in supporting his dance training. But, most boys who dance do so without the support of their fathers.

If your son does ballet, he must be gay right? Anyone out there have a girl who has been asked this? Even the most well intentioned people we came across managed to slip that question in when they could. There are no hard and fast numbers on gay men in professional ballet, but the general consensus is that it’s about 50/50. But, why does this even matter?

There are actually parents who have told their boys that they can’t do ballet because it would make them gay. Seriously, this happens. 

John Lam, a former Boston Ballet principal dancer, when being interviewed by the Huffington Post, says that when he was 14 and was offered a spot at an elite ballet boarding school in Canada, his father didn’t want him to go. “He said, ‘You have to stay home, I don’t want you to be gay.’ So I said, ‘Okay, I won’t be gay. And I just lied in front of my parents’.” 

Lam has been a professional dancer for 20 years, and his parents have never seen him perform. Let that sink it. He’s been dancing with one of the best ballet companies in the world and his parents have never seen him dance.

The boys that make it all the way to the upper levels of a ballet school or even to a professional career are relentlessly tough. Here are some of the things they had to endure (Risner):

• Teasing, name calling and other verbal abuse (93%)
• Verbal or physical harassment (68%)
• Verbal threats or threatening behavior (39%)
• Physical harm or injury (11%)

According to Risner, “If this were not the arts, it would be considered a child health crisis.”

In Risner’s study, teenage boys said the biggest challenge they confront as boys in ballet is the harassment about their masculinity— more than 85 percent said more boys would study dance if boys and men weren’t teased and harassed so much for dancing.

Because of the bullying, it is common for boys to drop out of dance. It just gets to a point where it isn’t worth it anymore. Ballet schools recognize the need for boys, hence the huge imbalance in scholarships awarded at summer intensives and year-round ballet programs.

When there are so few boys left as ballet gets more serious, the competition to get them is fierce. And, the top schools tend to get the top boys. That next tier down really has to fight hard for them. So, scholarships from those programs flow freely. It may seem unfair if you’re the parent of a girl. But, remember that your daughter will not learn partnering if there are no boys. There will be no Swan Corps if there are no boys to play the peasants or even Siegfried. 

Scott Gormley, the father of a male ballet dancer, saw these things happening to his son and it inspired Gormley to make a documentary about the stigmas male dancers face. It’s called Danseur and should be required viewing for every parent of a ballet dancer, male or female.

One of the many problems that exists in ballet’s hyper-gendered culture is that boys learn at an early age that it’s “not ok” to act feminine or be perceived as gay. And, hyper-gendered behavior can be common, often a reaction to the incessant bullying boys face. 

Logic says that if that hyper-gendered behavior starts early in ballet, they grow up practicing it and it simply perpetuates the problem. Remember, that the artistic directors of today were those bullied boys of yesterday.

I really don’t have a solution to this problem, but I do wonder if more boys got into dance, and it got more competitive at younger ages, that the misogyny and bad behavior at the upper levels would start to dissipate. Boys get into dance for the same reason that girls do. They love to perform. Maybe instead of trying to compare ballet to sports or or trying to show just how athletic male (and female) dancers are, we could celebrate this beautiful art form and support all who choose to pursue it.

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