BETWEEN FOUR JUNCTIONS

MAK CROSBY On Male Ballet

To an audience, ballet is an elegant cacophony of shapes and lines: grace that emanates out of the dancer and a type of beauty that draws tears from the subtleties of movements. But behind the illusion wrought by stage, lights, music and the audience, these dancers are like racehorses. Sweat glinting in the lights to match the glass jewels around them, legs so finely trained that each movement in their three act show is a matter of muscle memory and yet they’re still radiant with prepossessing might. A fine breed of young people sharing the same callused feet and bloodied toes and lactic acid that always manages to slightly paralyse the next morning’s movements. It seems to be a small price to pay for the spotlight. But my love affair with ballet came not because of this but because of its brutal purpose to find perfection in movement. Yes, ballet is far more than girls in tutus; ballet is an evolving symphony of skill and art.

It was, however, Michael Jackson’s Off the Wall album that first convinced my family I had a knack for dancing. Yes, moonwalking, forward leaning Michael made me dance persistently the whole car journey to my grandparents. The fast-paced beats and melodies are quite far from the violins and violas of Tchaikovsky’s and Stravinsky’s scores, but both of them make you want to dance. So I tried tap, jazz and contemporary, but ballet just stuck. It wasn’t the feeling of being the only boy nor the lycra leggings clinging to my scrawny eight year old body that particularly appealed. No, instead the feeling of calm and purpose as barre got underway and its unparalleled strength in focus and movement made my heart warm to it. Assemblé en tournant and temps de poisson would be moves you’d do to impress your ballet master, but to impress a friend I can always moonwalk too.

Our studio sits in a sports centre, quite far from the ornate and intricate ceilings of the Royal Opera House. Tucked behind the sports hall you’d be surprised to hear a piano’s chords and see a company’s costumes. It’s a small studio, but it’s still a monastery in the global religion of ballet. The clichés of pink, sequinned tutus and floods of girls is far from the reality of ballet (although I must admit, I don’t mind the latter). That illusion of control as a dancer spins five times on what seems like a single toe comes from years of blood, sweat and tears. Grand allegro, the big jumps to him and her, always turn the muddied faces of boys coming in from football, who look through the steamed glass door, from a judging oblivious disdain to what seems like shock and even amazement as the legs float metres above the ground in lithesome splendour. A boy doing ballet? He must be weak and sissy. But the muscles that carry me from exercise after exercise, the muscles that lift girls above shoulder and head tell them otherwise. Music ties a partnered couple together into one. It aligns itself with the développé and plié of each dancer. Without men, you wouldn’t have a company. No one to lift the females high; no one to spin them fast and no one to hold them tight. They’re a backbone to the show, but also the spark to light the fire. A male solo comes and those sixteen bars of dedicated music give way to an explosion of motion that your average man wouldn’t deem possible.

Male dancers are commonly stronger and fitter than footballers — a fact my dad once told me. It always comes into mind when they gawp in on class. And when the school people ask, I answer: no I don’t go on pointe; no I am not gay; and no I am not the only boy. In fact, ballet is much like a sport in the athleticism and physical training it requires to master it. But what makes me choose ballet over the ball is how it can tell a story and really say something about music, history, society and people in a way sport doesn’t. Yes, standing in a stadium cheering for a team is electric, all eyes focused on the ball with joyous fixation, but when Juliet sits and stares into the audience, her Romeo dead downstage left, everyone in enchanted silence, that is something that stays with you. Just like ‘good toes naughty toes’ is to a ‘one bounce’ game of footy, both breed a life-long love for their discipline. David Beckham may have more money and fame but Rudolf Nureyev leaving soviet Russia to dance with the likes of Margot Fonteyn at the Royal Ballet in London is symbolic of the passion ballet gives you and the struggle you push through to reach greatness. Your average footballer runs on average about ten kilometres per game, but compare that to a male principal who jumps around 275 metres and lifts over one and half tonnes all combined throughout a single show; I could certainly tell you what I think is more impressive.

And after class, I hope I will not be judged by the leotard I wear and lack of mud at my feet but by the sweat on my skin and muscles in my legs. The judgment of those boys is because of ignorance, but that ignorance is influenced by a society that sets gender roles, and those roles should be whatever you want them to be, because the removal of yourself from those insular minded standards brings a happiness and a freedom to everyone. It means I can pull my feet into position and move to the pianist’s rousing strikes and go from from stiff and cold to being focused on balancing somebody on the palm of a hand, to looking effortless and absolutely beautiful in the flow of music, all because I’m happy I can be a male ballet dancer.