How did we arrive at Dance = Feminine?

The picture below shows an all-male troupe of Morris dancers. Now, frankly, I have no clue what a Morris dance is. I only chose the pic as an example of near-modern Western male dancing. We all know that primitive Africans and South Pacific islanders men just love to dance. But so did Europeans and Americans until more recently than you might think. Somewhere along the line a deep-seated assumption of dancing=feminine was taken on. So, for instance, my son had an abhorrence of dance when he was 7 years old when his younger sister was taking lessons. And the first time I took my daughter to the ballet and she saw male dancers among the ballerinas she leaned over and whispered, “Dad, what are those boys doing on the stage?”

It has come so far that I would expect most men to respond to this question with “so what?” As if I had asked how skirts or make-up had become relegated to feminine-only.

How and why did this happen? It would have been strange to Gene Kelly and you-dirty-rat James Cagney.
Some not-so-girly-men:

Gene Kelly

James Cagney

No idea, but it certainly works out well for us men who can dance.

That first picture reads as feminine to me (maybe the colors?) Also, the old dude with the beard is out of step.

I refute the OP thus: Haka. :stuck_out_tongue:

(No Youtube access at work, but I’d encourge you to check out an example or two).

Though… the more I think about it… NZ rugby players do kinda fit your “primitive” exemption. :smiley:

Well, Terpsichore was the ancient Muse of dance and she’s feminine.

I’ve never thought of dance in general as feminine but certain kinds of dance such as modern (I guess that’s the proper term) and ballet are not dances I really care to watch men perform. There’s the obvious aspect of the costume. I love the male form but not in a leotard. Also, those particular dances emphasize grace and fluidity(?) which somehow don’t translate to masculine for me. And I really, really don’t want to see Chippendale type dancing; gag.

I can absolutely appreciate the talent, discipline and gorgeous physicques of male dancers, so please don’t any of you male dancers out there take offense.

Morris Dancing is still-current British dance style. It’s not exactly fashionable among the youth (as you can guess from that photo :wink: ) but I’ve certainly seen Morris sides (they’re not troupes, they’re called ‘sides’, if you want to sound expert) in the last year; they’re a common entertainment at summer fairs, especially at midsummer. In fact, a Morris group practices in the next building over to a club I go to weekly; though that one’s a mixed gender side, rather than the more common all-male. Several dances involve clashing large wooden sticks, the rest, for some reason, require several handkerchiefs. I can see the rather obvious stick masculinity metaphors, but I never did understand the hankies.

So far as I can tell, it’s basically a way to get rascally drunk while pretending to exercise, all under the guise of tradition.

They wear bells, so they’re easily avoided if you wish. :smiley:

I think it came from the idea that the men who did this sort of thing were not the macho men. And those men were often made fun of by being called feminine since they didn’t do “man’s work.”

That’s only your opinion.

I first read this blog post years ago, but managed to dig it up again for this thread:

From the same guy, later in the thread:

(NO, I did not write this. NO, I do not completely agree with it…but I do think it raises some valid points.)

I suspect a lot of people’s ideas about modern dance and ballet are horribly colored by conceptions of Isadora Duncan and the pop culture idea of a ballerina. I haven’t seen all that many dance performances, to be honest, yet the ones I’ve seen have been smooth and fluid, jerky and staccato, and even goofy slapstick.

Me, I think people think dance is feminine because we’ve lost the culture that really emphasized the arts as part of a well-rounded education. Being interested in art, music, dance or theater seem to me like pursuits that are considered unmanly.

There are two separate things being discussed here: dancing as a stage performance and dancing as a social activity. I just want to be sure that people realize the very big difference between the two.

It’s not like there are two distinct and non-overlapping heritages for the two. Dancing as performance is an outgrowth of dance as a social activity, just as ceramics as art is an outgrowth of ceramics as kitchenware.

I don’t know. My son is 7 and has been asking me for ballet lessons since age 5, but i can’t afford them.

There was an interview recently on one of the NPR shows about the history of ballet. The discovery for me was to learn that ballet was originally much more male dominated and it wasn’t until it was professionalized that it shifted to women.

Like, uh, Patrick Swayze, Mikhail Baryshniko, Gregory Hines and loads of other contemporary male dancers. Don’t forget Bollywood.

Who makes fun of dancers?

Since when is men dancing feminine? I think it’s sexy when a man knows how to dance.

Norman Mailer seems to haveabsorbed the meme. If there is no such meme, why the title?

Middle-Aged Simon Pegg looks really happy to be Morrising there on the left…

I think this notion of dance=feminine only really applies to certain modern cultures. It’s certainly not the case in hip-hop culture, nor (modern) African township culture. Bollywood’s already been mentioned.

I think the question might be better reformatted as, “Why do straight, middle class, white American men think dancing is feminine?” That seems to be about the only subculture where the OP’s observations hold true.