Men who dance. (Ballet)

I was idly watching ballet on tv the other night, trying to “get it”. I couldn’t help but again notice the rather prodigious crotch bulges on these guys. Enough to make even heavy metal band members jealous.
Ok, I’m sophisticated enough to know it ain’t meat, so what is it? And why?
Peace,
mangeorge

Some sort of built-in protective cup?

I thought of that, but I doubt it. Protect from what? Aggressive fans? :stuck_out_tongue:

From a ballerina’s kick. :wink: Seriously. One misplaced grand battement and oof!, he’s down on the floor writhing in agony, which tends to detract from the performance.

I am not a ballet insider, but I believe they’re wearing what’s known as a “hard cup”.

Caution: Non-work-safe link, if you work in a place where you wouldn’t want to be seen looking at a web page of guys modeling jock straps. Hubba hubba! :smiley:

http://internationaljock.com/hardcups.html

Now I have a completely different question after taking a cursory look at that link - what’s up with the one with the garters? I know I’m a little sports-stupid, but I had no idea there were sports you wore a garter belt to play, Bull Durham aside.

Heh. :smiley: Why, the garters are to hold his stockings up, dear.

I’m serious–it’s a hockey jock.

http://www.greatskate.com/acb/webpage.cfm?WebPage_ID=40&DID=10

http://www.hockey-equipment-expert.com/jocks-and-garters1.htm

I bet the male dancers have big MERKINS in their pants!

In polite society, it is called a “dance belt” but yep, it’s basically an athletic supporter with cup.

I never thought it was protecting them from anything, but just part of the costume to insure a uniform look.

But here’s a thought- baseball pitchers “adjust” themselves after each pitch, because the hard cup shifts with the throwing motion and can pinch (or worse, I suppose). If it’s a hard cup, how can dancers deal with not being able to readjust it?

I say they do it for looks, to try to fool whoever watches ballet into thinking they are more manly. Lord knows they need the help while prancing around in tights.

it’s definitely like an athletic supporter, but i’d be surprised if they always used a hard cup. i would think that might inhibit movement.

http://www.soundventure.com/web/footnotes/sbbelt.html
http://www.dancewear.com/dancewear/dept.asp?s_id=0&dept_id=2030
http://www.thecostumer.com/store/product.cfm?prodID=387

dance does bring you very, very, close to your partner. things brush up against other things. apart from a slight bit of protection from toe shoes, it would help camo. some physical responses.

I used to dance ballet. The “Nutcracker Prince” for four years running in our city’s yearly production, thankyewthankyew. Go ahead and crack jokes, I’m impervious. :smiley: The dance belt is basically an athletic supporter, but keeps your package a little more firmly packaged. I’ve never seen one with a hard cup…having worn one for contact sports it seems like it would inhibit your movement too much for dance. You can’t really cross your legs in one, and you do have to adjust it a lot.

If you want to know why you need one, put on a leotard without one and check out the unit. It is very visible; the shape of ol’ friendly and his two buddies is perfectly outlined for all the world to see. This can be rather distracting to the audience and your fellow performers and is sure to send the director into a conniption.

Makes sense to me, except, why sooo… generous. You’re not going to try to tell me that’s all pravnik in there are you. :wink:
Maybe it’s as someone stated above, to protect the egos of the less well endowed.

I guess partially for the same reason that some women’s bras make their breasts look somewhat larger…the kind of “lift up and thrust out”, so to speak. Plus, they have some padding, so no, it’s not 100% pravnik downstairs. Really, I think most of it is just the nature of the tights themselves, like how putting on a tighter shirt makes you look more muscular.

Also, probably some guys are just well endowed so that you tend to notice more and they stick in your mind more (or maybe they just stuff a sock or two in to make up for the assault on their manliness that ballet occassionally brings).

Thanks for your insight, pravnik. My curiosity is satisfied.
So, do ballet dancers have groupies? :smiley:

Well, the “dance belts” I looked at online produced nothing at all resembling the enormous bulges Mangeorge is asking about, and the “hard cups” did.

Dance belts.
http://internationaljock.com/thongs.html

Samples.
http://internationaljock.com/zpage14-9805.html
http://internationaljock.com/zpage14-9801.html

These produce what I would call a fairly flat and rather small [heh :smiley: ] normal swimsuit type of bulge, nothing at all like what Mangeorge is talking about.

And I know exactly what he’s talking about, because back in the 1960s, when I was a little girl watching the Ed Sullivan show with my dad, and they’d have the Bolshoi Ballet on there, my dad the self-admitted prude was always horribly embarrassed by their enormous bulges. I remember once he actually had to go in the other room, he was so embarrassed.

[flashing on the Festrunk brothers here]

So, I dunno, maybe some dance companies have official “hard cup” policies, so all their male dancers have enormous bulges, and maybe some dance companies allow dance belts? Maybe there’s a special more flexible “hard cup” out there? I have the wrong set of gonads to know from personal experience, but some of the cups on that page were billed as being more “flexible” and “comfortable”.

http://internationaljock.com/zpage3-3566.html

And there’s one designed for martial arts, which it seems to me involves a lot of similar “balletic” kicks, etc.

http://internationaljock.com/zpage3-3515.html

And this one is on both the “soft cups” and “hard cups” pages, but it produces a substantial bulge.

http://internationaljock.com/zpage10-3533.html

However, the rest of their featured “soft cups” don’t produce that enormous “Ed Sullivan Show” Bolshoi bulge.

Well, having been both an amatuer musician and an amatuer ballet dancer…it’s not even close. Probably different for the pros. It has its upsides, though. Ballerinas have absolute knockout bodies, you practice together constantly, and there aren’t just a whole lot of guys doing it (not in West Texas, anyway). Plus you get to do stuff like hold them up in the air by the boodie, and so on.

That was directed to mangeorge’s query about ballet groupies, for the benefit of the confused.

Pix of male dancers with bulges (well, okay, mainly pictures of Mikhail Baryshnikov, as he seems to be the one with the most pictures on Google). Anyway, they don’t look to me like they’re wearing “dance belts”. They don’t look like minimizing-flat-swimwear-type of bulges. So, what are they wearing? They’re obviously wearing something.

http://www.voiceofdance.com/Store/images/BaryshnikovNutcracker.jpg
http://cloud.datashed.net/static/images/es/baryshnikov.jpg

http://www.maurice-abravanel.com/221balanchine_en_Mikhail_Baryshnikov.jpg


http://www.danceeurope.net/docs/SHOP/BOOKS/BOOKCVRS/barysh.jpg

http://www.balletgifts.com/assets/images/nureyev.jpg

Artwork, not a photo, but still representing an enormous bulge.
http://www.ballet.co.uk/images/normal/nureyev_in_wings_as_armand.jpg

http://www.theaterburoschmid.nl/producties/2002_2003/petersburg/petersburg2.jpg
http://www.theaterburoschmid.nl/producties/2002_2003/petersburg/petersburg.jpg

http://www.nycballet.com/about/rep_hjunction.html

Now, these guys look to me like they are definitely wearing dance belts.
http://www.fotosearch.com/comp/corbis/DGT116/AEN0009.jpg

Mangeorge, what group was it that you saw on TV?

Hmmm…that does look a little big, dunnit? Maybe it’s some kind of bulky Soviet-era device. Either that or Barishnikov is hung like a horse.