Week 12 Blogging Assignment

As I was watching the Alonzo LINES Ballet (a Vision & Voices event here @ USC Bovard Auditorium), I saw that there were equal number of men and women, all of different races. Having never actually seen a ballet before, I had always assumed the dancers were mostly composed of extremely skinny Caucasian females doing pirouettes being tossed around by males. However, this was a completely different take on "traditional ballet". Instead, it was more of a contemporary take, using tribal music as background music to the contortionistic movements. Nonetheless, I was interested in finding out more about the relations between gender and ballet when I came about an article that had to do with a man having to choose between football and ballet. Now, this came as a clear surprise to me because I had never thought of to associate the two. But in reality, why shouldn't I be able to? Why does society portray these two as such extremes and the fact that men who do ballet is "less manly" than football players. Surely they have the same muscles, the same work ethic, and the same amount of pressure to perform well. Yet, society has put these two sports on a spectrum of extremes that one would never think to be combined. One quote that stood out in the article I was reading stated that, "In fact, football players have been known to study ballet to help their game". This quote deeply intrigued me because just like the movie "The Game Plan" a professional football player wearing tutu is not only slightly disturbing, but somewhat amusing. So this made me question, what does the association between sports and gender reveal about masculinity and femininity? In my opinion, a lot about stereotypes, especially when it comes to masculinity. Grace Huang.

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2002765032_ballet27m.html