15 GAYSWEEK September 25, 1978

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Dancing, Writing and Sexuality

AARON COHEN

f homosexuality has suddenly been discovered by the publishing industry as a very marketable item, dance has also begun to have its day. There are now books available on dance by people who can write, books by people who know dance, and even a few that qualify on both scores. (Too, there are those that qualify on neither count.) DaCapo Press

is building an extensive line of reprints

on the subject that are of historical importance. All are available in paperback and are heavily illustrated. I have seen and can recommend several strongly.

One of the best writers ever on dance was Carl Van Vechten. Though he is better known for his involvements with music and photography, his observations on dance in the first third of this century are models of vividness. The ones reprinted in Nijinsky, Pavlova, Duncan ($6.95) evoke living images of those three fabled artists. Also among the book's contents are an appreciation of Nijinsky by Robert Edmond Jones. The Pavlova section features her own reminiscences, and the Duncan material highlights a poem and drawings by Edward Gordon Craig. There are, as well, abundant illustrations (discussed with illuminating analyses), a chronology, a bibliography, and other addenda on each figure. There is hardly a better way to become acquainted with the subjects of this volume than getting lost

in its pages.

This is the second time Martha Graham, The Early Years, edited by Merle Armitage ($5.95), has been reissued in recent years. Originally brought out in 1937, this seminal work contains comments on Graham by many of her early associates and appreciators. They are all the more significant in view of the position she has come to occupy in the intervening forty years.

Unknown to most new dance enthusiasts is the fact that the art has had a long history in North America and a distinguished list of researchers has chronicled it painstakingly. Lillian Moore was one of the best. Three of her monographs from the long-defunct Dance Index were assembled along with many other works in Chronicles of the American Dance ($7.95), which was also edited by Paul Magriel. Among the delights are two short contemporary reviews of Maud Allen, a shadowy figure in the trail of Duncan and Loie Fuller about whom too little has been published of late.

Arnold Haskell's Diaghileff: His Artistic and Private Life ($6.95), written in collaboration with Walter Nouvel, dates from 1935. It was one of the earliest attempts at assessing the contributions of the father of the Ballets Russes to twentieth-century culture. Nouvel was an intimate friend of the impresario and privy to much that went on, especially the preparations for the early Paris sea-

sons.

Another figure closely associated with Diaghileff was Stravinsky, which makes Stravinsky in the Theatre, edited by Minna Lederman ($3.45), a good companion to the preceding book. Besides containing essays by the Maestro himself, there are pieces by, among others, Cocteau, Balanchine, Monteux, Milhaud, Bernstein, Lincoln Kirstein, and, of course, Robert Craft.

A book I do not recommend is Joseph H. Mazo's Dance Is a Contact Sport ($5.95). Mazo spent six months backstage with the New York City Ballet in 1973, and this is his journal of that period. It is as chatty and gossip-filled as a journal should be, but Mazo reveals many areas of profound ignorance about dance, dancers, and the dancing experience. All I had

BOOKS

to do was open his book at random to find

a typical absurdity. From page 160, re. Edward Villella: "In the ballet bestiary, Eddie is an American mustang. His presence is as virile as that of Nureyev or Bruhn, but he less brooding than the Russian, less remote than the Dane." Whatever the accuracy may be of Villella's position, the concepts of brooding Russians and remote (or melancholic) Danes are too tired to require further comment. The real gaffe is in associating the conventional image of virility with either Nureyev or Bruhn, since it is a quality neither particularly cultivated

nor cared whether he was identified with.

mension, which makes it awkward to shelve. Otherwise, next time he does a book on dance, I hope Graham Jackson takes the time to write from scratch. His ideas deserve that kind of consideration.

Dynamic Duo

BRAD MULROY

The Gay Health Guide

Robert L. Rowan and Paul J. Gillette

lems Attending Penile Penetration" which is to indicate why "anorectal penetration (is) more apt to cause injury than penetration of the vagina." For this "Table 2" the authors should receive the Bieber-Socarides (BS) award for monumental irrelevance. What concrete application this information has for gay males remains one of medicine's great mysteries.

In "Problems of Sexual Performance," approximately seven pages are devoted to women, examining orgasmic difficulties, Little, Brown. 177 pp (plus appendices). homosexual guilt, fear of failure and $9.95 similar matters. The conclusion is that most of these factors will rarely, if ever, come into play for most homosexually active women.

Their greatness lies in always projecting Do

that which is appropriate.

Another dim-witted remark by Mazo (page 231): "When dancers learn to turn out 180 degrees from the hips, to dance on pointe, to hold their torsos high off their waists, to arch and point their feet unnaturally, the muscles involved in these operations are strengthened in one way, but weakened in others." Aside from the banal obviousness of the latter part of this statement, Mazo is wrong anatomically. Turn-out of a full 180 degrees is not only almost impossible, but undesirable; it would be accompanied by a lack of control of the muscles of the inner thigh. Further, the torso extends from the pelvis to the neck, and dancers support their weight by riding the center of gravity (in the pelvis) to permit an easy, full range of motion. A held torso connotes rigidity. Also, there is nothing unnatural about arching and pointing the feet; it is merely more problematic for some than others (every dancer knows and "hates" at least one non-dancer whose feet point and arch exquisitely, without any special work having been required). And see how far you get when you tell the Georgian peculiar about their dancing à pointe-in (USSR) men that there is something

soft-toed boots, no less!

Amare jackson, who is based in

more insightful writer on dance is

Canada. He self-confessedly has a relatively limited long-range perspective on dance, going back, as it does, for less than a decade of serious viewing. But he is sensitive and has done a lot of solid studying. Dance as Dance (Scarborough, Ontario: Catalyst Press, $6.95 paper) is provocative primarily because of Jackson's concern with sexuality. In his Preface, he states: "I do think that critics should recognize the role that individual sexual tastes play in their assessments," with which I concur. It is a consideration that is downplayed much too often in dance, especially, the most physical and literally naked of art forms.

Jackson's comments are distinguished by the fact that he really does seem to see what is happening on the stage, and he describes it accurately. He is not easily taken in by schlock or kitsch, frequently making remarks that spark reassessments. Viz. (page 41):

There is room for both the macho dancer and the dainty dancer as well as for something in between, something little-appreciated in North America, the androgyne. The Royal Ballet in England has several androgynous male dancers; in fact, one of the best male classical dancers performing today, Anthony Dowell, is androgynous in both appearance and technique. When Mazo (see above] throws this term, "effeminate," around, he probably means this intersexual quality-one he obviously can't come to grips with.

The problem identified in this passage is not just one belonging to Joseph Mazo (although it does indicate another reason for my dislike of him), but a shortcoming shared by a good deal of the dance public (informed and otherwise).

Aside from its vacuous title, the other objection I take to Dance as Dance is the jerkiness of some of Jackson's prose, the brevity of the chapters (whose origins were mostly as reviews for weeklies), and the book's being bound in the short di-

octors Rowan and Gillette state in their introduction to The Gay Health Guide that their book is about "minimizing the health hazards of homosexual activity" which they say are "many and serious." They cite as a fact that "the typical homosexually active male will get venereal disease ten times more often than the typical male whose activity is exclusively heterosexual. The typical homosexually active female ... will get VD less often, but is nonetheless susceptible." They propose that knowledge of what can happen and the circumstances. under which it is likely to happen can reduce the chances of it happening to you.

The book is intended for homosexually active people and others who wish to know more about homosexuality in general. Their raison d'être established, they then devote 18 chapters to an explication of everything you always wanted to know about sexual diseases and other problems of the homosexually active life.

Most of the book follows a format of posing and responding to questions such as: What is it? How do you contract it? How do you know you have it? How is it treated? How can it be avoided? In six sexual injuries, performance problems, additional chapters the authors examine preventive medicine, emotional considerations, going straight and transsexualism. Insofar as organization, presentation and exposition are concerned, the authors cannot be faulted. As for substance, that is another matter.

In a discussion of Moniliasis (transmitted homosexually among men and women), we are told that it is

::

especially prevalent in pregnancy... Women whose activity is exclusively homosexual generally do not take oral contraceptives and therefore are less likely to incur the infection than women who do A man might acquire a monilia infection beneath the fingernails during a heterosexual encounter and transfer it to the rectum of another man, from whom a third man might acquire a urethral infection... Men whose activity is exclusively homosexual will not ordinarily contract the infection by sexual transmission. They can, however, contract it non-sexually-though this is quite rare.

While no one denies the possibility of contracting this infection, what in fact is the probability?

The above is typical of much of the information in the Guide which, while interesting, is of questionable relevance insofar as the day-to-day health problems of lesbians and gay males are concerned. Considering the cost of this book, it should be noted that for 75 cents one may acquire Health and Venereal Disease Guide for Gay Men from the Gay Men's Health Project, 74 Grove Street, New York, NY 10014. Over half of the topics relating to gay males discussed in The Gay Health Guide are also discussed in the project's report. Medical information by, for and about lesbians is available from women's organizations.

The chapter in Rowan and Gillette's book called "Sexual Injury" opens with the contention that almost all sexual injury occurs "anorectally" among males and is suffered by the person who is penetrated. To mitigate the problem, vaseline or KY are recommended. Included in this section is a table, "Comparison of Anus/ Rectum and Vagina in Terms of Prob-

The chapter "Going Straight" is likely to engender a medical problem of its own. An increase in the reader's blood pressure is virtually guaranteed.

While homosexual desire and/or activity need not be emotionally troublesome, there are some men and women who find it so and would like to pursue heterosexual relationships exclusively. This is certainly possible, though some people find it more difficult to change their orientation than others.

Thus are gay people categorized and circumscribed by their sexuality and should they experience any difficulty therein the "obvious" solution lies in changing their orientation.

"Behavioral scientists disagree vehemently about the causes of homosexual desire and the best ways to deal with it...." We are offered summaries of six of the most promising candidates for salvation. They could have saved themselves the trouble. Thousands of us are all too familiar with the horrors visited upon us by the self-appointed "authorities" who have long devoted themselves to changing our orientation. As eloquently expressed by members of the Gay Socialist Action Project at the New York Academy of Medicine (April, 1976): "For too long we have been diagnosed, prognosed, counseled, helped, treated and cured. We have been psychoanalyzed, tranquilized, hypnotized, psychodramaed, group therapied, hormone treated, shock treated, aversion treated, lobotomized, hysterectomized, clitoridectomized."

Rowan and Gillette carefully avoid the use of the word "cure" which certainly must have been a struggle, for what else. are they talking about? Having stated on page four "homosexuality is not an illness," it is apparent that the doctors suffer from a severe case of literary amnesia.

The final chapter, "Transsexualism," insofar as it describes in detail the surgical procedures of sex-change operations and the legal and personal problems of transsexuals, is quite valuable. However, the authors raise more questions than they answer as they take as a matter of course that transsexuals are homosexuals. Is homosexuality the attraction to the same sex as defined solely by anatomy? That the authors do not define homosexuality at least for the purpose of this chapter constitutes a serious oversight.

As for the health hazards of the homosexually active being "many and serious," one cannot help but wonder, compared to what? Are the health hazards of the heterosexually active few and frivolous? As for minimizing these hazards, this is what is proposed: abstinence, monogamy, condoms, and attempting "to be surreptitiously on the lookout for symptoms without offending the potential possessor of them..." Finally, "Visit regularly a VD clinic or a private physician." In other words, not very much.

The Gay Health Guide is an overwritten essay on one aspect of la condition humaine. The suggestion that relatives and friends will learn something from it about "homosexuality in general" verges on insult. Such persons would benefit themselves more by learning elsewhere about gay and lesbian people.