Written and Illsutrated By: Sofi Goldwater
Boys Can Dance! A young boy loves to dance and gets his dream job of dancing professionally at the Radio City Rockettes Christmas Spectacular. He quit dancing soon after. Peer ridicule, the most common expression of the extreme negative stigma in modern society against young male dancing strikes again, dashing another boy’s dream. There is a prevalent cultural attitude in society that boys should not dance. According to Scott Gormley, guest writer for the Huffington Post, “most boys who dance ballet face tremendous resistance – from their families, from friends and from society at large.” Gormley cites Doug Risner, professor of dance at Wayne State University, as finding “nearly 96% of all boys who dance have faced verbal and/or physical assaults from their peers.” Perhaps that explains Gormley’s claim that boys only make up 10% of the students of ballet nationwide. At Mountain View High School’s Dance Spectrum, a student centered dance program that teaches students to choreograph their own dance routines, only 3% of the students this year—two out of sixty—are boys.