This article first appeared in the St. Louis Beacon, Oct. 27, 2011 - Female dancers not only get tutus and toe shoes, they also get something else males don't: acceptance.
Little girls who dance are called graceful and talented. Little boys are sometimes called sissies and worse. In "Billy Elliot the Musical," opening at the Fox Theatre Nov. 1, young Billy tries to hide his dancing from his father and brother, British coal miners on strike in 1984. He ultimately suffers their ridicule and that of their poor mining community.
Being bullied for dancing is something "Billy Elliot" resident choreographer Sean Kelly and 14-year-old Kylend Hetherington, one of four boys in the role of Billy, know about first-hand.
Like Billy, Kelly also started dance in the '80s in his hometown near San Francisco, when he was 13.
"Some people thought it was rather strange," Kelly said.
As a tormented tap dancer in his Auburn, Mich., elementary school, Hetherington considered quitting only a few years ago.
"I couldn't stand all that teasing; it really hurt," Hetherington said.
Fear of Tights
Men who dance are at odds with what society has defined as proper gender roles for men and women, according to St. Louis psychotherapist Gary Hirshberg.
"A male dancer presses our buttons about a man acting in a way we've come to associate with being a woman," Hirshberg said. "A man also can't work in a florist shop or be emotional because those are things that we have decided are female."
Being Billy is a Big-boy Job
Like "playing "Hamlet" while running a marathon" is how "Billy Elliot the Musical" director Stephen Daldry has described the rigors of the role of Billy. For more than three hours a night, the young performer must act, sing, dance, execute daring acrobatics -- and pull off a difficult northern England accent.
Four boys are playing Billy in the touring production opening Tuesday at the Fox Theatre. Each completed more than one year of training prior to going on tour and now maintains a demanding 40-plus hour a week job of rehearsal, dance class and school lessons.
After a year or so, most of the young actors age out of the role, and new boys are auditioning all the time. As is explained at www.bebilly.com, those who can't afford to audition in person can send a video.
By the same token, people look askance at women who play football or are seen as aggressive. But there's another aspect to men's discomfort with men who dance, according to Michael Uthoff of Dance St. Louis.
"What makes them nervous is men in tights," Uthoff said. "It's as close to nudity as we are allowed to be."
When a man wears tights, imaginations go wild, Hirshberg agreed. Even though male dancers wear what's called a dance belt -- equivalent to a jock strap -- it's alarming to think about what might happen.
"It seems to risk exposing the dancer's penis, and I think that produces fear in a lot of men because it's both exciting and forbidden," Hirshberg said.
The issue is dealt with humorously in a scene in "Billy" in which the father sees an older male dance in a pair of tights.
"The father is looking at the man's crotch and thinking, 'This is the most bizarre thing I've ever seen," Kelly said.
What's gay got to do with it?
Before Hetherington started home-schooling to accommodate his dance schedule, classmates typically taunted him with a specific word.
"I was called 'gay' every single day," Hetherington said.
But in a progressive world, the word "gay" isn't truly an epithet any more than "redhead" or "St. Louisan." In fact, "the real issue isn't that Billy is or isn't gay," Hirshberg said.
Tight Tights
Watch Mel Brooks' masculine spin on men in clingy leggings in this song from "Robin Hood: Men in Tights."
"When we call someone 'gay,' we, of course, have no idea who that person might fall in love with, and we're not saying, 'Oh, you're a man who falls in love with another man'," Hirshberg said. "What we're saying is, 'You're gay' because in some ways we see that person behaving like a woman."
In reality, men who dance or who work as hair stylists (or women who work in construction or are "good at math") may be straight or gay. Digging deeper reveals that derogatory comments containing the word "gay" - usually directed at males - are actually steeped in sexism.
"At its core, homophobia is about hatred of women and hatred of femininity," Hirshberg said.
Ballet As a Metaphor
As a boy growing up in working-class Newcastle Upon Tyne in northern England, screenwriter and playwright Lee Hall was not a dancer, but he was teased for his literary passions. Years later, sitting in the bathtub, Hall was thinking back on his childhood, when suddenly into his head popped a vision of a young boy walking down the cobblestone streets of his youth - wearing a tutu.
"I thought about how unlikely that would be," Hall said.
Because watching a play about a writer "would be boring," Hall decided to focus the screenplay for "Billy Elliot" the movie around this image of a young male dancer.
"It's really about my own journey, and finding out what I wanted to pursue, which was poetry, drama and literature," Hall said. "I was kind of scorned and misunderstood by my contemporaries and the community I lived in."
The film's theme rang painfully true for entertainer Elton John, who called Hall to say he wanted to make the story into a musical play.
"He told me he came out of the movie absolutely in tears, and that the story really mirrors his own story, the problems with his father and his being a child prodigy," Hall said.
Nearly a decade later, "Billy Elliot the Musical" has implications for many different kinds of people, Hall said.
"Everyone should have a means of expression," Hall said. "The story is about dance, but it hopefully becomes a metaphor for self-expression in the widest sense."
It Gets Better
An ongoing Dan Savage web campaign tells young people who are bullied that "it gets better." Indeed, that may be the case for boys with a bent for music, literature or dance.
"Now, because of shows like 'So You Think You Can Dance' there is a lot more acceptance of male dancers," Kelly said. "I think people are perceiving it more and more as something that's athletic and masculine and cool."
Kelly's advice for young men? "Hold on to your passion," he said. "At the end of the day, the negative comments aren't going to matter."
Those words of wisdom certainly resonate for Hetherington. With the support of his parents, teachers and dance instructors, the teenager has flourished in dance and in life -- much like Billy.
"Your dreams can take you places you would never have imagined," Hetherington said.
"Now I'm dancing and hanging out with new friends and traveling the country with 'Billy Elliot'."
