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Journal of Homosexuality
Publication details, including instructions for authors and subscription information: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/wjhm20

The Queering of Swan Lake

Kent G. Drummond PhD
a a

University of Wyoming

Available online: 12 Oct 2008

To cite this article: Kent G. Drummond PhD (2003): The Queering of Swan Lake, Journal of Homosexuality, 45:2-4, 235-255 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1300/J082v45n02_11

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The Queering of Swan Lake: A New Male Gaze for the Performance of Sexual Desire
Kent G. Drummond, PhD
The University of Wyoming

Service: 1-800-HAWORTH. E-mail address: <docdelivery@haworthpress.com> Website: <http://www.HaworthPress.com> 2003 by The Haworth Press, Inc. All rights reserved.]

SUMMARY. This essay argues that, by re-gendering the ballet classic Swan Lake, choreographer Matthew Bourne has also queered it. He thrusts center stage an unstable relationship between two male characters, and in so doing, de-centers the conventionally fixed categories of sex, gender and sexual desire. He also forces a long-simmering relationship between homosexuality and dance out of the closet and into mainstream popular culture. Applying Mulveys theory of spectatorship and Butlers theory of gendered performance, the essay describes how viewers may be intrigued, rather than repulsed, by the ambiguities surrounding Bournes portrayal of sexual identity. [Article copies available for a fee from The Haworth Document Delivery

Correspondence may be addressed: Communication and Journalism, Box 3904, The University of Wyoming, Laramie, WY 82071 (E-mail: drummond@uwyo.edu). The author would like to thank two anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments in the preparation of this essay.
[Haworth co-indexing entry note]: The Queering of Swan Lake: A New Male Gaze for the Performance of Sexual Desire. Drummond, Kent G. Co-published simultaneously in Journal of Homosexuality (Harrington Park Press, an imprint of The Haworth Press, Inc.) Vol. 45, No. 2/3/4, 2003, pp. 235-255; and: Queer Theory and Communication: From Disciplining Queers to Queering the Discipline(s) (ed: Gust A. Yep, Karen E. Lovaas, and John P. Elia) Harrington Park Press, an imprint of The Haworth Press, Inc., 2003, pp. 235-255. Single or multiple copies of this article are available for a fee from The Haworth Document Delivery Service [1-800-HAWORTH, 9:00 a.m. - 5:00 p.m. (EST). E-mail address: docdelivery@haworthpress.com].

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KEYWORDS. Homoeroticism in dance, male dancer, male gaze, performance of gender Interviewer: How has the casting of a male dancer in the role of the Swan changed what is, after all, one of the great romantic ballet fables? Is this a gay Swan Lake? Matthew Bourne: I certainly would not deny that it can be read in this way . . . [the relationship] between the Swan and the Prince does have a very powerful erotic charge. Matthew Bourne, choreographer (1996) Needless to say, [ballet] is not just a matter of men reacting to pretty girls. Most people respond to some extent to the sex appeal of both sexes, whether they consciously recognize this or not. In addition, ballet attracts many homosexuals, who will obviously be more susceptible to the attractions of their own sex. Oleg Kerensky, ballet critic (1981) In 1996, the British choreographer Matthew Bourne presented a controversial remake of the ballet classic Swan Lake. For 120 years, the Russian-based full-length production featured a bevy of ballerina swans, clad in white tutus and toe shoes, chaining out demure arabesques under the regal supervision of Odette, the Swan Queen. Bourne retained the Tchaikovsky score, but changed the flock of swans to men: bare-chested, barefoot and hairy, with mounds of feathers around their thighs, they danced sharply and aggressively around the stage under the reign of The Swan, danced imposingly by the Royal Ballet star Adam Cooper. While he changed the sex of the swans, Bourne did not change the palpable attraction felt by the Prince for the Swan, now both males. Critics and audiences alike were shocked at Bournes re-conceptualization. Yet despite his radical revisionsor perhaps because of themthe ballet was a major critical and commercial success. It played to sold-out houses for months and garnered Bourne an Olivier Award (Londons version of the Tony) for Best New Dance Production. Upon its arrival on Broadway and later in Los Angeles, critical and commercial reactions were equally enthusiastic. Pictured on the January 1999 cover of Dance Magazine, commemorating the great moments in the just-completed century of dance, was the bare-chested, facepainted male Swan of Bournes production. And in the final scene of the recent film Billy Elliot, with his father and brother watching from the cheap seats of the Royal Opera House at Covent Garden, a grown-up Billy takes to the stagein the form of Adam Cooper dancing The Swan in Bournes Swan Lake.

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At the very least, Bournes remake was a powerful act of communication. But precisely what was it saying, and to whom? While many reviewers of Bournes Swan Lake were quick to identify a homoerotic theme in his re-conceived story line (Shapiro, 1997), none were systematic or rigorous in identifying the clusters of cues, beyond plot summary, that gave them that impression. Nor was it within their purview to do so, given the journalistic constraints of the review genre. Yet until recently, this gap is emblematic of the writing about dance and its relationship to homosexuality in general. Numerous gay theorists have examined homosexual themes in literature (see, for example, Hardins 2000 analysis of End Zone in Journal of Homosexuality), in drama (see Carlsens 1981 review of the gay male in contemporary drama) and in opera (see Bronskis 1984 essay on Mad Queens and Other Divas), but there is a remarkable dearth of literature on gay themes in dance. Only the works of Jackson (1978), Hanna (1988) and, especially, Burt (1995, 1999) explore this relationship in detail. This is largely because, until Bournes ballet, gay themes in dance were so repressed as to be unrecognizable to all but the most insightful reviewers. Dance critic Oleg Kerensky makes the general observation that ballerinas in romantic classics were essentially remote, demure creatures, scarcely real women at all (Kerensky, 1981). If this is so, then men who attend the ballet may not be doing so to arouse their sexual attraction for women, for the sexual attractiveness of women is rarely celebrated in classical ballet. In the case of the traditional Swan Lake, the Swan Queen is an elusive, ephemeral creature, not quite human and not of this earth, who cannot consummate her love for the Prince sexually. Nevertheless, the Prince swears his eternal love for her. Once he has done so, he becomes distracted and dispassionate at court, unwilling to reciprocate the advances of the young princesses paraded before him by a domineering mother intent on seeing him married. These same relational dynamics, which many, including Freud, would consider a classic profile of the repressed homosexual male, are present in other romantically-fabled ballets, such as Giselle and La Sylphide. And they closely resemble the popular perception of the young adulthood of Charles, Prince of Wales, and his relationship with his Mother, Queen Elizabeth. None of these references are lost on Bourne. Crucially, by re-gendering Swan Lake, Bourne has also queered it. He shows two men dancing together, and probably, according to most viewers, desiring one another. But more than create a gay ballet, he thrusts center stage an unstable relationship between chromosomal sex, gender, and sexual desire, which is itself a hallmark of queer moments (Jagose, 1996). In a broader context, he also forces a long-simmering relationship between homosexuality and dance out of the closet and into mainstream popular culture. Standing at the intersection of semiotics and mass media, Bournes Swan Lake combines symbols in a new wayand, for ballet, through a new channelto exert an impact remarkable for a work of high culture.

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At the same time, the power of this new Swan Lake can be expressed only by a more complex relationship of theoretical accounts, one which conventional theories of the communication discipline cannot adequately capture. In order to explicate the power of this essentially symbolic, nonverbal and highly stylized text, I apply Laura Mulveys theory of the male gaze to show how Bournes Swan Lake subverts traditional expectations of male spectatorship and female objectification into an uneasy relationship between male spectatorship and male objectification. I then apply Judith Butlers theory of gender performance to show how the ballet rejects a straightforwardly homosexual reading of itself, suggesting instead that the instability of gender and sexual desire, as signified in the performances of the ballets two main characters, favors a queer, not a gay, interpretation. Taken together, the application of these theories suggests that the ambiguities inherent is Bournes ballet allow for a multiplicity of interpretations that may not necessarily follow from the sexuality of the viewer. The semiotics of the new male gaze (Mulvey, 1975) combine with the performance of homosexual desire (Butler, 1990, 1995, 1998) to show that, while homosexual desire is far from celebrated in Bournes ballet, it thrusts the heretofore unspoken topic into the limelight, not only for the characters dancing, but for those who would watch them.

THE TRADITIONAL SWAN LAKE NARRATIVE

Although the first production of Swan Lake took place in Moscow in 1877, to unanimously negative reviews, most scholars and choreographers (Grigorovich & Demidov, 1986) agree that the premiere production for all subsequent performances occurred in St. Petersburg in 1895. Set to music by Tchaikovskyhimself a homosexual (Schonberg, 1981)with choreography by Petipa and Ivanov, the four-act ballet tells the story of the young Prince Siegfried. In Act I, his mother, the Queen, finds Siegfried at a boisterous party outside the castle with his friends, his tutor, and peasants from the surrounding countryside. She imperiously informs him that he has come of age; it is time to stop hunting and drinking with his friends. He should find instead a suitable bride, and soon. Dejected by this announcement, Siegfried dances a melancholy adagio solo, then withdraws with his friends to the forest to hunt. In Act II, set in the forest, the Prince wanders off by himself and comes upon a flock of swans near a lake. As Siegfried raises his crossbow to shoot them, Odette, the Queen of the Swans, suddenly appears. Through a complicated mime sequence, she explains that she and her flock have been transformed into swans by Rothbart, an evil magician, but resume their human form in the moonlight. Dressed entirely in white, her arms fluttering and her feet en pointe, she places herself in front of her flock, ensuring that if the Prince shoots, she will take the first arrow. Enchanted, Siegfried drops his weapon

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and dances a pas de deux (literally, step of two) with the swan, who, for the moment, melts into a demureyet still etherealwoman. The ethereal, otherworldly quality to this pairing is brought about through a very strict adherence to classical ballet movements that comprise the pas de deux, and that have been in existence for several hundred years. A relationship is being portrayed here, and a very profound onebut not an intimate one in the sense that we have come to know that word. For example, Siegfried and Odette spend most of the pas de deux in close physical contact. Yet there is no eye contact between the two of them, for the rules of classical ballet grammar forbid this. True to tradition, Siegfried does not so much desire Odette in the pas de deux as he displays her. Through a series of lifts, supports, and manipulations, he features her to an audience very much in compliance with and appreciative of the display. At the duets end, the Prince swears his undying love for Odette. She accepts it cautiously, explaining that only his undying, exclusive love can break the spell that imprisons her in a swans body. She also warns that his love for her must remain a secret, or the spell will remain in effect. As Odette is drawn away by Rothbart, Siegfried agrees to these conditions and departs. Siegfried returns to the royal court in Act III and learns that his mother has arranged a coming out celebration in his honor. Since he is now available to be married, she has invited all the beautiful young princesses from the surrounding countries to meet him. Each princess arrives, and with her retinue, proudly dances in the style native to her countryItalian, Spanish, Polish, Russianin the requisite divertissement of a Petipa ballet. Each hopes to win the princes approval, as well as his proposal of marriage. But the prince, bound by his vow to Odette, ignores all of them. And because he has promised to keep his love a secret, he cannot reveal the real reason for his disinterest in these beautiful young women. They are confused, while his mother is exasperated. Suddenly, an uninvited guest arrives: Odile, the alter ego to the Swan Queen, danced by the same ballerina. Dressed provocatively in black, she exudes an overt, powerful sexuality, moving seductively around the Prince, daring him to dance with her. Dazzled, he does so. Their duet, the so-called Black Swan pas de deux, contains many of the same dance movements as the White Swan pas de deux in Act II. But here, they are accomplished with much greater flair and less restraint. To the astonishment of the surrounding court, Odile proudly displays her sexuality to the point of brazennesswith none of the shyness or modesty of Odette or the princessesas she confidently assumes and holds the positions in which Siegfried places her. As before, Siegfried is enchanted, but this time by a raw sexual energy. The duet builds to a fever pitch, until, forgetting his vow to Odette, the prince swears his love to Odile. At the moment he does so, an image of Odette hovers in the background. Odile flaps her wings in a mockery of Odettes persona to reveal that she has purposely deceived him into betraying Odette. A strange man who escorted Odile into the

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castle reveals himself to be Rothbart, who now gleefully congratulates his charge. Everyone else onstage is distraught, no one more than the prince. Act IV takes place by the lake once again. Elegaic in tone, it represents a denouement to the narrative momentum. Aware that she has been betrayed, Odette enters and is comforted by her flock. Siegfried enters, kneels before Odette, and begs her forgiveness. She embraces him to signify her forgiveness, and they dance briefly before Rothbart claims her. What happens nextand what it signifiesis extremely variable, but usually Siegfried follows Odette off the stage as a transparent curtain, or scrim, descends. In a final apotheosis scene, we see the two of them through the scrim riding a swan boat across the stage, their arms pointing skyward. Program synopses offer one of two interpretations to explain this final union: either Odette has died of a broken heart and Siegfried jumps in the lake in order to be with her forever; or Siegfrieds disavowal of Odiles propositionand Odettes forgiveness of himare strong enough to break Rothbarts spell over Odette, and they leave the lake as a man and woman, alive and in love, good having triumphed over evil. What message does one take away from this traditional narrative of Swan Lake? Although the myriad versions ensure that a definitive interpretation of its meaning will prove elusive, several lessons ring true across them all. First and most important is the notion that some women are extremely good, while others are extremely evil, and that this extreme goodness and badness can reside in the same womanor perhaps all of them. Moreover, this goodness and badness are highly polarized and signified by different codes of demeanor and deportment, such that Good = Ethereal, Ideal, Unattainable, Non- or Asexual, while Bad = Earthly, Real, Predatory, Sexual. The traditional Swan Lake, then, consigns women to the abiding madonna/whore dichotomy that many men as well as women have long complained of, and that popular artists such as Madonna cleverlyand profitablyplay with and through (McClary, 1991). For a ballet created towards the end of the Victorian era, this comes as no surprise. But what sets the stage for Bournes remake is not the category of Woman, but the males reaction to it. Specifically, if any woman can embody both good and evil, then a relationship with any woman is dangerous, for it is bound to end in frustration, if not tragedy, depending on which aspect wins out. Better, instead, to desire other men.

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BOURNES RETELLING OF SWAN LAKE

Bournes retelling of Swan Lake is also accomplished in four acts and bears many resemblances to the original: it chronicles the adventures of a young prince, both within the palace and outside it, often invoking the relationship with his mother; it focuses on his fixation with a swan, as well as with the swans alter ego; and it concludes with an apotheosis in which the swan and the prince are united in eternity. However, the similarities end there. Set in mod-

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ern-day London, the ballet makes thinly veiled references to the escapades of Englands royal family, right down to Elizabeths corgis. More importantly, the traditional Swan Lake narrative is rife with homosexual possibilities, and in his retelling, Bourne seems to take advantage of them all. In the Prologue, the 14-year-old Prince, alone in a huge bed, wakes up from a nightmare in which a large, male-looking swan glares down menacingly at him from the headboard. As he screams, his mother the Queen rushes in and distantly offers him comfort. By Act I, he has become a young man of 21, ready for his investiture by the Queen (much as Charles was over 30 years ago when he became Prince of Wales). Amid the chaos of ribbon-cuttings, unveilings and flashbulbs, the Queen shows Prince Siegfried that his life will now be a neverending series of appearances and openings. Suddenly a statue of a large male wrestler is unveiled, and the Prince stares at it. Later in Act I, the Prince meets a commoner girlfriend (according to program notes). With flowing red hair and an exuberant, non-regal persona, she resembles Fergie. Her relationship with Siegfried seems friendly, but never passionate, otherworldly, or even significant. The Queen immediately disapproves of her. As the three of them attend a ballet together (a comical send-up of both Swan Lake and Giselle), a fight ensues in the Royal Box, and the girlfriend departs in tears. Behind closed doors, Siegfried tries to tell the Queen something, but she refuses to listen. Distraught, the Prince follows his girlfriend to a strip bar in Soho frequented by gangsters, sailors and prostitutes. Each group propositions the Prince, but he accepts none of them. Inebriated and belligerent, he is thrown out of the bar just in time for the paparazzi to snap his picture. Act II takes place by a lake in St. Jamess Park (the actual London home of Prince Charles). Depressed to the point of suicide, Siegfried writes a note and contemplates jumping into the lake. Suddenly, a flock of swans appears. But rather than exhibiting shy, ephemeral, hyper-feminine qualities, these swans are hyper-masculine: rough, aggressive, dangerous. Hair is exposed, feathers are shaggy. Here, we see a modern movement vocabulary filled with straight lines, ponderous leaps, hunched backs and contracted torsos. These stand in sharp contrast to the curved lines, effortless leaps, straight backs and delicate pointe-work of the traditional ballerina swans. As they fill the stage, the prince gazes in wonder from the side. The leader of the flock, called simply The Swan, enters and gazes intently at the prince. Siegfried and the Swan then engage in an extended pas de deux that mirrors the White Swan pas de deux of the traditional version. Here, however, the goal is not display but mimesis. By attempting to repeat the steps of the Swan immediately after he has danced them, Siegfried appears desperately to want to be the swan. We see not so much a display of gender opposites as knowledge opposites: expert and novice, instructor and student. The Swan appears to be teaching Siegfried how to command the space around the stage.

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Most importantly, the two display a type of intimacy that violates the rules of most movement vocabularies, as well as most rules of human interaction, with the possible exception of conduct at a gay bar (Bech, 1997): an extended eye gaze between Siegfried and the Swan. Sustained, intense and unflinching, it dominates this pas de deux. And it is buttressed by other interactional gestures that signify intimacy: a caress, an embrace, and a carry in which the Swan cradles the prince in his arms at the duets end. Elated, Siegfried tears up his suicide note and runs out of the park. Act III takes place in the royal ballroom at the palace. As in the traditional version, the room is soon filled with young, beautiful, aristocratic ladies who desireand whom the Queen desiresto meet the prince. Siegfrieds former girlfriend is also there, but she is ignored by all in attendance. And as before, an uninvited guest appears, the alter ego of the Swan, also danced by Adam Cooper. Dressed in black leather pants, black boots and black shirt, he looks like slick, but rough, trade. He dances lasciviously with all the young women, and they return his advances. The Prince looks on in a horrified stupor, for he recognizes this Stranger (as he is called in the program notes) to be the flip side of the Swan. Where the Swan was tender, supportive and instructive, the Stranger is rough, cruel and mocking. He gazes at Siegfried menacingly. Their pas de deux is filled with a dangerous intimacy that vacillates between the promise of sexual gratification and the infliction of pain. Indeed, the duet ends with the Stranger twisting Siegfrieds arm behind his back until it almost breaks, then leaving Siegfried in physical and emotional agony while he pursues the Queen. Following them, the prince produces a gun and aims it at the Stranger and the Queen. The Stranger wrests the gun away from him and shoots Siegfrieds former girlfriend. Guards restrain the prince and drag him away, screaming, as the Stranger gleefully comforts the Queen. Like the prologue, Act IV takes place in the princes bedroom. Heavily sedated, Siegfried lies sleeping when a surgeon and attendant nurses enter and perform some sort of operation on him. After they leave, the swans enter and dance non-threateningly around him. Then the Swan crawls out from under Siegfrieds bed, beckons him, dances gently with him, and embraces him. But as the two of them dance, the flock of swans becomes more agitated. Formerly obedient to the Swan and at least indifferent to the prince, they drive the two of them apart, pecking the prince to death and devouring the Swan. As the Queen rushes in to find her dead son, a vision of the Swan appears on the headboard above the bed. This time, the Swan is holding the 14-year-old Siegfried in his arms. The curtain falls. What message does one take away from Bournes retelling? And what accounts for its tremendous popularity? On the surface, one can answer that the movement vocabulary is highly accessible. Gestures, poses, and expressions have infiltrated this hybrid of ballet and modern dance styles, and the result may be, as one critic has suggested (Shapiro, 1997), more theatre than dance.

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My own research (Drummond, 1998) suggests that viewersparticularly those who have not seen much balletrespond more positively to dance that incorporates recognizable, everyday gestures than to dance which does not. With Bournes Swan Lake, the semiotic systems, whether through costuming, sets, movements or gestures, are easily navigated by a media-savvy audience.

IS THIS A GAY SWAN LAKE?

At a secondary level, it is clear that Bourne teases the audience with the promise, and perhaps the consummation, of a homoerotic relationship. At both the micro and macro levels, Bourne accumulates a series of gay touch points that prime the audience, however uncomfortably, for a homosexual culmination. The overbearing yet emotionally detached mother, the problematic girlfriend, the startled gaze at a nearly-nude male statue, the fantastic obsession with another maleall of these cues locate Siegfried within a homosexual matrix that appears probable even by Act II. Perhaps this is because, in the broader context of dance history, the audience is ready for, yet anxious about, a ballet that raises the curtain on a long-suggested relationship between male homosexuality and dance. Hanna (1988), following Jackson (1978), catalogues an extensive list of ballets with homosexual themes or characters. Among them are van Dantzigs Monument for a Dead Boy (1965), Arpinos The Relativity of Icarus (1974), Bejarts Dionysus Suite (1983), and Morriss New Love Song Waltzes (1984). Yet none of these has reconfigured a familiar evening-length ballet by switching the gender of one of the major characters to suggest a homoerotic attraction. Burt (1995) sums up the current state of homosexual-themed ballets in this way: The initial reasons for keeping quiet about gay male dancers are surely no longer valid, and silences now do more harm than good. Perhaps there are now more choreographers dealing with homosexual themes than there were . . . but only in the marginalized, underfunded, experimental fringes. (p. 30) This makes the critical and commercial success of Bournes retelling all the more remarkable. Prior to his production, the only mainstream choreographer to have dealt with homoerotic themes with such explicitness is Bill T. Jones (Desmond, 2001). Among his major works, Still/Herenoted, among other things, for New Yorker dance critic Anna Kisselgoffs refusal to see itdoes address gay themes, albeit on the way to other postmodern dance issues such as race, class, and living with AIDS. Another motivation for seeing this Swan Lake as a gay ballet is that the payoff for doing so is high. For gay members of the audience in particular, the prospect of watching muscular, barely clad men fill the stage brings immediate

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visual pleasure; to see them do so in the context of a scripted homoerotic relationship brings emotional gratification as well. As a self-identified gay male, Champagne (1997) writes about that sort of intense, affective identification while watching the films The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert; Muriels Wedding; and Strictly Ballroom: I feel an intense release of affect in the form of tears, laughter, and applause. I adore these films. . . . I continue to find them almost pleasurably painful to watch (pp. 68-69). Through their use of disco music and dance styles, the use of drag, and the consistent eroticization of the male body, these films interpellate (to use Althussers term) or call forth the gay male spectator because of the recognition and identification they provoke. The goal of such films is to create a space in which gay identities, expressions, relationships, and ways of being are freely created by the director and accepted by the audience. Such is the case, for example, in Derek Jarmans Sebastiane (Pitman, 1998), in which homosexuality is legitimated, where its expressions are tolerated, where its sex is both the subject of ribald humor and of personal self-fulfillment (p. 77). Does this Swan Lake have a similar goal? On the surface, it would appear so, with several important differences. Bournes version exerts much of its power within the context of the original narrative, and within the horizon of expectations established by it. But it is also important to note that Bournes ballet is not a parody. An all-male company such as Les Ballets Trokadero de Monte Carlo frequently re-stages the classics, but most viewers recognize, as Hanna (1988) writes, that the point of their productions is to perform entertaining burlesque and physical comedy that lovingly parodies the act of performance, specific ballets, and particular styles through informed in-jokes (p. 239). Only in Act Is ballet within a ballet, the send-up of Swan Lake and Giselle, could Bournes ballet be called parodic. Rather, Bournes Swan Lake features a spectrum of ways of being masculine, from the passive, neurotic Prince to the strong, protective Swan to the violent, cruel Stranger. Each relates differently to women, to each other, and to himself; but all depart radically from the traditionally masculine role prescribed by earlier classical ballets: the elegant, courageous and desirable nobleman who, particularly in a pas de deux, displays the female with proud restraint and humility (Dolin, 1969). When dancers vary from this traditionally masculine rolein either their personal or stage lifethe reactions have been historically problematic, for critics and audiences alike. Burt (1999) and Batson (1999) have researched the Paris performances of Swedish dancer Jean Borlin. Burt (1999) interprets the 1920 performance of Borlin in Dervishes as a challenge to the stereotype that all homosexual men were effeminate in appearance and sickly and degenerate in physique (p. 233). Borlin, whose homosexuality was common knowledge at the time, performed as a virile and vital Dervish, whirling about the stage to create an affirmative and, by all accounts, exhilarating theatricalization of a

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masculine psychological interiority (Burt, 1999, p. 233), which challenged the contemporary stereotype of the homosexual as hysterical degenerate. Also writing on Borlin, this time in a dance in which he appeared naked (LHomme et son desir), Batson (1999) notes the overwhelming critical response: attacks and jokes on Borlins nakedness, as opposed to intelligent remarks on his dancing. Batson links this repulsion to the fact that post-World War I France, anxious to rediscover a masculine sense of nationality, could condone the male body only in a show of strength in battle or in sport (1999, p. 248). Outside these contexts, the well-muscled dancer could not be seen as male, much less masculine. Even today, critical interpretation often misses the mark regarding the sexuality of the dancing male. Choreographer Mark Morriss Hard Nut, a re-working of The Nutcracker, contains several key roles traditionally danced by women now danced by men. This has led many critics to impute homosexual passion to one pas de deux in particular. But Morris himself denies this intention (Desmond, 1999), saying he was trying to stage a lesson in which an older man is teaching his nephew the art of courting a woman. Similarly, in the case of Swan Lake, Bourne himself allows for the possibility of an erotic charge between the Prince and the Swan, but emphasizes that the Swan is, after all, not human. And if the narrative structure is any indication, Bournes retelling is not a gay Swan Lake: the Swan and the Prince may end up together at the end, but the Prince is a boy again, suspendedor perhaps deadin the Swans embrace. And the lascivious posturing between the Prince and the Stranger in Act III is highly suggestive but fleeting; it dissolves into a brief sadomasochistic struggle before the Stranger attempts to seduce the Queen. Indeed, to read Bournes Swan Lake as a gay ballet is to overlook not only its narrative structure, but also the complex portrayal of masculinities that propel it. A gay interpretation simply doesnt fit. But the question remains: why do critics and audiences see a homosexual relationship when it may not be there? What tendencies is Bourne tweaking within the audience to cause it to respond the way it has? A starting point lies in the general observation made by Burt (1995, 2001) that, over the last 150 years, the male body became a taboo subject of cultural representation until very recently. Gay men in ballet and straight women in modern dance have been largely responsible for the development of male dancing. Yet they have done so without challenging two significant assumptions about the audience which may no longer be true: first, that the audience is always and already looking at the dance from a traditionally masculine point of view (the male gaze), beset with the notion of compulsory heterosexuality that goes with it; and that viewers approach the category of masculinity itself as stable and unproblematic. Bourne challenges both of these assumptions, yet two theoretical frameworks are needed to explain the means by which he does so. Specifically, British film scholar Laura Mulvey addresses conditions of the male gaze in her theory of spectatorship; and rhetorical critic Judith Butler ad-

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dresses the instability of gender in her writings on the performance of sexual desire.

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MULVEY AND THE NEW MALE GAZE

In her landmark essay, Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema (1975), British filmmaker Laura Mulvey posits a tripartite, yet unified, perspective between the camera as it records the unfolding narrative, the audience as it observes the final product, and the characters within the narrative itself. What the camera sees and what the audience sees are subverted into the third perspectivethe activities of the characters themselves within the screen illusionbecause the conscious aim [is] always to eliminate intrusive camera presence and prevent a distancing awareness in the audience (Mulvey, 1975, pp. 17-18). But the perspective of the characters themselves is not without a predictable identity and location, Mulvey observes: it is that of the protagonist, who is not only male but compulsorily heterosexual. Time and again as we watch mainstream film, there is a three-way complicity between the camera, the audience and the characters such that viewers naturally assume the perspective of the heterosexual male protagonist, and in doing so, identify with him. Drawing heavily on Freud through Lacan, Mulvey explains viewers deep-seated motivation for assuming this identity: A male movie stars glamorous characteristics are thus not those of the erotic object of the gaze, but those of the more perfect, more complete, more powerful ideal ego conceived in the original moment of recognition in front of the mirror. The character in the story can make things happen and control events better than the subjects/spectator, just as the image of the mirror was more in control of motor co-ordination. (1975, p. 12) Just as the male camera-viewer-protagonist invites identification and precipitates action on the screen, so the female on the screen threatens identification and halts action. She is the object of desire who momentarily freezes the action of the narrative, and who must then be woven into the narrative for that action to resume. In the meantime, she is the object of erotic contemplation: The determining male gaze projects its fantasy onto the female figure, which is stylized accordingly. In their traditional exhibitionist role, women are simultaneously looked at and displayed, with their appearance coded for strong visual and erotic impact (Mulvey, 1975, p. 11). Even, or perhaps especially, in its traditional form, the ballet stage preserves these relational dynamics. For example, in the original version of Swan Lake, Prince Siegfried embodies the traditional male protagonist: young, virile, active, constrained only by his mothers injunction to marry. Music, cos-

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tuming, lighting and choreography conspire to ensure that Siegfried remains the focus of viewers attention throughout Act I. The ballet is seen through his eyes, and the audience identification is with him. Even his initial response to his mothers plea for domesticityto go huntingmaintains the traditionally masculine qualities of independence and dominance. Yet, as predicted by Mulveys theory, his persona is frozen by the image of the White Swan by the lake, protecting her swans by forbidding him to shoot. For a moment, all action stops as the male gaze is directed at the female object. She is beautiful, mysterious, not quite available but nevertheless eroticized by a tutu, which, unlike those of the other swans, stands out rigidly from the hips so that her entire leg is exposed. As the prima ballerina Natalia Makarova notes, the legs are exposed, all lines are revealed, and you cannot conceal the slightest slip from the audience (Makarova, 1979, p. 122). The princeand the audienceare captivated by this beauty, much as audiences were as they watched the Ziegfeld Follies. The challenge now, according to Mulvey, is to enfold the objectified female into the narrative so that the action can continue and the male can reassert an active control. Classical ballet accomplishes this through the pas de deux, which ballerina Cynthia Harvey suggests is a conversation between two partners (Laws & Harvey, 1994). In an abstract sense, it is a conversation between two genders, for, as noted earlier, tradition mandates that the male is strong, stable and supportive while the female is fragile, pliable and pleasingly displayed, worthy of an astonished male gaze. In fact, the male subsumes the power ofand the castration anxiety associated withthe objectified female through the pas de deux itself. He literally man-handles her, and in so doing, subjugates the power she momentarily held over him. As dance scholar Susan Foster writes: She, like a divining rod, trembling, erect, responsive, which he handles, also channels the energy of all the eyes focused upon her, yet even as she commands the audiences gaze, she achieves no tangible or enduring identity . . . just as he conveys, she conveys desire. She exists as a demonstration of that which is desired but is not real. . . . She is, in a word, the phallus, and he embodies the forces that pursue, guide, and manipulate it. (1996, pp. 2-3) We know that Siegfrieds mastery is short-lived. Soon after the White Swan pas de deux of Act II, the Black Swan pas de deux of Act III takes place. Here, although many of the steps are the same, the effect is different: Odiles looked-at-ness is too powerful to be subsumed by the princes active strength. Rather, her dazzling beauty and aggressive sexuality fix not only his gaze but his virility, until she seduces him into betraying his vow to Odette. She has, in effect, castrated him. From here, the only act that will free him from her suspension is his self-destruction, which occurs in the final act.

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Mulveys theory helps explain why Odiles triumph becomes the climax of the traditional Swan Lake: it represents a betrayal of the audiences identification with Siegfried. Viewers joined Siegfried in being dumbstruck by Odiles erotic power, so now they, too, are emasculated. One could argue that the traditional Swan Lake is the balletic version of a film noir, in which a mysterious female-with-a-past (or in this case, alter-ego) ultimately destroys a disaffected yet trusting male. It is no coincidence the film noir genre provides the bulk of Mulveys cinematic examples. But Mulveys theory applies equally to Bournes retelling of Swan Lake in two ways: it provides great explanatory power in predicting the misinterpretation of this retelling as a gay ballet; and it also predicts (re)viewers confusion regarding what precisely the ballet is about. Central to Mulveys theory is the unity of perspective between the camera, the audience, and the protagonist. There is an implicit contract that the vital, potent, heterosexual male will prevail, or the audience may feel betrayed, alienated, and defensively uninterestedas it did while viewing the initial ending of Fatal Attraction, in which the flawed but traditional protagonist was brutally murdered by the woman scorned. Of course, that kind of betrayal sometimes makes for the most powerful theatre: the audience gets caught looking, identifying with culturally implicit values that the creators of the piece wish to question. Bournes Swan Lake takes the betrayal of Mulveys contract a step further. It is not that the audience gets caught looking; its what the audience is looking at that becomes problematic. The moment of crisis occurs at the start of the princes pas de deux with the Swan. There, subject and object gaze fixedly into each others eyes, arms draped across shoulders, legs across hips. The action has been stopped, but the object that holds the princes gazeas well as the audiencesis male, attractive by any measure. The effect is similar to watching a Ricky Martin video: are viewers supposed to be like Ricky? Or are they supposed to want him? Bart (1995) describes the discomfort of such a moment in this way: If, however, a [male dancers appearance] is also desirable, he is, from the point of view of a male spectator, drawing attention to the always-already crossed line between homosocial bonding and homosexual sexuality. His appearance therefore carries with it for the male spectator the threat of revealing the suppressed homosexual component within the links he has with other men and through which he maintains his power and status in patriarchal society. (p. 24) By creating and sustaining this moment, the new male gaze, Bourne disorients the viewer and subverts the taken-for-granted heterosexuality of the camera itselfthat which creates the piece and guides the audiences vision. This effect is only heightened when the ballet is seen on video, for the viewer is

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forced from a variety of viewing choices to engage in a single, potentially homoerotic perspective. And in the act of observing, viewers are, in some sense, asked to participate in the relationship between the two men. A very different kind of identification is called for here, one that many audience members may not be willing to make. Yet, as noted earlier, even as that homoerotic moment is established, it is dissipated by the sequence of steps in the pas de deux itself. The prince imitates the movements of the swan, rather than trying to subjugate the Swans attractiveness to augment his own power. Put in terms familiar to the communication field, the pattern of interaction is symmetrical, not complementary. The prince wants to achieve the strength, the control, the mastery of the Swannot by obliterating him in the way a normal protagonist might, but by learning from him. Recall that a similar misreading took place in Morriss Hard Nut, in which, Morris insisted, the subtext was not homoeroticism but education in the ways of courting a woman. Mulveys theory helps explain the audiences misinterpretations surrounding this ballet, but it cannot account for the ballets popularity. If audience members are disoriented and discomfited by the new Swan Lake, why did they not stay away in droves? Mainstream dance critic Bruce Fleming (2000) captures the confusion in this way: Im not saying that Bourne should have provided a happy agit-prop Gay Rights scenario, in which the Prince comes out of the closet and is rewarded for his boldness by a well-built lover and societys approbation. But it certainly left me shaking my head in wonder. [With both the mainstream viewer and the gay viewer turned off], whos left to like this titillating but ultimately deeply conservative parable? Or have I just explained . . . precisely why its going to be so wildly popular? (p. 30) Judith Butler offers a way out of this predicament by addressing the instability between gender and sexual desire that Bourne seems so inclined to investigate.

BUTLER AND THE PERFORMANCE OF SEXUAL DESIRE

In true Derridean fashion, Butler deconstructs the forced binary opposition of male versus female, gay versus straight, original versus copy. She questions whether our entire concept of gender is not, in fact, based on imitations for which no real essences exist. Just as Derrida insisted on recognizing language as a free play of signifiers lacking a stable center, Butler suggests that there are no fixed sexual identities; rather, we are invoked by a series of deep-seeded cultural practices to reify sexual identities, play them out, and perform them in profoundly unquestioning ways. Butler calls readers to question those ways,

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and in so doing, deconstruct the notion of gender itself. From her seminal work, Gender Trouble (1990): Gender ought not to be construed as a stable identity or locus of agency from which various acts follow; rather, gender is an identity tenuously constituted in time, instituted in an exterior space through a stylized repetition of acts. The effect of gender is produced through the stylization of the body and, hence, must be understood as the mundane way in which bodily gestures, movements, and styles of various kinds constitute the illusion of an abiding gendered self. (p. 140) For Butler, the trouble with gender is that gender itself is an unstable category, a fiction or a mythology constantly reiterating itself within the culture through performance. Rather than a cause of behavior, gender is an effect of reiterated performance, a kind of imitation for which there is no original (1998, p. 1520). Gender trouble itself connotes both a sense of playfulnessas in the expressions girl trouble or man trouble, when uttered ruefully by one friend to anotheras well as something pathological, something deeper, more darkly consequential to the culture at large. Both senses of the phrase apply to the new Swan Lake. And if gender is a performance, then it is, like all performances, an accomplishment. When Siegfried dances with Odette in the original version of Swan Lake, he is doing being male, put in the terms of the late conversation analyst Harvey Sacks (1972). Male is an accomplishment, and an interactive one at that. The extent to which Siegfried is successful in that accomplishment depends not only on his interaction with Odettewho is herself doing being femalebut also on the pairs interaction with the audience who, among many other considerations, is deciding, with every little movement, how well each dancer is accomplishing the performance of gender. According to Butler, if gender is indeterminate, contingent and provisional, so too must be the category of sexual desire. And it is here that Bournes Swan Lake achieves its status as a queer, rather than gay, artifact. For out of the same mundane bodily gestures, movements and styles of various kinds which Butler calls readers to observe, Bourne constructs a series of characters and relationships that mayor may notsignify sexual identity and sexual desire. By tapping into culturally-agreed-upon clusters of gendered behavior, he establishes particular expectations about characters and relationships, only to confound them by presenting another cluster of gendered behavioroften within the same character or relationship. At every turn, expectations of desire are established, then violated. For Butler, drag becomes the vehicle through which we can appreciate this instability of gendered performance. Drag constitutes the mundane way in which genders are appropriated, theatricalized, worn, and done (1998, p. 1520). For Tobin (1998), the contemporary tango couple dances its way back and

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forth, over the fortified and leaky border separating the straight and the gay (p. 84). And for Bourne, a full-length classical ballet becomes the laboratorytheatre in which his gendered experiments can be performed and observed. Like Butlers drag, and Tobins tango, his Swan Lake recognizes the at-playness of both gender and sexual desire, and he proceeds to play with them, to the sustained fascination of the audience. Cultural icon Madonna has enjoyed similar success through similar means. McClary observes that Madonnas art . . . repeatedly deconstructs the traditional notion of the unified subject with finite ego boundaries. Her pieces explore . . . various ways of constituting identities that refuse stability, that remain fluid, that resist definition (1991, p. 2). Madonnas play with gendered performance becomes the lens through which we, as spectators, may safely gaze; if the identification becomes uncomfortable, we need only wait: the view will change. Ironically enough, in the same way that motherhood may have rescued Madonna from an unending phalanx of performances emphasizing gender indeterminacy, so childhood may save Bournes Swan Lake from the sort of discomfort that might repel rather than attract an audience. The ballet begins and ends with the Prince as a child, first enduring a nightmare and finally cradled in the arms of the adult swan, suggesting an exoneration of agency and even reality. Like Eyes Wide Shut, it can be read, in the end, as a sad, bad dream of sexual vagrancy: the misguided adventures of a child who, in the absence of proper parenting, never learned the proper way to ask for what it wanted. Placed within this frame, the ballet can titillate without convicting, and the audience can resume a comfortable distance at the conclusion of the encounter. Such distancing is not to diminish, however, the longer-term effects the new Swan Lake may have on an audience. Burt (1995) exhorts choreographers to explore new masculinities in dance, because New representations of masculinity assert the physicality of the masculine body in ways that have the potential to make visible repressed aspects of the construction of masculine identity. On a private level, to uncover and become aware of repressed conflicts might be therapeutic, but to do so within a performance can have the effect of subverting norms and changing attitudes. (p. 163) Seen in this light, Bournes Swan Lake becomes an occasion for self-awareness and empowerment concerning issues of gender and sexuality, rather than a riveting, if disturbing, evening of dance. At the same time, Butlers work on the indeterminacy of gender and desire has an additional application to Bournes Swan Lake, worthy of further investigation: the overriding sense of melancholy one feels at the ballets conclusion, noted by critics and general viewers alike. The intenseand intensely privateglimpse into Prince Siegfrieds life reveals a succession of problematic

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encounters offering only fleeting gratification, overshadowed by misunderstandings of gender, power, and sexual identity. Siegfrieds sustained fragmentation ensures that nothing will come from nothing, for he cannot summon the whole necessary to connect with another whole. Butler (1995) addresses this sense of incompleteness with the term gender melancholy. Reinterpreting Freuds use of that phrase, she refers to the straight mans incomplete mourning for the gay man he might have been: When the prohibition against homosexuality is culturally pervasive, then the loss of homosexual love is precipitated through a prohibition which is repeated and ritualized through the culture. What ensues is a culture of gender melancholy in which masculinity and femininity emerge as the traces of an ungrieved and ungrievable love. (p. 28) Many of the scenes in Hedwig and the Angry Inch, for example, are impelled by this type of angst, at times ferocious. Unlike Swan Lake, however, Hedwig offers a somewhat hopeful resolution to this melancholia by stressing the integration of masculine/feminine, gay/straight at its conclusion: Hedwig transfers his androgynous persona to his pop-star protg, conferring a richness, depth and wholeness to the former that he did not possess before. That transference is seen as a gift, a triumphant act of generosity that enhances both giver and recipient. By contrast, the sense of sadness and loss, so palpable at the end of Bournes ballet, can be traced to Siegfrieds inability to finally center on a performance of gender that is at once comfortable and life-affirming. The ensuing sense of melancholythe haunting question of what might have beenbecomes the spectators to share as they leave this exhibit of gender trouble in its darkest sense.

CONCLUSION
When audiences attend a classical ballet, they often witness a fixed notion of gendered performancefixed in the sense of both stabilized and repaired. The major female characters of traditional narrative ballet, whether Giselle, Clara, Sleeping Beauty or the Swan Queen, display traditionally feminine signifiers of ethereal beauty, shyness, lightness, passivity, and emotional expressiveness and instability. Their male counterparts, whether Albrecht, the Nutcracker, the Prince or Siegfried, display traditionally masculine signifiers of muscular, earthbound strength, assured and acrobatic command of space, emotional reserve and protectiveness. In all of these balletsthe original versions of which have existed for well over a centurythe sex, gender, and sexuality of the major characters are taken-for-granted elements of the production, expressed recognizably and uncategorically for the audience. Using fixed notions of gendered performance as their starting point, the plots of these ballets

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are propelled by magic spells, long-standing feuds, quests, and transgressions from the material world to the spiritual and back again. Intricacies of plot, not gender, make these ballets; gender plays itself out in predictable patterns, the one thing to be counted on to reassert a preexisting order. In his retelling of Swan Lake, Matthew Bourne takes the starting points of sex, gender and sexuality and stops: are these categories really as fixed, out-of-play and unproblematic for a contemporary audience as the traditional narratives suggest? And if not, what would a traditional ballet look like if one destabilized the nerve center of sex, gender and desire and used that to propel the plot? It is a tribute to Bournes perspicacity that, in the case of Swan Lake, the audience was ready for an evening-length work that calls these ostensibly fixed relationships into question. Rather than boycott the ballet as sacrilege or dismiss it as inconsequential, critics and audiences welcomed it on its own terms, intrigued by new possibilities of movement, relationship, and resonance prompted by the change. To interpret this Swan Lake as a gay balletthough understandable, given the long-standing, close-knit relationship between male homosexuality and danceis to sell it short. Bourne is not that obsessive, and neither is the audience. Research by Sender (1999) shows that, when confronted with advertisements carefully coded to appeal to gay consumers while remaining undetected by straight ones, there was no necessary correspondence between the sexuality of readers and their readings. Gay readers do not always produce gay readings of a text, any more than straight readers necessarily produce straight readings. Rather, readers are quite capable of crossing sexuality in their readings, as well as allowing for the possibility of multiple meanings of a text simultaneously. Admittedly, this is a relatively broad, inclusive and apolitical reading of Bournes production. The only agenda it assumes is that lovers of theatrical danceas well as the curiouswill be drawn to any production in which dances finer elements are on display: the seamless melding of movement and music; the heightened drama of pas de deux in which a relationship is either developed or destroyed; the ending which is quite open-ended, provoking heated discussion as one leaves the theatre. Doubtless, the fact that several key scenes in this Swan Lake suggest unresolved sexual longing between two men puts the issue of homoeroticism front and center, to the point that hardly anyone reads the production as a relationship between a man and a swan. As with the original production, that may be the only reading that qualifies, according to most interpretants, as queer. Nevertheless, it is a crossing of readings among viewers that Bourne aimed for, and got. Audiences comprised of a spectrum of sexual persuasions were sensitive to a variety of sexual cues. And it is this crossingidentified by de Lauretis (1991) as the etymological root of queerthat marks Bournes ballet as a most queer act of communication. Such ambiguity is usually the realm of the art house, not the West End or Broadway. Yet the commercial suc-

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cess of the new Swan Lake suggests that mainstream audiences are more comfortable with ambiguities of gender and sexuality than producers might realize. Writing on the relationship of queer studies to the field of communication, Henderson (2001) urges that further research be conducted in such areas as gay music scenes . . . changing modes of sexual identification and affiliation among young queer people . . . and the social class conditions of queer expression (p. 481). It is hoped that research on contemporary cultural artifacts such as Bournes Swan Lake may serve to answer this call by focusing attention on the deeply embedded, highly ambiguous, yet richly appreciated communication cues surrounding the performanceboth staged and mundaneof gender and sexual desire.

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