Archive for the ‘Dancers’ Category

Love what Scrivan did with the rabbit pun!

April 1, 2024

šŸ‡ šŸ‡ šŸ‡ three rabbits to inaugurate the new month, šŸƒ šŸƒ šŸƒ three jokers for April Fool’s Day, and šŸŒ¼ šŸŒ¼ šŸŒ¼ threeĀ jaunes dā€™Avril. yellow flowers of April, all this as we turn on a dime from yesterday’s folk-custom bunnies of Easter to today’s monthly rabbits; for this intensely leporine occasion, a Maria Scrivan hare-pun cartoon:


(#1) (phonologically perfect) punĀ hareĀ on modelĀ hair, taking advantage of I love what you’ve done with your hairĀ as an common exemplar of theĀ stock expression (I) love what you’ve done with X; aĀ cartoon posted on Facebook by Probal Dasgupta, who reported, “Even I groaned at this one”

Things to talk about here: my use of turn on a dime just above; Easter + April Fool’s; the yellow flowers of April (which will bring us to Jane Avril — Fr. Avril ‘April’); and theĀ stock expression (I) love what you’ve done with X.

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Let’s dance

February 8, 2024

From the annals of visual allusion (bordering on parody or burlesque), this David Sipress cartoon in the 2/12&19/24Ā New Yorker:


(#1) A stripped-down, cartoonized, goofy reinterpretation of a key work of modern art, Matisse’s 1910 painting La Dance (the cartoonist is an old acquaintance on this blog; there is a Page here about my postings on his work)

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Gay flamenco day

June 25, 2022

(Naked male bodies — genitals concealed — and references to man-on-man sex, but nothing flat-out raunchy, so use your judgment)

Midsummer Night (6/24, with fairies reveling in the woods) broke onto the feast day of St. George Michael of the Beverley Tearoom (b. 6/25/63), the patron saint of parks at night and of fellatio by men in public places Ā — a racy lead-up to Stonewall Day (6/28) — and then the Falcon / Naked Sword Store greeted me with e-mail exhorting me to “Get your Pride on” with its $9.97 DVD sale:

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Dancing against homophobia

November 27, 2019

(Not about language, unless a sprinkling of French counts. Instead, cute guys dancing acrobatically and affectionately with one another.)

Today’s touching bulletin from the quartier franƧais of Homotopia: a performance that is all at once hot, sweet, tender, and earnest, to benefit the fight against homophobia, on the French reality tv show La France a un incroyable talent. An introductory shot of Guillaume (on the left) and Arthur (on the right):


(#1) “Une magnifique prestation pour la lutte contre l’homophobie” par les danseurs-acrobates Guillaume et Arthur

You can watch the performance here (set to Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah”).

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Dancer faces

April 1, 2018

(About dance rather than language.)

After some time away from dancers, I returned earlier today with Israeli dancer Yoav Bosidan, and then Mike McKinley went on a run through several Ballet Boys, two of them projecting intense emotions through facial expressions: cheeky Alexander Fost and smouldering Ransom Wilkes-Davis (both Americans). He followed that up with the charming Emanuel Abruzzo (an Argentine dancer of presumably Italian, specifically Abruzzese, descent).

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Jewish gay men

April 1, 2018

(Significant discussions of gay porn, men’s bodies, and mansex — definitely not for kids or the sexually modest.)

In yesterday’s “Deviant Passover rites”, a section on gay Jewish guys partying at the Sederlicious event in NYC, including a note on non-Jews who appreciate Jewish men — called bagel chasers in write-ups of the event (my 12/19/15 posting “X queen” mentioned matzo(h) queenĀ for a man with a preference for Jewish men, and also hummus queen or falafel queenĀ for a man with a preference for Arab/Middle Eastern men).

So in the gay sexual marketplace, there are certainly outgroup customers for Jewish men (and for Muslim men), but there’s evidence that this is a minority taste (suggesting significant implicit prejudice): while gay porn featuring Jewish men isn’t unknown, there’s not a lot of it — certainly Ā nothing like the enormous amount of porn featuring black and Latino men as objects of desire. Black and Latino men, especially working-class men, are seen as strongly masculine and powerful (and therefore attractive as fantasy lust-objects, in what you might think of as thug porn), while Jewish men in general are not.

With the (partial) exception of Israelis. The stereotype of Israeli men is that they’re soldiers, physically tough guys, while American Jews are stereotypically businessmen, accountants, lawyers, scholars, and so on. So there’s a vein of high-end gay porn featuring actors identified as Israelis (promoted especially by Michael Lucas) and a considerable genre of amateur porn offering men identified as Israelis, but not much featuring the sort of American guys who might turn up at Hebro events like Sederlicious.

Illustrations to come from Michael Lucas porn; Israeli gay icon Eliad Cohen; and an unusual piece of amateur (but well produced) gay porn starring a man identified as young Israeli dancer Yoav Bosidan (currently dancing with the Ballet am Rhein).

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Nanette Fabray

February 28, 2018

From the NYT on the 23rd on-line, “Nanette Fabray, Star of TV and Stage Comedies, Dies at 97” by Anita Gates:

(#1) Fred Astaire and Nanette Fabray on the set of The Band Wagon

Nanette Fabray, whose enthusiastic charm, wide smile and diverse talents made her a Tony Award-winning performer in the 1940s and an Emmy Award-winning comic actress in the 1950s, died on Thursday at her home in Palos Verdes, Calif. She was 97.

Warm memories for me, since I came to know her first in the 1953 movie musical The Band Wagon, which I saw as an impressionable young teen at the Radio City Music Hall. (I have the DVD and watched it again last weekend, with great pleasure.)

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Ballet Down the Highway

February 28, 2018

In #2 in Tuesday’s posting “Dancing with the cars”, I returned to the world of male ballet dancers with a photo of Bolshoi soloist Jacopo Tissi suspended in mid-air during the ballet Etudes — a demonstration of extraordinary athleticism. Tissi himself is young (born in 1995), good-looking, well-spoken (he gives good interview), and also an amazing musclehunk. A friend I showed this posting to then noted that I also posted a lot about the conventional fantasy figures of gay porn — cowboys, firemen, truckers, pizza boys, hitch-hikers, and so on — and was there a genre for male dancers too?

The short answer is no, for fairly obvious reasons (which I’ll write about below). But my question then was whether there’s any ballet-based gay porn. The answer here is yes, at least one film: Jack Deveau’s 1975 Ballet Down the Highway. Straight trucker falls for gay male ballet dancer, lots of mansex ensues.

Which has now gotten showings as an art house film, at a venue in Williamsburg, Brooklyn.

(#1) Poster for the Brooklyn showing in 2015

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Dancing with the cars

February 26, 2018

Another pun committed by the Bizarro/Wayno collaborative:

(#1)

(If youā€™re puzzled by the odd symbols in the cartoon ā€” Dan Piraro says there are 3 in this strip ā€” see this Page.)

ballet, valet, what’s the difference? And who can resist a man in a tutu? (CueĀ Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo.)

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Xmas follies 2017: the shirtless men of the season

December 17, 2017

Another crowded seasonal category — I’ve already been through music, decorations, clothing, and food — in which there seems to be no end of entertaining folly. Ā In this case, no end of shirtless men in Santa or elf costumes (down to a cap and nothing else).

On color coding: a red Santa cap can be worn by Santas or elves, while green or green+red indicates an elf.

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