ABSTRACT
First, ‘Men don’t dance’ is not far from ‘“real” men don’t dance’, i.e. there must be something wrong with those who do. With this go all the homophobic pressures on white men to conform to prevalent and culturally specific heterosexual norms of masculine behaviour. Second, what is or is not all right for Americans is a question of American cultural identity By the end of the twentieth century, while Russian men have continued to have a high profile on the international ballet scene, American men are now dancing on stage and have played a large part in the development of American modern dance. It must to some extent be as a result of Cold War rhetoric (Gilbaut 1990b) that there has been and still is among some critics and commentators a deep-rooted belief that the United States leads the world in the modern arts. To adapt a good line from the television series Star Trek, modern dance is seen as a new frontier where American men have been able to boldly go where no man has gone before.
