ABSTRACT
What happened to male classical dancers in the transition from amateur ballet de cour to professional ballet today? Have they, as many social commentators and historians would suggest, been the most spectacularly visible but innocent victims of widespread changing socio-political and aesthetic attitudes about gender representation?2 Could the way that men are represented (and represent themselves) in dance literature also be at least partially to blame? Or is it possible that ballet practice itself should shoulder some of the responsibility, wherein what would later contribute to the sense of unease that now surrounds male ballet dancers might be traced back to the noble style of dancing developed in Royal French courts during the seventeenth century? If so, might not this ballet de cour also provide a possible antidote to the current malaise?
