ABSTRACT

This chapter focuses on Cave's involvement in this rock movement, in particular on some of his dance performances, by both academics and commentators alike, as the Crystal Ballroom scene', as well as some of his dances performed with, The Birthday Party at two gigs at Manchester's Hacienda nightclub. Male performers in the scene, including Cave and others such as Simon Bonney from Crime and the City Solution, incorporated transgressive masculinities and sexualities into their performances, thus flagging the subculture as an unmanly' site for rock performance, at least in comparison to the spaces and attitudes of Oz pub rock. Cave's dance style with The Birthday Party can be understood more deeply in terms of an experimental performative arm of marginal performance that Broadhurst provisionally assembles under the heading of liminal performance'. An awareness or appreciation of, maybe even an affinity with, Cave's performatively queered masculinity holds the potential to engender a sense of pleasurable affinity.