ABSTRACT
This chapter explores choreography for male dancers from the mid-1990s to the 2010s that offers audiences opportunities to imagine new ways of understanding relations, both at an interpersonal level and in terms of relations of power. It begins by considering the shift away from explicit statements about identity politics since the early 1990s by comparing a section from Lea Anderson's 1992 piece Birthday, and John Jasperse 2005 piece Prone. It then examines the reversal of power relations when Trajal Harrell and Mat Fraser demand an inclusive space within the centre ground of contemporary dance for groups or points of view that are hidden or marginalised. It looks at choreography created by and for two men by Jonathan Burrows, Raimund Hoghe, and Martin Nachbar arguing that how these men dance together marks a move away from the time-honoured ways in which men work together in the interests of maintaining male hegemony. What these duets explore are new kinds of relationships. And finally it looks at the existential questions about the nature of masculinities raised by the works that the African choreographer Germaine Acogny has created with male dancers. All of these works, it argues, offer potentials for imagining society made up of equal and diverse agents capable of creating more equitable socialities.
