The queering of Swan Lake : a new male gaze for the performance of sexual desire

K. Drummond

This essay argues that, by re-gendering the ballet classic Swan Lake, choreographer Matthew Bourne has also queered it. He thrusts center stage an unstable relationship between two male characters, and in so doing, de-centers the conventionally fixed categories of sex, gender and sexual desire. He also forces a long-simmering relationship between homosexuality and dance out of the closet and into mainstream popular culture. Applying Mulvey_s theory of spectatorship and Butler_s theory of gendered performance, the essay describes how viewers may be intrigued, rather than repulsed, by the ambiguities surrounding Bourne_s portrayal of sexual identity.[Copies are available from: Haworth Document Delivery Center. The Haworth Press, Inc., 10 Alice Street, Binghamton, NY 13904-1580, USA]