Black Male Dancers and the Performance of Masculinity On- and Offstage: Bill T. Jones, Desmond Richardson, Dwight Rhoden, and Ronald K. Brown

The central premise of this dissertation project is that, contrary to conventional wisdom gay men and their experiences are uniquely situated to tell us about how masculinities are lived in American contemporary culture. With a critique of hegemonic masculinity at its core, this dissertation project shifts the paradigm on how we think about and perceive men in society and culture. Attempting to bridge theoretical perspectives with lived reality, my project aims to show the extent to which marginalization of black gay male identity and the black queer male dancing body is critical to understanding the performance of masculinity and how black male dancers inform us about the performance of identity. Rather than offering gay men's lives as examples of a marginalized identity, my dissertation examines their centrality to understanding men, diverse masculinities, and the performance of gender. Consequently, the fluidity of gay male identity across race, gender, and sexuality poses compelling reasons to look at gay male lives for unique prescriptions on dealing with and defining masculinities in American contemporary culture. The dissertation project examines the performance, perception, and representation of masculinity of the black male dancing body. I confront the prejudice against the male dancer within a Western theatrical dance tradition, while revealing how homosexuality and effeminacy make strange bedfellows in the public-private, on- and offstage perception of male dancers. Starting with the black male dancer as the focus, my interdisciplinary analysis combines dance studies, black feminist theory, masculinity studies, queer theory, critical race theory, choreographic analysis, oral history, and ethnography to reveal the broad implications of race, gender, and sexuality for men, masculinity, and manhood in American society and culture. To do so, I examine the work of Bill T. Jones, and the dance companies of co-artistic directors Dwight Rhoden and Desmond Richardson's Complexions Contemporary Ballet, and Ronald K. Brown's Evidence. I surmise, just as black people are the moral conscience of American democracy and freedom, and that no discussion of American history can occur without their presence; I, too, contend that gay men pose a similar relationship to understanding the performance of gender in society and culture