"They've lost that wounded look that fags all had 10 years ago." Allen Ginsberg told the Village Voice reporter, describing the crowd in the Stonewall Inn the night of the riots in 1969. An observer looking on now might say that they've lost that fanatical look they had during the AIDS era, when for example the dancers of the High Risk Groups were hurling themselves naked against cyclone fences, and Keith Hennessy danced blindfolded on top of, and near the edge of, a bus parked in the Mission.
Gay Pride Month gave us an explosion of gay-friendly dance. Space does not permit covering it all. But what a lot of performance there was, from the fabulous to the deeply thoughtful, covering a spectrum that included more bisexual nuance than I've seen for some time.
Joseph Copley, star of the venerable Margaret Jenkins Dance Company, won the King of Boylesque competition dancing the great solo from the classic ballet La Bayadere in a costume that was ripped from him by three studs in Baroque costume, leaving him full Monty and hardly surprised.
The extremely hunky Sebastian Grubb – he's built like a wrestler or a gymnast, with short limbs, tiny waist, broad shoulders, cushy chest, and moves like a cat – bared nearly all in the steamiest dance at The Garage, in an evening of experimental dance by the SF Moving Men that included some pieces of gay Angst choreographed and presented by Joe Landini. The black-box space suits Landini's purposes, which seem self-exploratory, to farm the impulses that lead to movement, and raise up some that may seem obsessive or unpleasant but that (like homosexual inclination itself) should not be suppressed per se. The show ran all month – the whole evening was engaging, despite the fact that the night I saw it, an important performer had to be replaced (by Landini himself, who's not in shape but jumped in and danced heroically, and in two other pieces replaced by his rehearsal assistant, Christine Cali, a magnificent mover who would have been ideal had she not been of the wrong sex for some of the material – and even so, the intimacy of her dancing with Grubb was very beautiful to see).
Even more interesting, though less enjoyable, were experimental dances at The Lab. First up, Jorge de Hoyos and Jesse Hewitt took gestures from porn movies and put them in a postmodern context – each stuck a few fingers into the other's mouth, one felt up the other's throat (which was not gagging on a thick, hard cock) – while flooded with romantic music ("I'll Be There," in honor of Michael Jackson, who had just died). Laura Arrington and Co. sent up various girly things, and the brilliant modern dancer Kegan Marling did almost none of his usual shtick – he can jump like Michael Jordan – but instead tried on a couple of ball gowns, sang breathily into a mike while making it clear that he was not comfortable in drag, let us see almost all of his sturdy little body, and made us feel not embarrassed but rather grateful that he'd been willing to be that brave and see him with his guard down. Finally, Jesselito Bie, who used to do extremely transgressive Queer! dance, did a duet with his friend Jennifer Chien that was a study in affection and quiet, which ended the evening on a calming note.
Two shows this weekend continue Gay Pride into July: the openly lesbian Anne Bluethenthal's Pluto in Capricorn evening at ODC Commons, and the retro-gay ManDance at the SF Conservatory of Music (50 Oak St., SF). The director of ManDance, Brian Heinrich was once a member of the Ballet Trockadero, and has all the theatrical savvy one would expect of them. The show will be Eye Candy Variety Pack – kinda retro, throwbacks to the era of the great gay entertainers, with very hot male dancers, superbly trained, displaying their beauties and their skills in a dizzying range of moods. But there will also be a male pas de deux to music from Brokeback Mountain that will not leave a dry eye in the house. The choreography is simple, sincere, as solid as the movie, and as heartbreaking.
Bluethenthal is a hero to many – she co-founded the Gay and Lesbian Dance Festival a decade ago, and has been making dances that embody women's ways of loving for 25 years. Her dancers are superb.