SYTYCD Fan(s) of the week: Are male dancers sissies?

Some years ago, there was a lot of publicity centered on eating disorders in ballet dancers, and from the number of comments by Nigel about the masculinity of the male dancers (and the comments on his comments), it seems that homophobia is huge issue in the dance community, too.

But is Nigel really a homophobe, or is he just responding to a homophobic audience, anticipating them, and demanding that the guys dancing for him conform to the stereotype of virile, "butch" men, rather than fey, "sissy" men? I was wishing for some gender-bending dances (or "post-gender", as a commenter I quote herein says), but it doesn't look like that's going to happen in the mainstream dance world any time soon.

Consider these comments at AfterElton
Dan McCallum:

I'm not sure either about who's gay, but what is up with Nigel and his homophobia???!!! Is anyone else as annoyed as I am by his constant need to heterosexualize everything? Ugh. In case he doesn't know, the majority of men in the dance world are gay, and the dance world doesn't care and is very accepting of it. Nigel seems to be the anomoly.

Guillermo Serritiello:

One thing that we so agree on is Nigel, but I've beat that dead horse too long. He keeps trying to correlate "gay" with "flamboyant" AND "weak," and says the same tired thing that some of these "types" are not strong enough to do some of the required lifts or play a traditional role. Lots holes in his sweeping generalizations esp. in a field that is opening more and more each day as I see people wanting to see something exotic, organic, and at times even post gender. It also ignored how some gays are so good at play acting.

And then there's Sean Cheesman, a choreographer from Calgary slated to be one of the guest judges for SYTYCD Canada this fall.

In the video, note Sean’s comments to dancers at 3:00

“Crying does not work in this business. Get strong, now”; “Tell your problems to Jesus, because I don’t care”

and at 3:35, when he himself is in tears

[I’m feeling] “emotional now, and it’s because…we all know growing up as a male dancer isn’t easy, and if anybody says male dancers are sissies, they need to watch you dance.”

SYTYCD: Top 4 Open Thread and Poll

So that's where they went: I found the BSYTYCD gang over on Levy on TV.

After tomorrow, we'll be moving over to SYTYCD Canada. If you're in Canada and you want to help out, drop us a line here:

SYTYCD: Episode 425 Open Thread

As far as I can tell, FOF thinks Chelsie is safe because she's the sexiest of the remaining women, and Katee's going home because she's not as hot as Courtney, but Mark will continue to get the BFF vote, while Joshua gets the anatomy vote, and Twitch loses out and toddles off with Katee.

No. That is not what's going to happen. FOF is out of his mind. Katee is not going home. How could Katee and Will both go home before the top 4? In the whole competition, can you imagine any other pair being able to pull of a pas de deux?
No, you can't.

Twitch is not going home, either, because he'll get the pity vote for his loss of composure last week.

My prediction: Mark is done, and so is Courtney.

If I'm wrong and FOF is right I hereby vow to slog blog my way through the upcoming SYTYCD Canada, provided FOF can come up with a suitable counter-wager.